Lost and Found Again: Jason and the Scorchers Rise From the Ashes

By Jeff Clark
Stomp and Stammer Magazine
Atlanta, Georgia - December, 1996
Copyright 1996-2004 Stomp and Stammer

I always figured I’d get around to interviewing Jason Ringenberg for a story someday, but 1 never thought the Nashville fixture would be calling from France when I did. Yet that’s where the call came from several weeks ago - from Nantes, France, specifically, where Jason & the Scorchers would be playing a show that night.

Ringenberg laughs at the absurdity of the situation, but as is the case with many American “roots” bands, there are places in Europe where they’re significantly more popular than at home.

“Particularly Scandinavia,” Ringenberg reveals. “That’s the Scorchers’ strongest market. There was a craze in Finland for awhile, and...that’s almost Russia! They are just nuts about us! We’re like on the charts in Finland...There’s a certain segment of the audience [in Europe] that is really into [American roots music]. It’s not like there’s millions of people who...are gonna buy the old Gene Vincent reissues or something, but there is a real loyal and devoted following of this kind of music over here.”

Enough, says Ringenberg, to have made possible several European Scorchers tours since the band’s reformation in 1993. “[I’m] this kid from the farm, this kid that grew up vaccinatin’ hogs,” he chuckles, thinking back to his childhood in Missouri [Illinois]. “It’s a pretty incredible thing.”

Back in the States, Jason & the Scorchers also have a loyal following, but not significantly larger or smaller than it was back in what could arguably be termed the band’s heyday: the mid-1980s. They’re still playing clubs and small theaters, and still putting out records bursting with the full-throttle collision of country/western and punk rock, for which the term “cow punk” was coined. But what’s most surprising to Jason is that they’re still together at all, with all the original members (Ringenberg, guitarist Warner Hodges, bassist Jeff Johnson, and drummer Perry Baggs), after the series of setbacks that broke them up in 1990.

And what may be most surprising for fans of the band is that they’ve just released their most fully-realized album since ‘85’s Lost & Found, and one that Ringenberg unhesitatingly calls “the most important record of our career.”

But first things first. After releasing that classic album and others like Reckless Country Soul (their debut 7-inch from ‘82, re-issued earlier this year on Mammoth Records), Fervor (‘83) and Still Standing (‘86), why the big breakup in the first place?

“A combination of a lot of things,” Ringenberg claims. “And most of them are very traditional rock n’ roll reasons: frustration and tiredness, lack of commercial success, a vast difference in the proportion of expectations versus what really happened. Uh, corporate problems, music business problems, problems with the record company. Drug problems, booze problems...”

It’s those last two items that are said to have directly contributed to the exit of Johnson, who left the band prior to recording their last pre-breakup album, Thunder and Fire. When asked if that’s the reason Johnson was replaced by Ken Fox (now in the Fleshtones) for that album, Ringenberg says, “I suppose,” but he downplays any finger-pointing.

“We didn’t kick him out. But it was obvious it wasn’t working. I don’t remember exactly. There wasn’t really an official reason why it didn’t happen. But it ended up that he was gone, and whether it was because of drugs - or because he was frustrated, I don’t know.”

Regardless, that album ultimately lacked the thunder and fire of its title, and the band at the time - augmented by a pointless additional guitar player - was obviously on its last legs.

“The band was probably tighter than it’s ever been on Thunder and Fire,” Jason reflects in hindsight, “and there were a couple of good songs on it, but it wasn’t quite the thing...it wasn’t what we really are. But we had no choice, we went on as best we could.”

They finally threw in the towel the following year, with Ringenberg going on to record an ill-fated solo album for Liberty Records. After that deal fell through, along with his marriage at the time, Jason never thought it would be Johnson calling him up from Atlanta, where he had briefly joined the Tombstones, pressing him to get the Scorchers back together.

“Yeah, Jeff did it, pretty much. He had heard that Essential Collection Jason & the Scorchers record that came out in ‘92 [on EMI Records], and he just all of a sudden fell in love with the band again,” Ringenberg remembers. “And I was totally against it. I wanted nothing to do with it. I had nothing but frustrations from the past, and I wanted nothing to do with it, and I pretty much told him so, but he was just so persistent.”

Eventually, with his fortunes such as they were at the time, and with Johnson “starting to dangle these incredibly good-paying offers under my nose...I said, sure, I’ll crawl in the van and do a few shows if you want. Just for the money, and to keep my mind off all the other problems in my life.”

