Gypsies Now - Essays

Mammoth Records - European promotional biography

Talk to a fan of Jason & the Scorchers, and the conversation inevitably turns to the band's extraordinary concert performances. Packed with blow-torch ferocity, yet teeming with down-home soul and genuine emotion, Scorchers' shows are the stuff of rock 'n' roll legend.

It's been that way from the band's revolutionary premiere shows in 1981 to the hard-charging, still-rockin' blasts of adrenalin that mark the band's late '90s revival. From then until now, the group -- singer Jason Ringenberg, guitarist Warner Hodges, drummer Perry Baggs and new bassist Kenny Ames -- have presented the best in reckless county soul (as the band so aptly described its music on the title of their first EP). These days, the band plays with a focus and maturity born from experience, but the dynamic heart of the shows continues to be the reckless energy and the honky tonk soul that pours off the stage at every appearance.

That's a theme critics constantly restate: "On Saturday at midnight, there wasn't a better rock 'n' roll performance taking place anwhere in America," wrote a U.S. newspaper critic recently. More than 10 years earlier, a reviewer in England made a similar boast: "Anyone lucky enough to be at the Scorchers' London Marquee show saw one of the top 5 gigs of all time." Then and now, the band ranks among the most exuberant live shows in existence.

That's why fans old and new raised a collective cheer when the Scorchers released a career-capping, two-CD live set that captures the band at its most explosive and expressive. Rather than a small sampling of a few concert favorites, the collection presents 23 songs that allow a listener (or viewer, as in the case of the accompanying long-form video) to experience the prolonged state of transcendence that occurs during a full-on Scorchers performance.

"This record is who we are, with all the energy right there in front of you," said guitarist Warner Hodges, perhaps the best guitarist alive at combining fast-fingered rock 'n' roll fury and melodic country music precision.

Long before anyone coined the terms "alternative country" or "Americana," the Scorchers married a rampaging, guitar-based sound to twangy vocals and poetic lyrics that explored the mournful and spiritual themes found in the best honky tonk and country music. Their music foreshadowed the '90s alt-country movement by a decade, and in recent years they've been cited as primary influences by a large generation of country-rockers. The movement isn't a radio format, but instead a ragged collection of American roots-music performers who, like the Scorchers, have
the nerve to follow individual visions rather than adhere to narrow formulas.

Even though the Scorchers pioneered a musical movement, there's still never been anyone quite like them. One wag aptly summed up their slammin' style of Southern roots music as 50 percent country and 100 percent rock 'n' roll. As Midnight Roads and Stages Seen proves, the Scorchers remain as volatile and as unhinged as ever.

""You would think that we wouldn't be as wild after 17 years," said Ringenberg. "But something still happens when we hit the stage. Right now, we're as good as we've ever been. We belong to that tradition of people, like Jerry Lee Lewis, who don't grow tamer with age."

Though the energy remains full throttle, the experience of playing together for so long shows both on record and on the video. It can be be heard in the band's tight dynamics; in the nuanced expressiveness and impassioned sincerity of Jason Ringenberg's unbridled vocals; and in the band's deep catalog of original songs, which explore the tension between sin and salvation with the earthy authenticity of Hank Williams and the erudite imagery of Walt Whitman.

Those qualities have always been there; now they've just been sharpened so that they cut through with more potency. But those who saw the Scorchers' earliest shows saw that the power and the glory was there from the start.

The story starts on the 4th of July, 1981. Ringenberg, who grew up on an Illinois hog farm that bordered the Rock Island Railroad line, celebrated Independence Day by moving to Nashville, bringing with him the idea of transforming country music by juicing it with the vitality of rock n'roll. Within a month, Ringenberg persuaded a loose-knit band of young musicians to back him up. One member was Jack Emerson, a rudimentary bassist at best, but a lover of country and rock at its rawest form -- Emerson, in fact, had been relieved of his job as a disc jockey at a Nashville college radio station because he played a Johnny Cash song during a program devoted to alternative rock.

The first show by this new band, crowned Jason and the Nashville Scorchers by its frontman, was as opening act for a newly launched quartet from Georgia, R.E.M. Among those in the crowd was Jeff Johnson, at the time a mainstay of Music City's underground punk-rock scene.

Amazed by Ringenberg's performance -- Johnson described Jason at the time as "a hayseed Iggy Pop" -- the young musician dragged his lifelong friend, guitarist Warner Hodges, to see the second Nashville Scorchers show, when they opened for rockabilly legend Carl Perkins.

"I remember watching this skinny guy just go nuts onstage," Hodges recalls. "The rest of the band just stood there frozen, but Jason was bouncing all over the place. He was incredible. He was all over the stage and beyond -- he kept leaping off the stage and jumping around in the middle of the crowd. Man, he put on a show -- hell, he was the show."

