Where there's heat...there's Scorchers
Jason and the Scorchers are on the road again; they'll stop at Roadhouse Ruby's Tuesday night.

By Patrick Beach
The Des Moines Register
March 16, 1995, Thursday

Copyright 1995 The Des Moines Register, Inc.

***Corrections and Clarifications*** Published 18.03.1995 Information in the Datebook Thursday erred in reporting when Jason and the Scorchers will perform at Roadhouse Ruby's. The show is Wednesday night.

A band doesn't have to be properly appreciated in its own time to become a
legend in another. That's how it was with Jason and the Scorchers, one of the great lost bands of the '80s. They made some fine records that welded roadhouse country and fire-breathing rock, and put on some jaw-dropping live shows. But bad timing, worse business deals and personal struggles squeezed the life out of the band.

And the legend was born. Other acts started fusing country and rock, and
everybody was crediting Jason and the Scorchers with being the first. And there
was vocalist Jason Ringenberg, living anonymously in Nashville.

"That was the hardest time of my life," Ringenberg said. "Sometimes it's like
it never even happened. We never saw royalties. I was working just jobs, mowing
yards and landscaping and working in restaurants - couldn't get things going
musically. It was like it never happened. I threw a lot of mementos away or put
them in the attic."

Then bassist Jeff Johnson, who'd been the first to quit the band, started
jonesing for a reunion after he bought a CD release of the band's greatest hits.
Johnson had sobered up, as had guitarist Warner Hodges, whom Ringenberg calls
"one of the best in the world."

"(Johnson) thought we ought to try to tour," Ringenberg said. "But all along
I think he thought it would be a permanent thing. Warner says Jeff called him
and made his pitch, and Warner said, 'Unquestionably, Jeff, don't ever talk to
me about this again. Don't ever talk to me about getting the Scorchers back
together. I will never do it.' And he hung up. And Jeff called back five minutes later: 'Hey, Warner. This is Jeff. Changed your mind yet?' And he'd call me at four in the morning."

Johnson's plotting and persistance paid off. At a show at Liberty Lunch in
Austin, Texas, not quite two years ago, the band announced the reunion was more
than temporary. "I had buried the Scorchers. It was tough for me. It's really funny, looking back," Ringenberg, 36, said. "I can't imagine life without the band now. It's unimaginable."

And it's a long way from his parents' farm near Sheffield, Ill., about an
hour east of the Quad Cities. Ringenberg left home in 1981 with his eye on being
a country star. In Nashville he hooked up with Hodges and Johnson, and later
with drummer Perry Baggs. In '83, Jason and the Scorchers released the epochal
EP, "Fervor," which sounded like Hank Williams fronting the Ramones and included
an unforgettable cover of Bob Dylan's "Absolutely Sweet Marie." The record wound
up on on a lot of critics' year-end best lists and turns up on the occasional
all-time 100-best list, as well.

Three other LPs followed, but the last, 1989's "Thunder & Fire," was the
sound of a band stumbling. Lineup changes only worsened the situation. "There's that indefinable chemistry," Ringenberg said. "When Jeff left for the last record and we added a guitar player, wee sounded better but it didn't have the spark. These guys just have a spark. That has nothing to do with me."

The spark is readily apparent on "A Blazing Grace," the band's new disc from
Mammoth Records. The opener, "Cry By Night Operator," is vintage Jason and the
Scorchers - incredibly catchy and melodic, played with piledriving intensity.
The country side of the band, which eroded as the '80s waned, is now back on
tunes such as "Where Bridges Never Burn."

And the covers are revelatory: Instead of taking the easy, cheesy route with John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads," they play it furious and desperate. Then there's George Jones' "Why, Baby, Why." It all adds up to a piece that's among the Scorchers best recorded work. And although it's at its heart a rock album, it's got more country in it than 90 percent of the watered-down soft stuff coming out of Nashville these days.

"A lot of the guys now, when they were starting out they were reacting
against the staleness of late '80s country, and they were rebels," Ringenberg
said. "I liked Garth's early records. Then they became as bad as the Mickey
Gilleys and the Lee Greenwoods they were supposed to replace. They become so
concerned with the markets, demographics and things like that."

None of which concerns Jason and the Scorchers any more. They're having a
great time touring - they stop for a free show Wednesday night at Roadhouse
Ruby's - and the experience is a lot more fun than the first time around.

"It's night and day," he said. "Any angle you look at it, it's a more
fulfilling experience. We have our priorities different, a different set of
goals. We don't care how big it does or doesn't get. We're just out to have fun
and have some personal satisfaction. You start thinking about career things and
it muddles the process. We still work hard, but . . . we're already a success.
We made a good record."

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