Disc brings redneck chic
back from the dead
BY LENNY STOUTE SPECIAL TO THE STAR
May 11, 1995, Thursday, FINAL EDITION

Copyright 1995 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
The Toronto Star

There's a country lyric that goes "I dunno when I got busted but it feels like I'm doing time." For almost six years, it was the plotline to Jason Ringenberg's life.

The leader of Jason & The Scorchers watched his band implode and his personal
life follow suit with a disintegrated marriage and the loss of custody of his daughter.

An attempt at a solo career yielded one sodden album, leaving Jason feeling more whipped than ever. He then joined the legion of Nashville "ghosts," - famed performers in limbo, scraping a living on the fringes of the music biz. Ringenberg found a measure of comfort in that milieu and he might be there still, were it not for other people's confidence in him.

"It was pretty bad," Ringenberg says from North Carolina, where his reformed
Jason & The Scorchers were holding court for another sold-out night. "I'd pretty much quit writing. I don't know if I missed the band as much as I felt we'd missed the chance to be a much better band," he says. "Plain and simple, we couldn't handle keeping it together and yes, we had our problems with drugs and drinking."

What a change from the mid-1980s when redneck chic ruled and a trio of groups - Jason & The Scorchers, Rank & File and Georgia Satellites - looked like they might go very far indeed.

They blasted upon the scene with a combination of country roots and punk energy like nothing else around. Set against the passivity of the alternative scene at the time, this stuff was red-hot; a reckless dancing, drinking and driving-all-night-to-a highway-juke joint kind of sound.

All three bands overdosed on the life itself, effectively putting the skids to the hard country revival.

Since then, many a band has tried to put the splice to country and rock, without messing up both. Few have done it well. Which is why the release of strong new music from Jason and the guys is welcome news.

"This kind of music wasn't intended to be mainstream," explains Ringenberg. "When the mainstream got into it through bands like us, and we weren't around
anymore, they just turned to country or whatever.

"The music itself was never at fault, which is why this album (the reformed Scorcher's A Blazing Grace) sounds like a logical continuation of the Scorchers' sound."

In the best guerrilla rock tradition, A Blazing Grace was born out of rock camaraderie and free studio time. The camaraderie came with the return of original members Jeff Johnson (bass), Warner Hodges (guitar), Perry Baggs (drums), while Jozef Nuyens, owner of Castle Studio and a rabid J&TS fan, coughed up the freebie.

Ringenberg says he had "trepidations by the truckload" over the idea of putting the band back together, not least of which was the "the danger for all of us of backsliding."

But after a successful first rehearsal it was obvious the musical chemistry was still there. Then came the question of whether, after a five-year absence, the band had an audience anymore.

"So we figured to make it or break with the very first show, by playing to an audience of Nashville heavies in a 50-seater," says Ringenberg. "These guys will
tell you straight up if they think you're wasting your time. The place was packed, there was this buzz about the gig and it was like we'd never been away."

Nuyens came next with the offer of studio time, provided the band was willing to slip in to make use of down- time for two days here, a few hours there.
"A difficult way to make an album," says Ringenberg. "But not as tough as raising fifty thou, so we gladly went along with the conditions."
And with no record label in sight, "we allowed ourselves to stretch out and just do the tunes the best way we knew how."

The approach allowed for the recording of such oddities as "Country Roads," a
staple of the Scorchers' live set but a song "no one would ever let us record it
because they said it was just too weird."

With a master tape in hand, the Scorchers found a home on the U.S.-based
Mammoth Records (with help from Attic Records in Canada) and the all-original
Scorchers resumed life as a full-time band, replete with touring schedule.

Among the dates: a searing session tomorrow at El Mocambo. Guitarist Gord
Cumming's new project, Possum, opens the show.

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: JASON RINGENBERG: The danger, of course, was a return to "problems with drugs and drinking."

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