Before long, Emerson stepped aside to manage the band, and Johnson joined the Scorchers as bassist and Hodges as guitarist. By November, Hodges brought the ferocious punk drummer Perry Baggs into the fold -- giving the group, along with Ringenberg and Johnson, yet another songwriter with a colorful grasp of country and rock styles.

Hodges, Baggs and Johnson were well-known in the underground Nashville rock community, but it shocked many of their friends and peers when they added a significant dose of twang to their sound. Few realized that each of them were as steeped in country music as in punk and rock 'n' roll. Hodges and Johnson had shared a taste for hardcore honky tonk for years; indeed, both of them spent many nights jamming with Warner's parents, Ed and Blanche Hodges, both of whom had a rich history as country performers.

Ed Hodges has long been a first-rate guitarist. His wife, Blanche, continues to be a passionate country singer who merges country and rockabilly in a style reminiscent of the great Wanda Jackson. (The Hodges, who often join the Scorchers onstage during the band's Nashville sets, can be heard performing a live version of "Walkin' the Dog" with the band on the audio and video versions Midnight Roads and Stages Seen).

In earlier years, the Hodges were a touring act that performed with Johnny Cash, among others. Warner began joining them onstage as early as age 10 and traveled with them to perform for Americans in the Armed Services on a USO-sponsored tour that took them to several overseas locales. After the Scorchers started, Johnson often spoke of how Ed Hodges often had suggested that the boys should consider taking country music and playing it with more of a rock edge. Little did any of them know how important those country lessons would be for the two musicians later in life.

Baggs, whose uncanny 4/4 drumming style is as vital to the Scorchers sound as Ringenberg's voice and Hodges' guitar, also had the benefit of growing up in a musical household where variety was encouraged and Southern roots-music was part of the family fare. Baggs' father had been a professional gospel singer, and his son grew up in a home saturated with traditional music of both the spiritual and secular varieties. Even in his most rampaging punk days, Baggs wrote country songs on the side, and his knowledge of of both country lyrics and rock rhythms would later play an important part in the ongoing development of the Scorchers.

"It almost seemed like fate, the four of us getting together," Ringenberg said. "I mean, how many people were out there who thought it would be cool to mix country music and punk rock? Not too many -- not in 1981, anyway. But, to the four of us, it was natural. That was the music we loved. Warner, Jeff and Perry all knew country music, and they all had played it. Then here I come, this green kid from the farm, and I love the same things they do. From the very first note we all played together, there was this amazing chemistry."

Nashville first got shocked by the power of this unusual quartet when the Scorchers debuted its new lineup on New Year's Eve, 1981. It was to be the first of many legendary hometown shows, and there are now thousands of people who claim to have been among the hundreds to see that landmark performance.

"In those earliest days, people either really loved it or hated it," Ringenberg said. "People were fanatical about it. They'd either want to kill us or take us home and feed us. It was a wild existence."

Two weeks after the New Year's Eve show, the band issued its first album, Reckless Country Soul, which was recorded in four hours. "From the first note, we knew we were onto something," Ringenberg recalls. That they were: with rip-roaring covers of Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers and Carl Perkins, the band staked its claim as hyper-speed hillbillies who packed their velocity-driven tunes with personality and raucously propulsive arrangements. Just as tellingly, the album featured the band's first original tune, "Broken Whiskey Glass," a gothic tale of addiction and lost love that achingly evokes both personal anguish and the Southern landscape.

"That songs always been real important to us," Ringenberg said. "Once that was written, we knew we had something to contribute. We not only had a sound of our own, but now we had this song that was really unlike anything else, too."

The groundswell of support for the rockers among Nashville fans was equally remarkable. By the summer of 1982, the band stunned the city -- and brought traffic on one of its major avenues to a standstill -- when it drew more than a thousand people to an outdoor show in the parking lot of a local record store.

Playing off of a flatbed truck without a backdrop or lights, indeed with nothing other than a p.a., the Scorchers put on another in an escalating list of unforgettable shows. This night, in all the excitement, Jason broke a tooth during the first song when he slammed the microphone into his mouth while flinging himself into a lyric. That didn't stop him, though. A few songs later, he was climbing a utility poll with an American flag in his arms.

It was a signifying gesture, a triumphant moment when the pioneers of American cowpunk claimed a new sound as their own and, at least for a day, victoriously rose above the Nashville system to claim their position as lords of a new musical style. By waving a flag while dangling dangerously over a Nashville street, Jason served notice: The revolution was on.

"It's not considered a radical thing anymore to have punk rock and rock 'n' roll and American roots music fused together," said Jason, who speaks as softly offstage as he does as forcibly when onstage. "But, I can tell you, in 1981 it was absolutely radical. We faced violence in some places because of what we were doing."

The resistance only served to stoked the band's passionate commitment to their vision and their unique sound. Time moved forward quickly for the band. While Reckless Country Soul documented the band at its most primal, 1983's Fervor displayed a fuller stylistic range. With songs that were as mournful and grave as others were ferocious and visceral, the album lifted the band from regional fame to international buzz status. The New York Times named it the best EP of the year; Rolling Stone granted it a four-star review.

