Jason and the Scorchers
Still standing, still rocking, still the most amazing live band in America

By Baker Maultsby
Creative Loafing
Greenville/Spartanburg, SC - August 1, 1998

Copyright 1998-2004 Creative Loafing Greenville, Inc.

PLACE: Rockafella’s bar, Columbia, SC
YEAR: 1989

It was like nothing I’d ever seen or heard.

For one thing, the drums and guitars were louder than I could have thought possible, creating a rumbling, thumping, spasmatic wall of noise. And then there was the showmanship. Guitarist Warner Hodges slung his guitar around his neck and spun himself around and around at breakneck speed — like some terrifying, exhilarating combination of Kerri Strug and AC/DC’s Angus Young — while playing solos! Drummer Perry Baggs pounded the drums as if to inflict damage, all the while contorting his face into maniacally gleeful expressions.

And frontman Jason ran all over the stage, dancing wildly and grinning like he knew something we didn’t. The audience sang along with ballads and jumped up and down to the rockers. I got back to Spartanburg at 4 a.m., and woke up hours later, a happier, deafer man. I should have been ready for all that, but I wasn’t.

A year before, I had taken the recommendation of a friend and bought a tape of Fervor, the Scorchers’ 1984 major label debut. Not expecting the tape would be worth much more than the $2.99 I’d paid to pull it from the bargain bin, I put Fervor in the stereo of my parents’ station wagon and headed home from the mall.

About three songs into the album, I almost had to stop the car. This was something I had never dealt with before. It had the twang and beautiful harmonies of whatever good country music I had been exposed to at the time. But it rocked like nothing else. It was, to say the least, highly consequential. I wore that tape out within weeks, though I still had no idea what havoc could be wrought upon the songs in a Scorchers’ live show.

After that night at Rockafella’s, I understood. Now the band has released a live, double-disc greatest hits collection, Midnight Roads and Stages Seen, recorded in their hometown of Nashville, TN, and anyone whose speakers can handle that kind of massive input can hear something akin to what I experienced that evening (and have heard on half a dozen wondrous Southern evenings since then).

But even a full clockwise turn of the volume knob can’t bring a complete understanding of what this band is, why they’ve remained such an important force in American music for the past 15 years, and how they came to be known to many as the greatest live band in the country. For that, we have to go back to Nashville, circa 1981.

Nashville in 1981 was, as it still is in many ways, a town whose musical character was being actively sacrificed at the altar of staid commerce. Music Row, the financial center of Nashville’s music scene and the world’s primary provider of popular country music, was doling out heaping helpings of glam-country syrup like Crystal Gayle and Kenny Rogers. The Grand Ole Opry had abandoned its home at the Ryman Auditorium in downtown for a plush complex out from town that included a hotel and theme park. The soul of country music and its hometown had shifted from Hank and honky-tonks to Ronnie Milsap and urban cowboys.

But there were undercurrents in Nashville that ran counter to the big money politics and musical fluff. There were, as there are today, ties that bound the consciousness of Nashville to the music and legend of Johnny Cash, George Jones, and Merle Haggard. And much of Nashville’s younger crowd wasn’t terribly interested in country music’s generation gap at all. Like kids anywhere else in America, they had grown up on Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Tom Petty, and KISS.

This state of affairs awaited Jason Ringenberg, a 19-year-old fellow from an Illinois hog farm. Jason moved to Nashville on July 4 of that year, bringing with him no publishing contracts, no high-level contacts, only with a single tune written by himself and his brother: a silly, old-time country stomp called “Help, There’s a Fire.”

Ringenberg grew up with an abiding love for vintage country music, and for the songs of Bob Dylan, Gram Parsons, the Band, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. In addition, Jason had recently been turned on to late 70’s punk rockers The Ramones and the Sex Pistols. While hundreds of young singers descend upon Nashville each year in hopes of being snatched up and groomed for commercial stardom, Jason aimed for something quite different: a melding of the seemingly incongruous genres of country and punk. He was looking to turn the whole thing upside down, and, within a few months, he did just that.

“I remember driving into Nashville and just feeling like, ‘This is really romantic and really important.’ Everything felt so romantic, and it felt like I was doing something important,” Jason recalls. “I don’t think I had a very defined idea, but I had a general feeling I wanted to get from the music. I wanted it to be very modern, but at the same time, very rooted in American music.”

