Gypsies Now - Interviews

We will always be on that road trying to get there
A conversation with Jason Ringenberg
by Michael McCall
............................
No Depression Magazine
Seattle, Washington
September-October, 2000

As with many great bands, the sound of Jason & the Scorchers emerges from a culture clash. The band is unique partly because of how the tastes and influences of its members diverge as much as they converge. Singer Jason Ringenberg’s determination to write songs of meaning and depth is as integral to the band as guitarist Warner Hodges’ interest in flash and stomp and drummer Perry Baggs’ desire to keep it simple and savage. If not for Ringenberg’s folkie heart, the Scorchers would have been just another wildass roots-rock band - albeit one with a one-of-a-kind guitarist.
With A Pocketful Of Soul, Ringenberg’s second solo album, the former Illinois farmboy lets his folk flag fly. Sprung from the bliss of a loving family and a fertile rural home, his new songs own a heartfelt sweetness toasting the good fortune that currently surrounds him. On other songs, though, Scorchers fans will recognize the singer’s uncommon way of creating narratives fired by history and the passion of people unwilling to bend to the forces of society and the evils of man.
Still, A Pocketful Of Soul decidedly not a Scorchers record. The guitars resonate instead of burn, the rhythms lope rather than gallop, the emotions bubble instead of boil. In talking about the album, which he released on his own newly formed Courageous Chicken Records, Ringenberg dwelled on its inspirations, especially his wife Suzy and his daughters, two (Addie Rose and Camille Grace) who live with him on his farm outside of Nashville and one (Kelsey) who resides out West with his ex-wife. He also made it evident that he’s more content than ever, and that he’s wholly reconciled with his role within the music industry as an outsider who has been able to construct a staunchly loyal fan base through touring and word-of-mouth.

I. NOW I SEE MYSELF AS BEING ABLE TO EXIST IN THE WORLD

NO DEPRESSION: Did you decide to put out this album yourself for a philosophical reason or a practical one?
JASON RINGENBERG: I think it was both. It was philosophical in that it was the easiest way to get a record out. I didn’t want to go deal-hunting. I just wanted this project to be fun. Now I’m so profoundly glad I’ve done it this way; it’s really invigorated my whole creative life and the way I look at music. Now I see myself as being able to exist in the world, no matter what happens. If no one wants to release a record by me, I can still put it out.
ND: Obviously, you’ve put out a solo record before, but this seems much different in a lot of ways.
JR: [laughs] I can’t imagine any more different of a situation. The first one was completely corporate, completely Music Row. There are points of the record I like. I enjoyed it. But it was a Music Row version of Jason Ringenberg - or Jason & the Scorchers.
ND: Would you say this record is more reflective of where you are now in your life?
JR: Absolutely. No doubt about it. When I made my first solo record, I was going through a divorce and the Scorchers had just broken up. It lent itself real well to the honky-tonk country thing. This record represents my life now - more down-to-earth, more satisfied with things. Family is way more important to me now than it ever has been.
ND: Amid all the personal stuff, you included a couple of cover songs. Why’d you do “Lonesome Pines”?
JR: I’ve always loved that song. I’ve always wanted to record it. But if you want to get really deep with it, when my mother-in-law first heard “Lonesome Pines”, she said, “That song’s about Kelsey, isn’t it?” I thought, “Wow, that’s probably true.” I miss Kelsey a lot. I see her a lot, too, but she doesn’t live
with me. It’s sort of the answer to the Addie song. I also think Fats Kaplin deserves a lot of credit for how that song turned out. Those twin fiddles - man.
ND: “Trail of Tears” (from Guadalcanal Diary’s 1984 debut Walking In The Shadow Of The Big Man) might be even more unexpected.
JR: I remember hearing that song the first day it came out. I was just blown away by it. So I’ve sung it for years. It just seemed to fit a place the record needed. I’d written “Price Of Progress”, which covered the gothic Southern aspect of who I am as well. “Trail Of Tears” is a sort of companion song to it.
ND: Why does it fit?
JR: It takes the Southern mythology even deeper than I’ve done in the past with “Still Tied” and “Harvest Moon” and songs like that. I needed more of that on the record. I’ve written about the South before, but never in a way that went back to the Cherokees. The Cherokees ruled the South until the white man came. How that changed, and how they adapted to that, is quite an amazing story. It’s a very sad story, of course.
After the white man came, they built up their own culture. They were really the only tribe to do it; certainly the only tribe in the South to do it. They had their own languages and they were contributing to the economy of the South. Then they were forced to move. It’s an incredibly sad story.