The album grew in stature after the band signed with EMI, added a few songs and re-released Fervor to even greater acclaim. A rollicking cover of Bob Dylan's "Absolutely Sweet Marie," still one of the band's cornerstone songs, garnered airplay across America, and the album landed near the top of the Village Voice's annual poll of hundreds of music critics.

In more recent years, with the added importance of time and perspective, Fervor has repeatedly been cited as one of the best albums of the rock 'n' roll era. Writer Jimmy Guterman named it among the most important and most enjoyable rock records in history, including it in a Rolling Stone book that named the top 100 records of the rock era.

From the other side of the coin, the Country Music Foundation gave the collection five stars in its list of Country Music on Compact Disc, as well as referencing the band as the best country rock band of the '80s in its acclaimed history book, Country: The Music and the Musicians.

"Their shows were so physical," Nashville music critic Robert K. Oermann has said of the band. "Jason acted like a guy who had been attacked with a cattle prod. And I still maintain that Warner Hodges was one of the most charismatic lead guitarists of his generation. The two were like twin poles of electrical energy. You could almost see the bolt of lightning that connected them. The Scorchers never sold more than a million records, but nobody who saw them will ever forget it."

Physical? Sometimes the show's were downright dangerous, especially onstage. "I've been knocked out, and I've knocked Jason out," Hodges said. "Jason and I have collided and knocked each other cold before. I'd be throwing my guitar, flipping it over my shoulder, and the thing would could around while we were going in the wrong direction and boom! We've always been a three-ring circus onstage."

Lost & Found followed in February of 1985. A perfect extension of Fervor, the songs showed polish and focus without glossing over any of the raw power that pulsed at the music's core. "Lost Highway," the opening cut, still ranks as the hardest-rocking cover of any Hank Williams song ever, while the newly extended version of "Broken Whiskey Glass" added a grace-note of quiet drama to a standout song. "Still Tied," about the risky subject of a black man's peril in the South, was another manifestation of the least recognized element of the Scorchers' greatness: their unusually insightful and provocative songs about Southern history and culture.

The album also featured several other mainstays of the band's repertoire, including "If Money Talks" and "White Lies." The latter received widespread airplay on MTV and ranks as the most-played radio song in the band's history.

The reviews remained ecstatic. "There isn't a second-rate song on the album, or a performance that is anything less than wildly exciting," Robert Palmer wrote about Lost & Found in the New York Times. "This is rock 'n' roll, the real stuff..."

That year, the band hit what may be its most ecstatic and memorable point. Once again staging a free show in the same parking lot of a midtown Nashville record store, the Scorchers attracted an estimated 10,000 fans -- stunning local officials and industry heads again. Amid an incredibly joyous set, Ringenberg dived into the crowd and, again clutching an American flag, climbed a billboard that stretched far higher than the utility pole of old. Ringenberg hung the flag from the billboard and, with a cordless mic pinned to his shirt, finished singing a rousing version of "White Lies." In the crowd, pandemonium reigned.

By 1986, however, the pressures brought on by music business politics, constant touring and the increasingly self-destructive habits of Johnson, Hodges and Baggs started to strain the band. "We let it slip away from us, and we caused a lot of the slippage," Hodges has said. "We watched a good thing go bad."

Nonetheless, while Still Standing might not have been as consistent as the earlier records, it had plenty of shining moments. One of them, "Golden Ball and Chain," certainly should have had a chance at giving the band its long-deserved national rock hit. A Stones-like honker with a killer guitar riff, a multi-dimensional message about the perils of stardom, and ludicious use of rousing R&B harmonies, the song started to build steam at rock radio. It climbed into the top 15 of rock radio before EMI lost the momentum when executive changes resulted in a period of ineffective
promotion and marketing.

On the road, however, the toll showed. By 1988, Jeff Johnson had quit. The band hired Ken Fox on bass, then added a second guitarist, Andy York (who later became bandleader in John Mellencamp's band). After leaving EMI, the band signed with A&M Records. Despite the background problems, the band poured itself into creating its next record. More than 70 songs were written, and the band spent almost two years preparing for the recording of the the album.

"We worked our butts off making that record, and it came out and nothing happened," Hodges said. "It fell flat on its face. It was really discouraging. I don't think it was a bad record. But no one heard it."

Then, while ending a tour with Bob Dylan, Baggs contracted diabetes. Discouraged and worn down, the band called it quits. "We didn't split, we fractured," the guitarist said. "We just fell out from exhaustion and frustration. It was devastating. Everyone of us went into some sort of crisis then."

As Ringenberg told No Depression magazine, "If you talked to each of us independently, I think all four members of the band would tell you it wasn't a good time in anybody's life. I did a solo record for Capitol/Nashville, a watered-down Scorchers kind of record, and I went through a divorce. It just wasn't a good time."