Soon, this musical vision took form in Jason’s acute ability to connect the aura of classic country music with the brash excitement of punk rock. “When I first moved to Nashville, I couldn’t believe that no one else was doing what I had in my mind,” he says. “It felt like there was this gigantic watermelon ready to be eaten, and I’m the only guy with a knife.”

Jason played a few shows, including opening slots for R.E.M. and Carl Perkins, with a start-up group he called Jason and the Nashville Scorchers. But our hero (Jason, of course) was quickly taken under the wing of bassist Jeff Johnson, a veteran of Nashville’s floundering rock and roll scene. Johnson brought in a wild-eyed country and rock session guitarist named Warner Hodges.

A masterful country picker with an angle on boisterous, aggressive rock, Warner could deliver most any instrumental context for Jason’s country-meets-punk vision. Warner grew up in Nashville, where his parents and older brother were musicians. “My older brother was a guitar player. My dad was a really good rockabilly and country player back then. As a kid I got bombarded with everything from Hank Williams to Jimi Hendrix, you know, and all points in between,” Warner explains. “My brother would know what Henrix was doing, and my dad would know what the hell Luther Perkins was doing.”

Like Jason, Warner soaked up the essence of the diverse influences which came his way. In addition to the country players he came into contact with through his parents, Warner studied the guitar sounds some of his favorite bands: the Faces, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and his favorite, AC/DC. “I don’t own another record that’s not an AC/DC record,” he says today. And then Warner, too, got hit over the head with punk rock.

“I was raised on George Jones and Tammy Wynette and Merle Haggard,” Warner says. “But, the first time I heard that Sex Pistols record and the Ramones, it like, ‘Shit, I want in on this, too.’” What Jason and Warner were up to was, in some ways, not entirely new. Bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top, and the Allman Brothers had forged “Southern rock” out of a blending of country music with hard rock and blues.

But Jason and the Scorchers were, and are, an altogether different thing. “We had country influences,” Warner explains. “But the rock we listened to was either the British stuff or, later on, Sex Pistols and Ramones. But the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker, what was known as ‘Southern rock’ back then, that wasn’t where we were coming from at all.”

Jason concurs. “The knowledge of punk rock is what separates us from the other generations of Southern rockers. I never looked at Lynyrd Skynyrd or the Allman Brothers. ‘Southern rock’ is what that was, but we’re Southern rock and roll.” And so, while Southern rock bands played long jams, wrote sentimental anthems, and, in some cases, showcased their political ideologies, Jason, Warner, Jeff, and drummer Perry Baggs, a musical cohort of Warner’s, set out to strip country and rock and roll down to their most pure and outrageous elements. They cloaked themselves in the imagery of vintage Grand Ole Opry days, but played fast and loud, with all-out abandon.

According to Warner, it didn’t even matter that they started playing gigs with only a couple of their own songs. He says, “We were mostly playing punk rock clubs. Nowhere else would let us play. We only had two original songs when we were out playing, you know, and we had eight or 10 country covers that we just turned into other songs. The kids were going ape shit! They thought Jason was the greatest songwriter on the face of the earth.”

It didn’t take long for Jason to, in fact, become a world class songwriter. While the Scorchers were establishing a larger-than-life reputation as Nashville’s most insanely rowdy and entertaining band, Jason was writing songs that would solidify the group’s critical reputation as one of the most important rock bands, of any genre, of the 1980s and 90s.

Shortly after forming, the Scorchers went into the studio and recorded Reckless Country Soul, a wonderfully wild EP of demos in 1982 that included rocking covers of songs by Hank Williams, Carl Perkins, and Jimmie Rodgers. But it was two originals, “Help, There’s a Fire,” and, in particular, “Broken Whiskey Glass,” that signaled the arrival of Jason and the Scorchers. Reckless Country Soul was quickly followed up with a more polished EP, soon reissued with additional tracks by EMI Records.

That record, Fervor, shows Jason and the Scorchers at their best. The production and, more importantly, the performance are raw enough to capture the band’s aggression and irreverent charm, while sufficiently slick to showcase Jason’s growing confidence as a singer, Warner’s astonishing talents on guitar, and the inventive dynamic shifts of the entire band.

But, most of all, the songs on Fervor and the band’s first full-length album, Lost and Found, are the core of Jason and the Scorchers’ greatness. Rockers like “I Can’t Help Myself,” “If Money Talks,” and Perry’s “White Lies” contain all the velocity and swagger of rock and roll classics by Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard.