Admittedly, for fans of the explosive quartet, it was a sheer off-balance thrill to catch the original lineup, in action again. The energy was there, and the old favorites sounded fresh and ragged, but it soon became apparent that this reformed Scorchers wasn’t exactly kicking the barn doors down with new material. As the lackluster Sex Pistols’ reunion demonstrated this year, such empty reunion motivations such as making a quick buck work to cheapen whatever legacy a once-revered band had developed. No one wanted ‘em to end up an oldies act. It was time for the Scorchers to put up or go away. So, they put up...if a bit hesitantly at first.

“It took a couple of years to get to where we were really a band again, and not
just a reunion thing,” admits Ringenberg. “It took the new album to do it. Before the new album it was still...A Blazing Grace [the first post-reformation album, on Mammoth] was almost a reunion album, you know. And it could still go either way at any time. All of us were wondering whether we wanted to do another record or not, ‘cause we knew what it was gonna take to do it.”

But is Clear Impetuous Morning (also Mammoth Records) really, as he insists, the band’s most important record ever?

“I think it’s the most important in terms of our own creative abilities, and our
own confidence in where we stand creatively,” Ringenberg states. “We’ve made good records, and borderline great records in some cases, but I don’t think we’ve made a brilliant record since Lost and Found. And I also feel we were in a pretty severe creative rut. We were able to go onstage and play “White Lies’ and play “Lost Highway’ really well, and get the energy going, and people enjoyed it and really liked it, but I didn’t see us coming through with dramatically new creative ideas. And I wasn’t sure we were gonna be capable of doing that again.”

Ultimately, Jason sat down with his friends of fifteen years, and had probably the biggest heart-to-heart they’ve ever had. The questions asked, and the goals set, formed an ultimatum for a band in limbo:

“Do we wanna do it? Because this is what it’s gonna take if we wanna do it. We can’t just keep going in the same way we’re going; we have to write a whole lot of new songs, have a lot of new ideas. We need a new massive infusion of creativity into the band.

“That was a pretty intense meeting,” says Ringenberg. “There were some really tough things said, and it took several weeks to actually get over it, and get past it. But once everybody came back and said, ‘Yeah, I’m in, let’s do this,’ the next step of course was for me to put my money where my mouth is, and to write some cool songs that these guys could get behind...And essentially, it happened way beyond my expectations. I was completely and totally satisfied. I think I wrote some great songs, and I think the guys made a great record out of those songs.”

As a matter of fact, they did. Blasting off with the holy ruckus of “Self-Sabotage,” Clear Impetuous Morning smolders with the spirit of four old friends who’ve rediscovered a youthful fire within. There’s an unhinged raggedness present that’s been missing on their previous couple of albums, a go-for-broke, full-speed-ahead enthusiasm.

“Cappuccino Rosie,” “Going Nowhere,” and a cover of Gram Parsons’ “Drugstore Truck Drivin’ Man” are certain to be live favorites - you can almost feel the smokey air brush by you from one of Hodges’ patented spinning guitar tosses - while the gorgeous “Everything Has A Cost,” a duet with Emmylou Harris, is the prettiest, most touching thing they’ve ever recorded.

“She’d seen us before, and kind of stayed in touch,” Ringenberg says of Parsons’ old pal Harris. “We knew it was a duet when we wrote it. And she was the only choice. We didn’t want to do it with anybody else but her. It wasn’t really much of a problem, we just had to find the right time for her and us. And she had one off day between Europe and Australia, and she took it and showed up at ten o’clock in the morning all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and did a great job. But it was an unforgettable experience.”

Much as Parsons, and to a certain degree, Harris, were credited with predating and inspiring much of the laid-back California country-rock movement of the 1970s, Jason & the Scorchers are now being touted as forerunners of the current “Americana” craze. Which is understandable in a superficial sense, but even today the Scorchers come off as closer to a rough n’ tumble bar band with a few snazzy Stetsons than many of the earnest “no depression” outfits popular today, and on a good night (which is quite honestly more often than not), Ringenberg still lives up to his “Jerry Lee Rotten” reputation touted in the band’s current Mammoth bio. How does he feel about the current country-rock climate, and does he feel like a proud father?

“Well, I think we ought to take a certain amount of credit for it,” he insists. “We do take a certain amount of credit for it. It’s hard to picture what’s happening today with this area of music without Jason & the Scorchers. I think it’d be much different. I think it’d be farther behind, ‘cause you just can’t take away our contribution.