Hodges moved to New York, then Los Angeles. He left his guitars in Nashville and didn't pick them up for years. Baggs wrote country songs. Johnson, who had left years earlier, lived in Atlanta and worked in a florist shop.

In 1992, EMI issued Essential Jason & The Scorchers, Volume 1: Are You Ready for the Country. Featuring all of Fervor and Lost & Found, plus a few b-sides and outtakes, the collection not only rekindled interest in the Scorchers. It also lit a fire under band members.

Ironically, Johnson was the first to make the call about a reunion. Contacting Ringenberg, then the rest of the band, the original bassist suggested the group put together a short tour to support the reissue and relive old times on good standing. Other band members resisted, especially Hodges and Ringenberg. But Johnson persisted, even calling booking agents to prove to his former bandmates that interest in a tour existed. Eventually, they agreed to a few shows.

By then, Johnson, Hodges and Baggs were clean and sober -- making it the first time the band embarked on a tour without any drug or alcohol use along the way. It turned out to be an exultant event for all concerned; by tour's end, no one wanted to stop.

Talk of a record surfaced. The tour kept getting extended. An owner of a studio outside of Nashville offered the band recording time. The group finished the album on its own, with production help from engineer Mike Janas. Once it was done, Mammoth Records asked to hear the results. Always fans, the label's chief executives extended the band a contract -- as well as a promise to give them the kind of corporate support they hadn't received in the past.

The result was 1995's A Blazing Grace, an album that surveyed all of the band's past strengths through a series of new songs and choice covers. Right away, both loyal fans and the press rallied around. "No doubt about it, they're back and formidable as ever," wrote a columnist for the College Music Journal.

The live shows drew similar raves. As Don McLeese wrote in the Austin American Statesman about a 1995 performance, "For 90 minutes or so, the Scorchers showed that any band that can simultaneously remind one of the best of Lefty Frizzell and the best of the Ramones should never have been allowed to disappear."

The band was similarly ecstatic. "I've never been happier," Ringenberg said. "The rebirth of the Scorchers has been a central point in rebuilding our lives. It's been a wondrous, rejuvenating experience."

If A Blazing Grace was a look back, then A Clear Impetuous Morning looked to the future. It established a sound that incorporated the power and sweep of the '80s with a forward-looking sound that featured a new maturity without sacrificing muscle or emotion. Under great pressure to prove they hadn't lost their atomic whomp, the Scorchers showed that they not only could live up to past glories, but that they could add a new dimension as well.

"A Blazing Grace was about getting the train back on the track," Hodges told a Nashville newspaper. "This time around we wanted to push the envelope. We wanted to surprise a few people. We ended up surprising ourselves. We upped the ante a bit."

Band members agreed that they still loved playing the early gems from their initial albums. But, with Clear Impetuous Morning, the band felt it had created new songs that stood up well beside their best material.

"I love playing 'White Lies' every night, but we need to move forward, too," Hodges said. "We had to find a way for it to become creative again, to feel like its blossoming and moving forward. For the first time in 10 years, the band is hitting on all cylinders."

Critics and fans agreed. Once again, the Scorchers drew rave reviews from publications worldwide -- Entertainment Weekly, for example, gave the album a rare "A". The band also were heralded at home when Clear Impetuous Morning was named Rock Album of the Year at the Nashville Music Awards.

The also album also found the band reconciling its ambitions with the reality of the modern music business. With the release of Clear Impetuous Morning in 1996, the Scorchers had 15 years and seven albums behind them. The band had achieved a lifespan that was rare for modern rock bands. Moreover, they could count on fans across the United States and Europe to rally behind them when they toured.

"I remember growing up as a teen-ager looking at Neil Young, Bob Dylan and those people, seeing that they had achieved longevity," Ringenberg told interviewer Michael Gray shortly after the album came out. "Now we are sitting on that. We've accomplished what I thought was something really special when I was a teen-ager."

Unlike most bands that survive, the Scorchers hadn't enjoyed platinum records and stadium tours. "For us, the reward is doing great music," Ringenberg said. "It's what bonds us together."

With Clear Impetuous Morning done, the band realized that a live album now made since. Not only would it capture the band ripping through the highlights from the '80s; now it also would show the growth and depth the band has experienced since re-forming.

"We'd reached a point where we can do a live record that doesn't just capture the past, but shows a band that's got something new to say as well," Ringenberg said. "The band had moved forward creatively. We proved we could still write good songs and make a great studio record."

When word got out about a live album, fans around the world applauded. "The live aspect of the band has been so important," Hodges explained. "We didn't want to do it as just some after thought. I wanted to make sure we put out a true representation of the live band. And we did. We're all real proud of the live album. It was a real special night, and I think that comes across on the CD and on the video."

Perhaps drummer Perry Baggs best sums up where the Scorchers are now. "We've become better players, but there's still all that power and wildness in us," he said. "We've got this past to draw on, but on top of all that it's as new as it can get."


