Back on the burner; Ex-Scorcher Jason returns with a new band, Nashville sound

By Jack Hurst, Country music writer
Chicago Tribune
October 8, 1992, Thursday, DU PAGE SPORTS FINAL EDITION

Copyright 1992 Chicago Tribune Company

Three years ago, after a tour with Bob Dylan and a flop of an album titled "Thunder and Fire," the band Jason and the Scorchers abandoned a 10-year quest for rock immortality. "The tour with Dylan was the swan song," said Jason, the ex-group's lead singer. "We got done with the tour, and there were no more shows to do. No one wanted to buy us. We were dead."

Rigor mortis set in soon thereafter. New representatives of A&M Records, which had just been sold to PolyGram, arrived in Nashville to bury the band. It was informed that it had been dropped from the A&M roster. The next day, one of the other members telephoned Jason and resigned, saying he no longer could go on.

"It was a tearful time," said Jason, whose surname is Ringenberg but who will perform simply as Jason on Saturday at Schuba's, 3159 N. Southport Ave., in front of a new, as-yet-unnamed band.

Although devastated by the sudden removal of the huge "extended family" the band had been for him - a loss he compares to the death of a close friend - he quickly set about rebuilding his professional life. In January 1990, soon after the Scorchers' breakup, he took the first steps up what initially seemed "an insurmountable mountain. I knew if I laid back and tried to deal with it mentally, I'd just get lost," he said. "I'd never be able to regain the drive and momentum.

"I made a little demo tape and started calling record companies. All I had was an attorney and a reputation, and I got a lot of doors slammed in my face, because I wasn't really ready. I didn't have a band, I didn't have a good-quality tape, I didn't even have a manager. "I just had 'I'm an old Scorcher.'" He had more than that. He had a goal and a background to match.

The son of a Sheffield, Ill., hog farmer, Jason had been the most country-directed of the Scorchers, loving the music of some of the neo-country stars of the '80s.

With the Scorchers' flameout, his goal lay in a different but not implausible direction. The Scorchers had been Nashville's first rock band to achieve national recognition, but the solo Jason "was determined not to continue on in the pop world. I felt that musically and creatively I would fit better into Nashville, into what's happening here now," he explained. "If I looked at the whole picture of what I had to put together, it was staggering, especially for a guy who was used to having so much help around. I basically had to do it myself."

He took a demonstration tape to Capitol (now Liberty) Records, and - though he said it was "horrible: I was kind of lost and groping for an identity" - producer Jerry Crutchfield called him back. Crutchfield wanted to talk. Then he suggested they record "a couple of songs just for fun."

By then Jason had written a song with prominent Nashville composer Don Schlitz and another with rocking Georgia Satellites member Dan Baird, and under Crutchfield's supervision he recorded those two. When they took them to Liberty boss Jimmy Bowen, he "bit," Jason recalled.

He and Crutchfield ended up making an album titled "One Foot in the Honky Tonk." The package has "sold some," he said, without so far denting the country hit charts. "We knew it was going to be tough," Jason said. "Our strategy now is to go out and tour first, rather than waiting for a hit record." About 30 percent of his new band's material, he said, is vintage Scorchers - "stuff that makes sense to do: anything that's got that country, rock 'n' roll, American thing about it."

The terms "country, rock 'n' roll, American" describe the singer himself. Raising chickens and rabbits on a few acres in the Nashville exurbs, he said he's too far out of the city for cable TV and has bought no satellite dish because his fowl would roost in it.

"I don't ever want to go back to the rock world," he said. "We'll probably have rock fans, get rock press and maybe even rock airplay, but I consider myself a part of the Nashville world, and I'm going to hang with it. Sooner or later, country radio will buy Jason. It's not going to happen overnight or on every record, but it's going to happen enough to keep me here."

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Jason (left) with the Scorchers. In going solo after the band broke up, Jason gave up the pop approach and concentrated on country.

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