“But I agree with you, it’s a very important distinction...I explained it to a Dutch journalist the other day, I said if you were into taking drugs or drinking, and you went to shows - and I don’t mean this as an insult or anything, it’s just the honest truth - if you went to a Son Volt show, you’d probably smoke pot. If you went to a Scorchers show, you would probably drink whiskey. That’s the fundamental difference. And it is a difference.

“The Scorchers owe as much to the Ramones as we do to Hank Sr. We owe as much to the New York Dolls as Merle Haggard or Gram Parsons. The other bands, it’s pretty much a direct line right back to Gram Parsons, or the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, any of the late ‘60s, late ‘70s country rock. A lot of ‘em don’t go much further than that.

“I don’t hear any sort of punk attack, any sort of high energy attack in any of the other acts, really, except maybe Supersuckers, a few bands like that,” Ringenberg continues. “And frankly, I don’t see any of them really doing it as well as we do. We kind of carved out our own niche, and to this point, fifteen years later, no one else can really still do it like we do it.”

Yeah. the Scorchers are still valid, and anyone who don’t believe it has to meet me on the front row of their next show here. But besides all of that, besides the fact that they’ve finally proven that their “reunion” is less that than a maturing and sharpening of their original vision, is the ultimate strength of what keeps this American classic together through thick and thin (and there has been, and still is, much of the thin.) It’s the closeness between them that’s only grown stronger with time.

“The brotherhood, or common bond, of fifteen years of shared experiences - it’s been over fifteen years we’ve been together, and there’s a million shared experiences there. I know these guys better than I know my family, than I know my brothers and sisters. There is that common bond, and there’s a respect. I mean, I’ve seen these guys get kicked down and rise from the ashes so many times, I’ve seen ‘em do so many thousand mile drives, I’ve seen ‘em do so many weird little shows, I’ve seen ‘em, you know, continue to walk on these stages and deliver these sort of thermonuclear experiences, to 50 people, to a hundred people, to 500 people. But not 10,000 people, you know (laughs). It’s not like we have a huge thing behind us keeping us in it. And that’s something to be very proud of.

“And when it’s all said, and done,” he hastens to add, “I like the guys.”

Sidebar:
Bakos For Breakfast: Clear Impetuous Morning is clearly Jason & the Scorchers’ finest album in ten years. To record it, they came to Atlanta, a city that embraced the Scorchers early on, a relationship that has since worked both ways; for their 15th anniversary show, the band chose to celebrate with a riotous show at The Point, where they blasted through old chestnuts from Reckless Country Soul and Fervor like they were on fire in a crispy cornfield.

On the recommendation of bassist Jeff Johnson, an Atlantan and longtime friend of Jeff Bakos, the band chose tiny Bakos Amp Works on Ponce de Leon Avenue to record their demos for the album.

“Jeff [Johnson] kept saying it was a cool, funky room, and it got great sounds,” Jason Ringenberg recounts. “Bakos just has ways of getting great sounds out of that room...So we cut our demos there, and it really worked out very well, sounded good, and I started seein’ what Jeff was talkin’ about, that Bakos really is kind of an up-and-coming undiscovered talent. Also, we could get six weeks of there for what would have been two weeks of time in Nashville or New York or LA. And the record really does sound good.”

Bakos, who engineered and mixed Morning, and who has worked on many an album - and repaired many an amplifier - for scores of Atlanta bands, was impressed with the all-around genuineness of the Scorchers, one of the few internationally-known, non-local bands he’s worked with. Putting his pay back into the business, he used his advance compensation from the Scorchers session to buy a 24-track analog mixing board. “It increases the capacity of recording, ‘cause you can do mastering,” he explains. “It’s a great thing. I can’t complain.” Bakos also recently moved his amp repair business out of the studio space, increasing the usable square footage.

As for the Scorchers’ experiences recording Morning here, “I think, musically speaking, it was one of the best times I’ve had in my life,” proclaims Ringenberg, “and I think the other guys would agree with me on that. Jeff [Johnson], of course, loved it, bein’ in his hometown.”

Shortly after the album was finished, Jason returned to Atlanta for a solo acoustic show at the Star Bar, the personable watering hole he discovered during work on Morning.

“It was a bit nerve-racking, but I came to enjoy it,” he says of his first solo show since before the days of the Scorchers. “That show was kind of like the last little sweet kiss from recording the record. The last touch of a great positive experience all around.”

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