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News Meet The Scorchers Learn Back to Essays > Look		Mammoth Records - European promotional biography Copyright 1998 Mammoth Records Talk to a fan of Jason & the Scorchers, and the conversation inevitably turns to the band's extraordinary concert performances. Packed with blow-torch ferocity, yet teeming with down-home soul and genuine emotion, Scorchers' shows are the stuff of rock 'n' roll legend. It's been that way from the band's revolutionary premiere shows in 1981 to the hard-charging, still-rockin' blasts of adrenalin that mark the band's late '90s revival. From then until now, the group -- singer Jason Ringenberg, guitarist Warner Hodges, drummer Perry Baggs and new bassist Kenny Ames -- have presented the best in reckless county soul (as the band so aptly described its music on the title of their first EP). These days, the band plays with a focus and maturity born from experience, but the dynamic heart of the shows continues to be the reckless energy and the honky tonk soul that pours off the stage at every appearance. That's a theme critics constantly restate: "On Saturday at midnight, there wasn't a better rock 'n' roll performance taking place anwhere in America," wrote a U.S. newspaper critic recently. More than 10 years earlier, a reviewer in England made a similar boast: "Anyone lucky enough to be at the Scorchers' London Marquee show saw one of the top 5 gigs of all time." Then and now, the band ranks among the most exuberant live shows in existence. That's why fans old and new raised a collective cheer when the Scorchers released a career-capping, two-CD live set that captures the band at its most explosive and expressive. Rather than a small sampling of a few concert favorites, the collection presents 23 songs that allow a listener (or viewer, as in the case of the accompanying long-form video) to experience the prolonged state of transcendence that occurs during a full-on Scorchers performance. "This record is who we are, with all the energy right there in front of you," said guitarist Warner Hodges, perhaps the best guitarist alive at combining fast-fingered rock 'n' roll fury and melodic country music precision. Long before anyone coined the terms "alternative country" or "Americana," the Scorchers married a rampaging, guitar-based sound to twangy vocals and poetic lyrics that explored the mournful and spiritual themes found in the best honky tonk and country music. Their music foreshadowed the '90s alt-country movement by a decade, and in recent years they've been cited as primary influences by a large generation of country-rockers. The movement isn't a radio format, but instead a ragged collection of American roots-music performers who, like the Scorchers, have the nerve to follow individual visions rather than adhere to narrow formulas. Even though the Scorchers pioneered a musical movement, there's still never been anyone quite like them. One wag aptly summed up their slammin' style of Southern roots music as 50 percent country and 100 percent rock 'n' roll. As Midnight Roads and Stages Seen proves, the Scorchers remain as volatile and as unhinged as ever. ""You would think that we wouldn't be as wild after 17 years," said Ringenberg. "But something still happens when we hit the stage. Right now, we're as good as we've ever been. We belong to that tradition of people, like Jerry Lee Lewis, who don't grow tamer with age." Though the energy remains full throttle, the experience of playing together for so long shows both on record and on the video. It can be be heard in the band's tight dynamics; in the nuanced expressiveness and impassioned sincerity of Jason Ringenberg's unbridled vocals; and in the band's deep catalog of original songs, which explore the tension between sin and salvation with the earthy authenticity of Hank Williams and the erudite imagery of Walt Whitman. Those qualities have always been there; now they've just been sharpened so that they cut through with more potency. But those who saw the Scorchers' earliest shows saw that the power and the glory was there from the start. The story starts on the 4th of July, 1981. Ringenberg, who grew up on an Illinois hog farm that bordered the Rock Island Railroad line, celebrated Independence Day by moving to Nashville, bringing with him the idea of transforming country music by juicing it with the vitality of rock n'roll. Within a month, Ringenberg persuaded a loose-knit band of young musicians to back him up. One member was Jack Emerson, a rudimentary bassist at best, but a lover of country and rock at its rawest form -- Emerson, in fact, had been relieved of his job as a disc jockey at a Nashville college radio station because he played a Johnny Cash song during a program devoted to alternative rock. The first show by this new band, crowned Jason and the Nashville Scorchers by its frontman, was as opening act for a newly launched quartet from Georgia, R.E.M. Among those in the crowd was Jeff Johnson, at the time a mainstay of Music City's underground punk-rock scene. Amazed by Ringenberg's performance -- Johnson described Jason at the time as "a hayseed Iggy Pop" -- the young musician dragged his lifelong friend, guitarist Warner Hodges, to see the second Nashville Scorchers show, when they opened for rockabilly legend Carl Perkins. "I remember watching this skinny guy just go nuts onstage," Hodges recalls. "The rest of the band just stood there frozen, but Jason was bouncing all over the place. He was incredible. He was all over the stage and beyond -- he kept leaping off the stage and jumping around in the middle of the crowd. Man, he put on a show -- hell, he was the show." Before long, Emerson stepped aside to manage the band, and Johnson joined the Scorchers as bassist and Hodges as guitarist. By November, Hodges brought the ferocious punk drummer Perry Baggs into the fold -- giving the group, along with Ringenberg and Johnson, yet another songwriter with a colorful