Jason & The Nashville Scorchers Tearing It Up -- Again
The band has rereleased its first EP, recorded in 1981, in addition to recording new material

By BARRY COURTER, Entertainment Writer
Chattanooga Free Press
February 18, 1996, Sunday

Copyright 1996 Chattanooga News-Free Press Company

The last time we saw Jason & The Scorchers, they were tearing through an unplanned unplugged set during an evening performance at Riverbend as the heavens relieved itself of some unwanted moisture.

For his part, Jason Ringenberg endeared himself to the crowd as he sat on the front of the stage giving it the old college try. Even when Riverbend workers accidently dumped water that had gathered in the overhead tent on top of him, he carried on. "Man, that was an historic show because I have people mention it to me all the time," he said from Nashville, where the band is back together and recording again.

Their reunion album, A Blazing Grace was released last year, complete with a new name for the band, Jason & The Nashville Scorchers.

The big news for Jason fans is that the group's first four-song EP Reckless Country Soul is being rereleased with six previously unreleased songs from the same era. The new songs are so rare, even the band had not heard them in their finished stage until the project was completed earlier this year. "The fun thing was that those extra tracks were more exciting than the first EP was. We didn't know what we had. It was like finding a dead body that was still living," he said.

Recorded in 1981, only a few thousand pressings were made of the extended play disc that is now a hot collector's item among audiophiles. Jason said some of the material sounds a bit dated, but he likens it to the Band's Basement Tapes. "It predated some of today's country-rock stuff. It's funny to have this one coming out (this past week), and a new one out pretty soon (September)."

Known as a great live act with a high-energy show driven by powerful guitars and a thumping rhythm section, Ringenberg, Warner Hodges, Jeff Johnson and Perry Baggs, were popular with the critics and with fans, but never sold a lot of albums.

"It's amazing how what people think it was was never how it was for us. We would be on MTV and go home and people would expect us to be in limousines. We never made a lot of money. It was a lot of behind-the-scenes work, but you don't see people getting out of it when they do it. Once you've been on stage and hear that crowd, it's great."

While some artists play for the pure love of the music, hearing the roar of the crowd is what the Scorchers live for, he said. "The relationship with the audience is as important as the relationship with us and the music," he said. "We're known as a live band. We didn't come to please ourselves: we're there to please the audience and to rock the house."

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