II. WE SOMETIMES FORGET THAT WE HAVE SUCH A RICH HISTORY

ND: You mentioned ‘Price Of Progress.” The opening line (“Some people have the nerve/To say you get what you deserve”) really jumped out at me the first time I listened to the album. Where’d that come from?
JR: I wrote “Price Of Progress” in Ireland on the last Scorcher tour of Europe. I went over a week early. I was walking the Moors and feeling the connection between Celtic Ireland and the Celtic South. I had this general idea about a Southern farmer whose farm was slowly being flooded by the TVA dams. I thought that was such an evocative story. I don’t think it had been written about in a song; it may have been in short stories. So I wrote a story about a Southern farmer whose generational homestead is slowing being flooded because they built a dam.
ND: That sense of history has been heard in your songs from the start of the Scorchers.
JR: When I was 5 or 6 years old, I’d hang out in an old barn, and I’d really get what was cool about it. So I’ve always been interested in history, and lately it’s been Tennessee history before the white man arrived. It’s pretty fascinating stuff, with the mound builders and all. The South is so dominated historically by the Civil War. It’s so strong that we sometimes forget that we have such a rich history long before that.
ND: You’re living on a Tennessee farm now, right?
JR: It’s a 1940s farm-actually, a chicken farm. That’s part of why I call the record company Courageous Chicken. Everything ties together on this record with the farm and the family. A big part of what I’ve done in the last three years is turning this farm into a working farm. I’m building a barn now. The land has a real deep character to it. There’s some old trails, an old creek.
ND: How big is it?
JR: Five acres. Really small. We’ve got chickens, a huge garden, we’re getting a potbellied pig. I’ve always envisioned being able to make a farm like what I remember farms were when I was growing up. They had these big tractor tires with petunias painted on them. Barns with white trim. There was no real reason to do that stuff. Those farmers were really busy and money was really tight. But that’s the environment they wanted to create for their families and their children. Now I know the work it takes to do that because I’m doing the same thing: White picket fences, long wood fences, a chicken house with white trim, a little horse stable. I’m building it all myself.

III. I REMEMBER NORMAN ROCKWELL AMERICA

ND: As you said, family songs are a big part of the album. Let’s talk about “For Addie Rose”.
JR: That’s one of my favorite songs I’ve ever done. I wrote that for my daughter, period. It rolled out in one day. I’m so glad people are getting it. Sometimes those kinds of songs are so corny. But people are saying this song is the best one on the record. I think that’s because I wasn’t trying to write a song for the record. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it again. If I wrote a song for Camille or Kelsey, I’d be more aware of what I was doing.
ND: I take it that “A Pocketful Of Soul” was written for your wife.
JR: “A Pocketful Of Soul” was written for Suzy. It’s very literal. Suzy is a really special person. So many people love her. So what I tried to do with that song wasn’t to write a love song from me to Suzy. What I wanted to do was write a love song from the people who love Suzy to Suzy. There’s a lot of lines in there that I got from other people. And some of them are from me. I don’t think I know anybody who has more friends and is a better friend to people.
ND:“Merry Christmas My Darling” is another family song, only it’s not about your life. Still, it comes from the perspective of a father with a family.
JR: Actually, I wrote that song years ago, in ‘83. It’s an old thing I’ve wanted to record for years. I tried to picture myself in the early 1960s, before the changes of the ‘60s and ‘70s. There’s the images of the jacket hung by the sewing machine, the rifle, the fishing pole. At the same time this guy is stuck in Vietnam in a prison camp. A lot of soldiers went to Vietnam who weren’t drafted who thought they were fighting for the old Norman Rockwell vision of America. They thought they were fighting communism. In that respect, they were doing a noble thing.
Whether that was what they were doing or not is not the question. From their point of view, it was a real honorable thing. So the guy in this prison cell is remembering the life he left behind. He’s remembering these beautiful things: Snow in the lane, grandma’s cooking, grandpa whistling - Christmas in rural America at the time. I wrote it at a time that I was losing the sort of innocence that I brought into the world, and I was remembering all that stuff- not as a Vietnam soldier, of course. But I remember Norman Rockwell America.