grasp of country and rock styles. Hodges, Baggs and Johnson were well-known in the underground Nashville rock community, but it shocked many of their friends and peers when they added a significant dose of twang to their sound. Few realized that each of them were as steeped in country music as in punk and rock 'n' roll. Hodges and Johnson had shared a taste for hardcore honky tonk for years; indeed, both of them spent many nights jamming with Warner's parents, Ed and Blanche Hodges, both of whom had a rich history as country performers. Ed Hodges has long been a first-rate guitarist. His wife, Blanche, continues to be a passionate country singer who merges country and rockabilly in a style reminiscent of the great Wanda Jackson. (The Hodges, who often join the Scorchers onstage during the band's Nashville sets, can be heard performing a live version of "Walkin' the Dog" with the band on the audio and video versions Midnight Roads and Stages Seen). In earlier years, the Hodges were a touring act that performed with Johnny Cash, among others. Warner began joining them onstage as early as age 10 and traveled with them to perform for Americans in the Armed Services on a USO-sponsored tour that took them to several overseas locales. After the Scorchers started, Johnson often spoke of how Ed Hodges often had suggested that the boys should consider taking country music and playing it with more of a rock edge. Little did any of them know how important those country lessons would be for the two musicians later in life. Baggs, whose uncanny 4/4 drumming style is as vital to the Scorchers sound as Ringenberg's voice and Hodges' guitar, also had the benefit of growing up in a musical household where variety was encouraged and Southern roots-music was part of the family fare. Baggs' father had been a professional gospel singer, and his son grew up in a home saturated with traditional music of both the spiritual and secular varieties. Even in his most rampaging punk days, Baggs wrote country songs on the side, and his knowledge of of both country lyrics and rock rhythms would later play an important part in the ongoing development of the Scorchers. "It almost seemed like fate, the four of us getting together," Ringenberg said. "I mean, how many people were out there who thought it would be cool to mix country music and punk rock? Not too many -- not in 1981, anyway. But, to the four of us, it was natural. That was the music we loved. Warner, Jeff and Perry all knew country music, and they all had played it. Then here I come, this green kid from the farm, and I love the same things they do. From the very first note we all played together, there was this amazing chemistry." Nashville first got shocked by the power of this unusual quartet when the Scorchers debuted its new lineup on New Year's Eve, 1981. It was to be the first of many legendary hometown shows, and there are now thousands of people who claim to have been among the hundreds to see that landmark performance. "In those earliest days, people either really loved it or hated it," Ringenberg said. "People were fanatical about it. They'd either want to kill us or take us home and feed us. It was a wild existence." Two weeks after the New Year's Eve show, the band issued its first album, Reckless Country Soul, which was recorded in four hours. "From the first note, we knew we were onto something," Ringenberg recalls. That they were: with rip-roaring covers of Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers and Carl Perkins, the band staked its claim as hyper-speed hillbillies who packed their velocity-driven tunes with personality and raucously propulsive arrangements. Just as tellingly, the album featured the band's first original tune, "Broken Whiskey Glass," a gothic tale of addiction and lost love that achingly evokes both personal anguish and the Southern landscape. "That songs always been real important to us," Ringenberg said. "Once that was written, we knew we had something to contribute. We not only had a sound of our own, but now we had this song that was really unlike anything else, too." The groundswell of support for the rockers among Nashville fans was equally remarkable. By the summer of 1982, the band stunned the city -- and brought traffic on one of its major avenues to a standstill -- when it drew more than a thousand people to an outdoor show in the parking lot of a local record store. Playing off of a flatbed truck without a backdrop or lights, indeed with nothing other than a p.a., the Scorchers put on another in an escalating list of unforgettable shows. This night, in all the excitement, Jason broke a tooth during the first song when he slammed the microphone into his mouth while flinging himself into a lyric. That didn't stop him, though. A few songs later, he was climbing a utility poll with an American flag in his arms. It was a signifying gesture, a triumphant moment when the pioneers of American cowpunk claimed a new sound as their own and, at least for a day, victoriously rose above the Nashville system to claim their position as lords of a new musical style. By waving a flag while dangling dangerously over a Nashville street, Jason served notice: The revolution was on. "It's not considered a radical thing anymore to have punk rock and rock 'n' roll and American roots music fused together," said Jason, who speaks as softly offstage as he does as forcibly when onstage. "But, I can tell you, in 1981 it was absolutely radical. We faced violence in some places because of what we were doing." The resistance only served to stoked the band's passionate commitment to their vision and their unique sound. Time moved forward quickly for the band. While Reckless Country Soul documented the band at its most primal, 1983's Fervor displayed a fuller stylistic range. With songs that were as mournful and grave as others were ferocious and visceral, the album lifted the band from regional fame to international buzz status. The New York Times named