Fifteen Minutes with Jason Ringenberg
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Interviewed By Peter Cooper
Creative Loafing Magazine - Greenville/Spartanburg, South Carolina Edition - January 11, 1997

Copyright 1997-2001 Creative Loafing Magazine

Superfax about Jason:
Fave color: Neon red.
Fave food: Anything seafood.
Birthday: November 22. The same day Kennedy got shot.
Turn-ons? Women with intelligence and a good personality.
Turn-offs? Country radio.
Kind of car? 1987 Ford Ranger pickup truck.
Conway Twitty fan? Yes.

Jason Ringenberg is a legendary figure in rock and roll, the originator of a frantic musical hybrid called Country/Punk, a hero of the proletariat, and the proud owner of a brand new Sears Craftsman garden tiller. Thursday, January 9, he will lead his band, Jason and the Scorchers, through what may well go down as the single greatest rock n’ roll show in the semi-lame post-Elvis history of Greenville, South Carolina. For now, he’s as happy as a pig in poke on Jason’s own Daddy’s Illinois hog farm, and he’s more than glad to field some questions from intrepid reporter and Scorchers fan, me, Peter Cooper.

PC: Jason, what’s going on?
JR: Man, I just bought a tiller! It’s my “Merry Christmas” present to me. It’s a big old 8-horse monster! I can do some garden plowing now, buddy. The tiller’s in the back of my truck with my lawnmower. That truck bed just looks like redneck heaven!
PC: That’s cool, but the question on everybody’s mind is this: how does Scorchers’ drummer Perry Baggs celebrate Christmas?
JR: Everybody’s been asking that. He just eats most of the day. That’s all he does besides play music. He doesn’t look it, but Perry’s a good eater.
PC: Did you ever see (guitarist) Warner (Hodges) smoke a cigarette through his nostrils when he wasn’t on stage?
JR: When people asked him to he would, but it was basically an onstage antic. Warner is quite a showman.
PC: What was the wildest Scorchers show ever?
JR: Unquestionably that would be opening for Status Quo in England. Over there, that band is like Led Zeppelin. This was their farewell English concert, back in 1984. We went on stage and the whole thing was covered with plastic. After we started playing, we found out why: the Status Quo fans have a tradition of trashing opening bands.
We walked on stage and they just started showering us with unimaginable filth, garbage, and other horrible, horrible things. We got into it and started throwing stuff back at these thousand screaming English drunks and crazed maniacs. I was on the front of the stage acting like a duck at a gallery: I would say, “Bing!” when something would hit me, turn around and go back the other way. We ended up lasting the whole show and getting encores, and it launched our career in England.
PC: You guys are from Nashville, but you don’t really have anything to do with the country music industry. Are any of the mainstream country guys fans of the Scorchers?
JR: Yeah, sure. We got tired of them hiding their allegiances, so what we started doing was outing people. We hired a private eye and basically put the pressure on until they came out and admitted to being Scorchers fans. We felt like people should be open and honest about their true musical orientation. We’ve outed a whole lot of people over the years.
PC: I need names. John Michael Montgomery? Is he a fan?
JR: It’s possible. We have the P.I. on him right now.
PC: You cover Gram Parsons’ “Drug Store Truck Driving Man,” which was a musical thumb of the nose at Nashville celebrity D.J. and variety show Ralph Emery. Did Ralph ever hear the Scorchers?
JR: Yes. In 1982, an adventurous producer on Ralph’s Nashville Now show came out and filmed a piece on us. She filmed one of our shows and interviewed us in my little shack in West Nashville.
When they aired it, they got through the clip and showed a close-up of Ralph’s face. He was staring ahead with his mouth open, and then he said, “I’m not sure what that was, but I don’t think you’ll be delivering anything else to this show for a while! I’m reading my notes and it says, ‘Singer screams and falls to the floor.’ I think it’s time for an advertisement.”
I don’t know what this producer was thinking, ‘cause there was no way Ralph or his audience was ever going to go for that: it was raw, crazy rock n’ roll.
PC: Jason, it’s great to talk to you. Glad you got your tiller.
JR: Yeah, Merry Christmas, Peter. Life is very good today. It’s important to treat yourself sometimes, and what better treat than an 8-horse Sears Craftsman tiller? Counter-rotating tines at that! Tell the people in Greenville that if they want a garden tilled, they know who to call now.

Caption: Jason and the Scorchers will perform Jan. 9 at The Handlebar in Greenville. Tickets are $12. Call 233-6173 for more information.

© 1997-2001 Creative Loafing Magazine— All Rights Reserved