At the same time, Jason’s inspiration was not purely visceral. “The state of America has always been a huge topic for me. The characters usually come from traditional upbringings and they’re trying to exist in the modern world. There are problems they run into by trying to maintain a spiritual base in a very physical world.” “Harvest Moon,” “Pray for Me Mama,” “Last Time Around,” and “Broken Whiskey Glass,” re-recorded for Lost and Found, bring these themes to life as well as any songs in recent memory.

Taken together, Fervor and Lost and Found comprise some of that decade’s most impressive music (in 100 Greatest Rock and Roll Records, critic Jimmy Guterman ranked Fervor above albums by the Beatles and the Stones). Unfortunately, the indefinable qualities that made the band’s songs and performances special contributed to its commercial failure during the 80s.

The Scorchers were more countrified and flamboyant than earnest rockers Springsteen or Mellencamp, more rockin’ and interesting than any country radio act, and, ultimately, completely uncategorizable. The situation was as confusing to the band as it was to the marketing guys, and by the time the Georgia Satellites copped a Scorchers attitude and hit big with “Keep Your Hands to Yourself,” Jason and the boys were beginning to lose their focus.

“Without question, there was a time in the mid-80s when we were on the cusp of stardom, and we missed that chance,” according to Jason. “I don’t know quite why. We made mistakes. Other people made mistakes, too, on our behalf.” Warner explains that these mistakes had a lot to do with the suffocating pressure to put out a record which would be a radio hit. “The record company had been beating us over the head, ‘We’ve got to have a radio hit.’ And, I’d be a lying sack of shit if I told you we didn’t want one,” he says. “It’d be great to have a radio hit. But in working so hard to do a radio record, we kind of got away some from what Jason and the Scorchers is all about. And it didn’t work.”

As a result, their late 80s efforts, Still Standing and, especially, Thunder and Fire, had some inspired moments and featured strong songwriting, but lacked the spirited mayhem of earlier efforts. After touring in support of Thunder and Fire in 1989, the band called it quits (Jeff actually quit after Still Standing). Jason put out a solo country album, and they all needed time off to kick some of the bad habits that had become part of their lives as rock and rollers.

When Jeff called Warner in early 1993 to discuss the prospect of reuniting Jason and the Scorchers, Warner had reservations on both a personal and musical level. “When Jeff first called and wanted to put the back together, I had been sober 3 or 4 months. I wasn’t going out at all,” he remembers. “And, also, I was really scared we’d go out and be a shadow of what we once were. I didn’t want to go out and be a bunch of old men that couldn’t play the songs with the gusto they deserve.”

What the band discovered was that could still play and that there remained an audience for their live shows. “It was a real pleasant surprise for us to be able to go out and have a damn good time,” Warner says. “I’ve been real happy with the way the band gets after it.”

With the grunge and alternative explosion in the 90s, sullen self-absorption became the accepted style. But for Jason and Scorchers, “getting after it” still means world-class showmanship. “I was always into bands that entertained me.” Warner remarks. “Nothing pisses me off more than seeing some of these bands that look absolutely miserable playing. It’s like, ‘If you don’t want to do this then go home. You should be having a good time.’”

In addition to their continued prowess as a live band, Jason and the Scorchers are still capable of making records worthy of the critical acclaim that their last two studio albums, A Blazing Grace and Clear Impetuous Morning, have received. Songs like “Cry By Night Operator,” “Self-Sabotage,” and “Going Nowhere” are among Jason’s finest songs.

Meanwhile, a host of younger bands like Son Volt, Whiskeytown, and Wilco are writing and playing tunes that combines rock-era influences with a taste for classic country music. Jason and the Scorchers have been acknowledged as the band that paved the way for these and other “alternative country” bands. “It’s a cool thing for people to cite the band as a reason they did this, that, and the other,” Warner says. “I appreciate it. It’s a weird thing sometimes, though. At times, it’s like, ‘I’d rather sell 50 times the amount of records we sell than be an influential band.’”

But Hodges knows that today as in the 80s, the musical edge of Jason and the Scorchers frightens corporate radio programmers and many mainstream listeners. “I think musicians, writers, creative people have always gotten it,” he explains. “Where we’ve had serious trouble is radio and people not understanding, ‘Hell, is it a country band? Is it a rock band? My God, one minute they’re doing Hank Williams, the next minute they’re the Sex Pistols.’ After 17 years, I still don’t know. I think we’re damn good at whatever it is we’re doing.”

Jason and the Scorchers perform at The Handlebar Thursday, July 30. Come on Thunderchild opens the show. Call 233-6173 for information.

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