it the best EP of the year; Rolling Stone granted it a four-star review. The album grew in stature after the band signed with EMI, added a few songs and re-released Fervor to even greater acclaim. A rollicking cover of Bob Dylan's "Absolutely Sweet Marie," still one of the band's cornerstone songs, garnered airplay across America, and the album landed near the top of the Village Voice's annual poll of hundreds of music critics. In more recent years, with the added importance of time and perspective, Fervor has repeatedly been cited as one of the best albums of the rock 'n' roll era. Writer Jimmy Guterman named it among the most important and most enjoyable rock records in history, including it in a Rolling Stone book that named the top 100 records of the rock era. From the other side of the coin, the Country Music Foundation gave the collection five stars in its list of Country Music on Compact Disc, as well as referencing the band as the best country rock band of the '80s in its acclaimed history book, Country: The Music and the Musicians. "Their shows were so physical," Nashville music critic Robert K. Oermann has said of the band. "Jason acted like a guy who had been attacked with a cattle prod. And I still maintain that Warner Hodges was one of the most charismatic lead guitarists of his generation. The two were like twin poles of electrical energy. You could almost see the bolt of lightning that connected them. The Scorchers never sold more than a million records, but nobody who saw them will ever forget it." Physical? Sometimes the show's were downright dangerous, especially onstage. "I've been knocked out, and I've knocked Jason out," Hodges said. "Jason and I have collided and knocked each other cold before. I'd be throwing my guitar, flipping it over my shoulder, and the thing would could around while we were going in the wrong direction and boom! We've always been a three-ring circus onstage." Lost & Found followed in February of 1985. A perfect extension of Fervor, the songs showed polish and focus without glossing over any of the raw power that pulsed at the music's core. "Lost Highway," the opening cut, still ranks as the hardest-rocking cover of any Hank Williams song ever, while the newly extended version of "Broken Whiskey Glass" added a grace-note of quiet drama to a standout song. "Still Tied," about the risky subject of a black man's peril in the South, was another manifestation of the least recognized element of the Scorchers' greatness: their unusually insightful and provocative songs about Southern history and culture. The album also featured several other mainstays of the band's repertoire, including "If Money Talks" and "White Lies." The latter received widespread airplay on MTV and ranks as the most-played radio song in the band's history. The reviews remained ecstatic. "There isn't a second-rate song on the album, or a performance that is anything less than wildly exciting," Robert Palmer wrote about Lost & Found in the New York Times. "This is rock 'n' roll, the real stuff..." That year, the band hit what may be its most ecstatic and memorable point. Once again staging a free show in the same parking lot of a midtown Nashville record store, the Scorchers attracted an estimated 10,000 fans -- stunning local officials and industry heads again. Amid an incredibly joyous set, Ringenberg dived into the crowd and, again clutching an American flag, climbed a billboard that stretched far higher than the utility pole of old. Ringenberg hung the flag from the billboard and, with a cordless mic pinned to his shirt, finished singing a rousing version of "White Lies." In the crowd, pandemonium reigned. By 1986, however, the pressures brought on by music business politics, constant touring and the increasingly self-destructive habits of Johnson, Hodges and Baggs started to strain the band. "We let it slip away from us, and we caused a lot of the slippage," Hodges has said. "We watched a good thing go bad." Nonetheless, while Still Standing might not have been as consistent as the earlier records, it had plenty of shining moments. One of them, "Golden Ball and Chain," certainly should have had a chance at giving the band its long-deserved national rock hit. A Stones-like honker with a killer guitar riff, a multi-dimensional message about the perils of stardom, and ludicious use of rousing R&B harmonies, the song started to build steam at rock radio. It climbed into the top 15 of rock radio before EMI lost the momentum when executive changes resulted in a period of ineffective promotion and marketing. On the road, however, the toll showed. By 1988, Jeff Johnson had quit. The band hired Ken Fox on bass, then added a second guitarist, Andy York (who later became bandleader in John Mellencamp's band). After leaving EMI, the band signed with A&M Records. Despite the background problems, the band poured itself into creating its next record. More than 70 songs were written, and the band spent almost two years preparing for the recording of the the album. "We worked our butts off making that record, and it came out and nothing happened," Hodges said. "It fell flat on its face. It was really discouraging. I don't think it was a bad record. But no one heard it." Then, while ending a tour with Bob Dylan, Baggs contracted diabetes. Discouraged and worn down, the band called it quits. "We didn't split, we fractured," the guitarist said. "We just fell out from exhaustion and frustration. It was devastating. Everyone of us went into some sort of crisis then." As Ringenberg told No Depression magazine, "If you talked to each of us independently, I think all four members of the band would tell you it wasn't a good time in anybody's life. I did a solo record for Capitol/Nashville, a watered-down Scorchers kind of record, and I went through a divorce. It just wasn't a good time." Hodges moved to New York, then Los Angeles. He left his guitars in Nashville and didn't pick them up for years. Baggs wrote country