Scorchers retrospective: The heat goes on

By Brian Mansfield; Special for USA TODAY
USA TODAY
May 8, 1998, Friday, FINAL EDITION

Copyright 1998 Gannett Company, Inc.

Garth Brooks isn't the only Nashville act looking back at his career this week. Eight years before Oklahoma's favorite singing son sold the first of his 67 million albums, Jason & the Scorchers blazed a trail through Nashville with a fervid rock-country hybrid known for lack of any better term as "cowpunk."

Both acts have just released albums that serve as career retrospectives. Brooks' The Limited Series compiles his first six nonseasonal albums with a half-dozen new recordings. Jason & the Scorchers' two-disc live set, Midnight Roads & Stages Seen, covers material from the band's 17-year career. On the surface, the two acts couldn't be more different. Brooks counts George Strait, Billy Joel and KISS as influences; the Scorchers draw on Hank Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Ramones. Brooks' Sevens outsold the Scorchers' last album, Clear Impetuous Morning, by more than 100 to 1.

But Brooks and the Scorchers share considerable common ground. Both took iconoclastic approaches to rock and country music. Brooks and Scorchers frontman Jason Ringenberg briefly were signed to the same label during the early '90s. ("He could've sold more records in five minutes than I sold all year," says Ringenberg.) Both new sets contain Bob Dylan covers the Scorchers' Absolutely Sweet Marie, a live staple since the early '80s, and Brooks' new single, To Make You Feel My Love. And both acts have been tremendously influential. Brooks created country music's new business paradigm, while the Scorchers set the stage for the rise of alt-country.

In 1981, the Scorchers came screaming into a town dominated by the likes of Barbara Mandrell and Alabama, playing punk covers of songs such as Hank Williams' Lost Highway and Eddy Arnold's I Really Don't Want to Know. The band's churlish guitar and yelping hillbilly vocals, even now, make Brooks' version of Aerosmith's The Fever which shocked fans and radio programmers alike seem tame by comparison. Back then, it was like the Sex Pistols had sauntered into town wearing leopard-skin cowboy hats.

"Nashville was so sleepy when we started out," Ringenberg says. "It was unbelievably square."

The New York Times called the Scorchers "one of the great rock bands of the '80s," and they were the first Nashville rock act of that decade signed to a major label. They almost single-handedly created the city's rock scene, and they had an indirect but undeniable impact on country music as well. Now they're finally getting some of their due. The Country Music Hall of Fame has approached them about donating items for a permanent exhibit in the museum's new location, set to open in 2000 in Nashville.

"My life would've been a lot different if I hadn't walked into some clubs early on and seen Jason," says Kyle Young, associate director of the Country Music Foundation, which operates the Hall of Fame museum. "Here was a band that turned me on to hard-core country music through their renditions of hard-core country songs." Young isn't the only Scorchers believer in Nashville's music industry. Former Scorchers manager Jack Emerson now runs E-Squared Records with Steve Earle; Andy McLenon, formerly Emerson's partner, is now a Nashville-based vice president for Sire Records. Acts like Deana Carter, Billy Ray Cyrus and BR5-49 have sung the group's praises.

If the Scorchers didn't pave the way for rock-influenced country singers like Brooks, they at least opened Nashville's mind to the possibilities of mixing the two styles. "There certainly was an excitement at the shows that you couldn't see in the country music of the time," says Nashville journalist Michael McCall, who has authored a biography of Brooks. "It was such a powerful experience, you couldn't help but want to see it carry over into the mainstream of country music."

"[When] the genre needed to reach out and become more aggressive, there certainly had been exposure to Scorchers-style material, so it wasn't such a leap of faith," says DreamWorks Nashville general manger Wayne Halper, who dealt with both Brooks and the Scorchers in previous positions.

While Brooks now packs arenas, the Scorchers still play clubs. But both acts have changed the music of Music City. Brooks is "taking rock influences to country music," says Scorchers guitarist Warner Hodges. "We've been taking country music to play rock. It's kind of going to the same place, but going to it from a completely different angle."

© 1998-2001 Gannett Company, Inc. — All Rights Reserved