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SCORCHERS ARE
ON FIRE AGAIN Copyright 1993 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
But many of Nashville's more innovative acts foundered during the Reagan years, and Jason and the Scorchers had little luck moving beyond the college-radio level. Their albums, while critically acclaimed, failed to perform at the box office. On a 1986 song called "Greetings from Nashville," the band vented some of its frustration in a shot at the glitz surrounding mainstream country music: "Greetings from Nashville, the new LA/The money's pourin' in, I ain't about to move away. . . ." The sarcasm reflected their gathering disenchantment, which was complicated by problems involving substance abuse. "The end of the '80s was just a bad time for a band like the Scorchers," Ringenberg said during a recent interview. "Our music just wasn't very fashionable. We were having a hell of a time just staying clothed, basically. We got tired of making great records that no one listened to. And I kinda wanted to go in more of a country direction. "So the band just kinda fell apart. We broke up in the midst of frustration and disappointment. It was just one of those things." But as occasionally occurs in popular music, the Scorchers managed to achieve a status among their fellow musicans that kept them from taking a permanent chair in the back row of rock oblivion. Long after they had thrown in the towel, Jason and the Scorchers kept encountering their name on short lists of prominent influences on major bands. "A lot of the new young acts started talking about the Scorchers as a big influence on their music," said Ringenberg. "Bands like the HeadHunters and the Black Crowes. In their interviews, they acknowledged their debt to us. So a lot of younger people started digging back into our music to see what we were about. "Then EMI released that best-of series ('Essential Jason & the Scorchers, Vol. 1'). It sold really well, and we thought that was really interesting." Interesting or not, Ringenberg had trouble priming himself for another shot with the Scorchers. He'd been playing basketball with the band's guitarist, Warner Hodges, but music seemed to be a sore point between them, and they kept it out of the conversation. With memories of days with the Scorchers that included most of the misfortunes that can overtake a rock band, Ringenberg felt disinclined to take to that lost highway again aboard a rattling 1969 Econoline van. But the persistence of bassist Jeff Johnson eventually overcame Ringenberg's resistance. "I was knee-deep in my solo career, and Warner was doing video work," Ringenberg recalled. "Everybody was just scattered out. I hadn't spoken to Jeff in six years. He called up and said, 'Let's try this thing. I think there's business to be done.' "At first, Warner and I were like, 'There's no way. We're not doing this. Forget it, Jeff.' I threatened to change my phone number if he didn't quit bothering me. But he just stayed after it. "Finally, I said I'd do it for a couple of weekends. "And we did a couple of weekends, and we just packed the rooms and had a great time together. And the music was really good, and we found ourselves enjoying playing together, so we did another weekend and another - it just kept going. And now we're writing songs, and we're going to cut another record." They kicked off their new tour last May at the Lafayette Club in Bloomington, Ill., where they had played their first gig 12 years before. Ringenberg, who is now 34, grew up on a farm in the small north central Illinois town of Sheffield and went to school at SIU-Carbondale, where his bands included Shakespeare's Riot and the rockabilly band Catalina. During the Scorchers' dormancy, Ringenberg recorded "One Foot in the Honky Tonk" for Liberty. He suggested that the band's newest material reflects the traditionally inclined music of that album as well as the roots sound of the Scorchers' earliest recordings. "I'm fond of saying there's two different Scorchers," he said. "There's the first two albums and the last two albums, the last two albums being much more hard rock and much more heavy, and the first two being more of a country, punkabilly, roots-rock sort of thing. I think we're harking back to the first two on our next record." One factor in Ringenberg's deciding to give the band another try was the fact that the others had cleaned up their substance-abuse problems. "I knew they'd straightened out," Ringenberg said, "and that did make a big difference. "I had been playing basketball with Warner, and he told me all about AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), and how much it meant to him, how much he enjoyed being sober. He'd tell me about Jeff and Perry (drummer Perry Baggz), too - how they'd changed their lifestyles. "It did make a big difference for me. They're not as erratic in their behaviors and their personalities. And they play better. They just are more creative. Alcohol and drugs just zap creativity. "I've always been straight, completely, pretty much. It used to be almost looked down on if you didn't do drugs or drink. Now it's kind of looked down on if you do drugs and drink, particularly if you do drugs. I mean, if you pull out a line of cocaine in the studio now, everybody just says, 'Get out of here!'" Jason and the Scorchers
© 1993-2001 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc. — All Rights Reserved |
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