songs. Johnson, who had left years earlier, lived in Atlanta and worked in a florist shop. In 1992, EMI issued Essential Jason & The Scorchers, Volume 1: Are You Ready for the Country. Featuring all of Fervor and Lost & Found, plus a few b-sides and outtakes, the collection not only rekindled interest in the Scorchers. It also lit a fire under band members. Ironically, Johnson was the first to make the call about a reunion. Contacting Ringenberg, then the rest of the band, the original bassist suggested the group put together a short tour to support the reissue and relive old times on good standing. Other band members resisted, especially Hodges and Ringenberg. But Johnson persisted, even calling booking agents to prove to his former bandmates that interest in a tour existed. Eventually, they agreed to a few shows. By then, Johnson, Hodges and Baggs were clean and sober -- making it the first time the band embarked on a tour without any drug or alcohol use along the way. It turned out to be an exultant event for all concerned; by tour's end, no one wanted to stop. Talk of a record surfaced. The tour kept getting extended. An owner of a studio outside of Nashville offered the band recording time. The group finished the album on its own, with production help from engineer Mike Janas. Once it was done, Mammoth Records asked to hear the results. Always fans, the label's chief executives extended the band a contract -- as well as a promise to give them the kind of corporate support they hadn't received in the past. The result was 1995's A Blazing Grace, an album that surveyed all of the band's past strengths through a series of new songs and choice covers. Right away, both loyal fans and the press rallied around. "No doubt about it, they're back and formidable as ever," wrote a columnist for the College Music Journal. The live shows drew similar raves. As Don McLeese wrote in the Austin American Statesman about a 1995 performance, "For 90 minutes or so, the Scorchers showed that any band that can simultaneously remind one of the best of Lefty Frizzell and the best of the Ramones should never have been allowed to disappear." The band was similarly ecstatic. "I've never been happier," Ringenberg said. "The rebirth of the Scorchers has been a central point in rebuilding our lives. It's been a wondrous, rejuvenating experience." If A Blazing Grace was a look back, then A Clear Impetuous Morning looked to the future. It established a sound that incorporated the power and sweep of the '80s with a forward-looking sound that featured a new maturity without sacrificing muscle or emotion. Under great pressure to prove they hadn't lost their atomic whomp, the Scorchers showed that they not only could live up to past glories, but that they could add a new dimension as well. "A Blazing Grace was about getting the train back on the track," Hodges told a Nashville newspaper. "This time around we wanted to push the envelope. We wanted to surprise a few people. We ended up surprising ourselves. We upped the ante a bit." Band members agreed that they still loved playing the early gems from their initial albums. But, with Clear Impetuous Morning, the band felt it had created new songs that stood up well beside their best material. "I love playing 'White Lies' every night, but we need to move forward, too," Hodges said. "We had to find a way for it to become creative again, to feel like its blossoming and moving forward. For the first time in 10 years, the band is hitting on all cylinders." Critics and fans agreed. Once again, the Scorchers drew rave reviews from publications worldwide -- Entertainment Weekly, for example, gave the album a rare "A". The band also were heralded at home when Clear Impetuous Morning was named Rock Album of the Year at the Nashville Music Awards. The also album also found the band reconciling its ambitions with the reality of the modern music business. With the release of Clear Impetuous Morning in 1996, the Scorchers had 15 years and seven albums behind them. The band had achieved a lifespan that was rare for modern rock bands. Moreover, they could count on fans across the United States and Europe to rally behind them when they toured. "I remember growing up as a teen-ager looking at Neil Young, Bob Dylan and those people, seeing that they had achieved longevity," Ringenberg told interviewer Michael Gray shortly after the album came out. "Now we are sitting on that. We've accomplished what I thought was something really special when I was a teen-ager." Unlike most bands that survive, the Scorchers hadn't enjoyed platinum records and stadium tours. "For us, the reward is doing great music," Ringenberg said. "It's what bonds us together." With Clear Impetuous Morning done, the band realized that a live album now made since. Not only would it capture the band ripping through the highlights from the '80s; now it also would show the growth and depth the band has experienced since re-forming. "We'd reached a point where we can do a live record that doesn't just capture the past, but shows a band that's got something new to say as well," Ringenberg said. "The band had moved forward creatively. We proved we could still write good songs and make a great studio record." When word got out about a live album, fans around the world applauded. "The live aspect of the band has been so important," Hodges explained. "We didn't want to do it as just some after thought. I wanted to make sure we put out a true representation of the live band. And we did. We're all real proud of the live album. It was a real special night, and I think that comes across on the CD and on the video." Perhaps drummer Perry Baggs best sums up where the Scorchers are now. "We've become better players, but there's still all that power and wildness in us," he said. "We've got this past to draw on, but on top of all that it's as new as it can get." © 1998-2001 – Mammoth Records — All Rights Reserved

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