Jason & the Scorchers: Live and on edge

By Michael Gelfand
Musician Magazine - April 1998

Copyright 1998-2004 Musician Magazine

Warner Hodges is buggin’. His band, Jason & the Scorchers, is almost finished with a pre-recording soundcheck, but he’s still “stressing out,” i.e., chain-smoking before, during, and after each song; it’s not until the band starts tearing through “Last Time Around” that he finally relaxes. Grabbing the headstock of his Fender Telecaster with both hands, Hodges furiously thrusts the guitar under his right armpit. It’s a maneuver that, for a split-second, seems ill-conceived, but as the guitar arches back over his left shoulder and dives toward the stage floor at breakneck speed, Hodges reaches out blindly and catches it in time to nail the downstroke. It’s an exhilarating display of rock & roll bravado, but no one’s paying attention; soundmen are scurrying around setting up mics and shouting into walkie-talkies while disinterested bartenders lifelessly unpack bottles of tequila at the back of the room.

The room in question is the Exit/In, which, depending on who you ask, is regarded either as one of Nashville, Tennessee’s worst dive bars or its premiere rock venue. Whatever way you choose to look at it, it’s where Jason & the Scorchers first made a name for themselves, and it’s also where they’ve chosen to record Midnight Roads and Stages Seen, their long-awaited live album for Mammoth Records.

“We’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” Hodges explains between draws on a Marlboro Menthol. “It was just a question of us getting it together, being able to do it the way we wanted to do it - with a full-on, 24-track truck so we never have to stop. It’s all analog, ‘cos we ain’t digital dudes. It comes down to us now; if everything’s the way it’s supposed to be, it’s our job to deliver a decent show.”

The Scorchers say they want Midnight Roads to be a major statement in the same way that Alive cemented Kiss’ live reputation back in the mid-Seventies, so they left no room for falling short of that mark; Hodges (who’s producing the record) and the rest of the band (singer Jason Ringenberg, drummer Perry Baggs and bassist Kenny Ames) chose to rent a mobile recording truck and a massive generator instead of setting up rented recording gear backstage and hoping that everything went off as planned. (Opting for the mobile truck immediately paid dividends, as it arrived with Yamaha NS-10s, two 24-track Otaris, and the very same custom-built ‘72 API console that was used to record Frampton Comes Alive.)

As preparations began for the recording, the band quickly realized that they wouldn’t have enough time to record every song they wanted; after agreeing to disagree, they whittled down a “must” list of forty songs to a more manageable master list of seventeen - including two new songs - creating two separate sets (for the ensuing performances on Friday and Saturday) with alternate takes to be recorded during soundchecks before each show and throughout the preparatory run-through on Thursday.

“The difference with a live record versus the studio animal is, we can’t go, ‘Hold on a minute.’ You go with what you got, and I love being out on that limb,” says Hodges. “The limb breaks or the limb holds. That’s what Jason & the Scorchers has always been about. This band has always had the potential to be the best bar band in America on a given night, and we’ve been the worst, too. The potential’s supposed to be there, and good rock & roll to me is supposed to be like, ‘Aw shit, what’s gonna happen next?’

“Everybody in this band has always been willing to fall on his face,” says Hodges. “Hopefully you don’t. When we do, it’s a major fucking catastrophe, but that’s okay. I know there’s gonna be a few chords missed, and I know there’s gonna be a few things said that shouldn’t have been said, but if it’s a good screw up, it’s gonna be there [on the record]. I want this record to be as close as we can possibly make it to a sweaty night in Nashville with Jason & the Scorchers.”

To ensure that the band’s performance would be captured without any sacrifices, every mic and DI output onstage ran into a splitter box, enabling their performance to be sent simultaneously to the house’s main mixer as well as the monitors and the mobile truck for the independent mixes. (Associate producer Michael Janas pulled double duty, manning the house’s mixing board while coordinating the efforts of monitor engineer Kyle Miller and mobile engineer Jeff Bakos.)

So as the band pounds its way through the end of “Last Time Around,” Ringenberg leaps from the stage and struts toward the back of the room, pacing as he listens to the floor mix. “Best damn sounding room in the South,” he shouts. The rest of the band is equally satisfied with their stage sound, but before they can start recording, Hodges wants to hear what’s printing to tape. “I’ll know tonight if I can leave here being just the guitar player in the band for the next two nights,” says Hodges. “That’s what I want. We’ll get some stuff on tape, make sure the sounds are what we’re looking for, and then I can put on the guitar player hat and say ‘To hell with the producer thing’ for the next two days.”

As Hodges walks outside to the mobile truck, Ringenberg sits down and reflects on what’s about to happen: “When you’ve been in the business for a long time, you really can’t take anything for granted. It could all be gone tomorrow - really easily, you know? And to be together after all these years - sixteen years - and to do a live album, it’s really a spiritual experience. It brings back all the memories of the band: the work we’ve done, and the thing we’ve built up - which ain’t that big, but it’s ours.

“It isn’t because we’ve had a hit single or anything like that,” he explains. “We’ve gained everything we’ve got the hard, hard way. The absolute hardest way there is, from playing and basically being a punching bag; that’s what it essentially boils down to. You’ve got to be able to take punishment to survive this long and not have hit records. You’ve got to be able to take lots of abuse, and we took it, but now we’re on the other side of something and feeling real good about it.”

Pushing himself up from his seat, Ringenberg wears a supremely confident look. “I don’t have any doubts that we’ll nail it,” he says with a smile. “I just hope I remember all those words.”

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