Hot Rock From the Deep South
Interview from 1985
Source unknown
Interview By Richard Sweret

Jason Ringenberg remembers rock’s primal scream. But don’t be mistaken, he and the Scorchers are not just rekindling yesterday’s passions on their new album Lost and Found, they are bringing some of our rock and roll roots into the present day and giving them a fresh face and heart. The Scorchers know the deep resonant voice of country blues and the lament in a Hank Williams song; but they also know the heady release of Bob Dylan and The Band or the unbridled power of punk. But most of all the band know how to rock the house like few other bands currently taking the stage.

I spoke with Jason about the band and their music, their critical success, and the state of radio down South, among other things. Some of what he has to say may surprise you, but then he and the Scorchers are not a very conventional band for a bunch of Nashville cats.
Richard: How is the tour going?
Jason: It’s been fantastic. In the past we’ve played a lot of places we didn’t enjoy ourselves in. We’ve always wanted to do a tour of small halls. Now the band is taking on a more national character and getting a significantly stronger reaction. It’s a big difference with this tour, people know the record.
R: The day is coming when you’ll be playing much larger theatres and arenas.
J: That shouldn’t be too much of a problem...the problem will be if we can make the transition from theaters to arenas and still keep that kind of roadhouse Scorchers feel.
R: That is a big problem for most bands, one of the few who can pull it off are U2...
J: U2 and the E Street Band, Neil Young at his height...we are going over to Europe in May and we’ll be playing some festivals.
R: Have you played in Europe before?
J: Yeah, two tours so far.
R: You’ve gotten some great press in England...they seem to be going through a phase where everything American is very trendy, the Long Ryders are on the cover of this week’s NME.
J: It’s a very scary thing in England, you don’t want to get too personally involved with it, because the press tends to build you way up and tear you way down and boy they get vicious when they cut you, real vicious.
R: Well, that’s certainly not going to happen soon.
J: It’ll happen with the next album, there is no doubt about it...(laughs)...it doesn’t matter if the next one is the best rock and roll album ever made, the English press will slash the next one, it’s inevitable.
R: With “Lost and Found” you have really captured the Scorchers’ live sound and energy on vinyl.
J: We are real proud to have been able to do it, a lot of it has to do with the fact that we played the songs for a year and a half, some of them for two years. So the songs have a real live groove. We just basically walked into the studio...we didn’t do them live ‘cause I don’t like to work that way as a vocalist, but the band played pretty much live. There are very few overdubs, at most two or three on a track and that’s really unusual with today’s high tech recording.
R: Terry Manning did a nice job of getting it down.
J: Yeah, Terry has a reputation with ZZ Top and all, but he’s been around rock and roll since its inception. He recorded the Staple Singers in the Stax Memphis glory days, he recorded a lot of that Stax stuff and then on the other side of the fence he recorded Led Zeppelin’s second album.
R: On the new LP I was impressed with the brevity of the songs, everything is pretty short.
J: I guess that sums up the band. That’s how we differ from a band like the E Street Band, we play short intense shows, hour, hour and a half. But we really pack it in in that hour, the record is the same way.
R: Do you think about that when you are writing?
J: Yeah, when I get past the second verse, I think I’ve said what I want to say. There is no point in being too wordy.
R: Two of the songs on “Lost and Found” that really struck a note with me were “Still Tied” and “Broken Whiskey Glass.” With “Still Tied” you addressed racism, what was the thought behind that song?
J: Well the story was...the black man who got lynched, and his white friend is telling the story and it’s about the helplessness that he felt that he couldn’t do anything about what was happening, particularly in the last verse: “The baby cries/the Georgia pines whisper...the Southern grave still lies waiting.” He still feels the guilt for it. It’s a very spiritual song.
R: On “Broken Whiskey Glass” you’ve created a very colorful world, with a girl packing off for Memphis to chase the whole rock and roll myth of Elvis and honky tonk. She’s a familiar character.
J: It’s not so much one person as a whole group of friends and folks and acquaintances. It’s definitely a rock and roll biography, a character caught up in it all and trying to fight his way out.
R: Getting caught up in the rock myth...living the myth, you guys seem to be doing some of that.
J: I can’t really ever explain it without sounding too pretentious, but there is a certain...Well, people tend to lump us with all the traditional rock legends. For example when people talk about the pop bands from England, you don’t hear them talking about where they came from or the people that influenced them and the stories behind them. It’s basically pop music, here today and gone tomorrow. Whereas with us, people tend to get in depth with the whole thing, why the music sounds the way it does. I think it is exciting for people to think that they are part of the whole picture, it’s definitely larger than life. But if you think too much about it you just wind up being a revival band. We definitely are trying to take it a step forward. But when I’m singing “Lost Highway” I remember where that song came from!
R: On the last song on the album “Change the Tune,” it seems to be a cry to younger people to take a different track.
J: We are trying to make a positive statement. There has been so much music in the past five years that has been negative and very Satanic. We are trying to make rock and roll that is just as wild as anything that has happened, but at the same time it’s maybe a little different in attitude...a better attitude.
R: And it’s directed at the kids?
J: Yeah, it’s directed to the younger folks. I mean they don’t know who Bob Dylan is or Hank Williams was or Jerry Lee Lewis. Basically the only place they are going to encounter some of those attitudes that we are singing about is from us. Initially they are drawn to the Scorchers by the energy and color, not by the history. But we have a responsibility to show those kids that they can rock without selling their souls to the devil (laughs).
R: In the South what kind of a role does country radio play? Do kids listen to it?
J: I think that in the sticks people will still listen to country stations if they are really country stations, being that most country stations are having a real identity crisis. They can’t figure out what they are, ‘Are we gonna play country or in effect pop music from Nashville? Are we gonna play Crystal Gayle or George Strait?’ And most of the time they opt to play Crystal Gayle. It’s not country music, it’s pop music from Nashville, when I listen to Nashville country radio I ask myself ‘am I listening to adult hit radio?’ It’s interesting, EMI are going to push ‘Shop It Around’ to country radio! Any success will be a success, even if one station in the whole damn country plays it.
R: Hey, you know the labels do special dance remixes, how about a country mix, boosting the pedal steel or the fiddle?
J: Well they could!

What the Scorchers are doing is nothing particularly new. They are taking music that is as old as the hills and giving it a young voice. Just as Jerry Lee Lewis or Bo Diddley or The Band did with our musical tradition some years ago, touching on the American rock and roll myth with their youth, keeping it alive and changing its course, Jason and the Scorchers aren’t thinking too much about the “larger picture” which contains the myth, though it is surely exciting as Jason admits. They are too busy chasing around the country, spreading their rock and roll and looking for more people to touch.