IV. THE REST OF US HAVE TO WORK AT IT ALL THE TIME

ND:“Under Your Command” is as directly a spiritual song as you’ve done.
JR: That’s just pure, good ol’ gospel with a modern twist. In a way, I was conjuring Todd Snider. I wrote with him a little in those days. So, yeah, that song is really spiritual. But I wanted it to have a modern kick in the lyrics. I wanted it to be from a person like me. I’m not as perfect as I’d like to be, and that song is about the imperfection that a lot of us have. I know some saints, but I don’t know too many.
ND: The line about lighting a truer fuse sounds like it came from someplace real.
JR: I think that’s real appropriate to what a lot of musicians face. The line in there about the hotel Bible, I think a lot of musicians relate to that, too. They’re in a hotel and have nothing to do for five hours. You’re separated from your family, everything is unreal, and all of sudden here’s this Bible. I wonder how many musicians have turned to the Lord because of that little Gideon’s Bible? I really wonder that. How many have been on the road and found solace in that, in the saving grace of the Bible? It’s a cool thing.
ND: Is that something that’s happened to you?
JR: Oh yeah, man, hundreds of times. That’s also what the song is about. It’s an ongoing process. There are some people who are blessed to be saved. The rest of us have to work at it all the time. I think especially if you travel, you have to work at it all the time, whether you’re Christian or Muslim or Jewish or American Indian. It’s a uniquely American Christian idea that you can become saved and then everything is OK. That’s a very modern idea. I don’t quite understand it.
ND: That gets at something that’s part of this album, I think, that you try to get at something that’s true to you. There’s a big part of the American songwriting tradition that’s just about writing entertaining songs. But you’re part of that line of songwriters that’s trying to get at something that reflects your experience.
JR:You know, I include myself in a heritage of writers who are like that. It’s a great group to be a part of. None of us make any money [laughs]. Or very few of us do. But we are all on this path. We’re never going to get there - that’s the cool thing about it.
Steve Earle is never going to get there. Lucinda Williams is never going to get there. Jimmie Dale Gilmore is never going to get there. Kevin Welch is never going to get there. We will never get there, but we will always be on that road trying to get there. It’s the primary focus of all of our lives. Economics is secondary. If we can make money at it, that’s fabulous. But it’s the journey that’s the important thing.
ND: All of those people you mentioned have a certain reputation - they’re not the most famous musicians, but they’re going to be listened to for generations. That idea of glory without fortune, have you reconciled with that?
JR: Glory without fortune? [laughs] That’s a good line. Internally, when I first got into music, I never thought about the commercial aspects of music. After I got into the Scorchers, especially in the middle point, I thought about it way too much. I think Warner said it the other day, “I didn’t make the money, but I got the longevity.”
What’s the old saying: A Frenchman admires a man of culture, an Englishman admires a man of breeding, an Italian admires a man of taste, an American admires a man of wealth. I think that’s an awful thing. I don’t like that about America. We put way too much emphasis on money. We need to pay more attention to what’s in our hearts.


News Meet The Scorchers Learn Back to Interviews > Look
News Meet The Scorchers Learn Back to Interviews > Look		We will always be on that road trying to get there A conversation with Jason Ringenberg by Michael McCall ............................ No Depression Magazine Seattle, Washington September-October, 2000 Copyright 2000-2001 No Depression Magazine As with many great bands, the sound of Jason & the Scorchers emerges from a culture clash. The band is unique partly because of how the tastes and influences of its members diverge as much as they converge. Singer Jason Ringenberg’s determination to write songs of meaning and depth is as integral to the band as guitarist Warner Hodges’ interest in flash and stomp and drummer Perry Baggs’ desire to keep it simple and savage. If not for Ringenberg’s folkie heart, the Scorchers would have been just another wildass roots-rock band - albeit one with a one-of-a-kind guitarist. With A Pocketful Of Soul, Ringenberg’s second solo album, the former Illinois farmboy lets his folk flag fly. Sprung from the bliss of a loving family and a fertile rural home, his new songs own a heartfelt sweetness toasting the good fortune that currently surrounds him. On other songs, though, Scorchers fans will recognize the singer’s uncommon way of creating narratives fired by history and the passion of people unwilling to bend to the forces of society and the evils of man. Still, A Pocketful Of Soul decidedly not a Scorchers record. The guitars resonate instead of burn, the rhythms lope rather than gallop, the emotions bubble instead of boil. In talking about the album, which he released on his own newly formed Courageous Chicken Records, Ringenberg dwelled on its inspirations, especially his wife Suzy and his daughters, two (Addie Rose and Camille Grace) who live with him on his farm outside of Nashville and one (Kelsey) who resides out West with his ex-wife. He also made it evident that he’s more content than ever, and that he’s wholly reconciled with his role within the music industry as an outsider who has been able to construct a staunchly loyal fan base through touring and word-of-mouth. I. NOW I SEE MYSELF AS BEING ABLE TO EXIST IN THE WORLD NO DEPRESSION: Did you decide to put out this album yourself for a philosophical reason or a practical one? JASON RINGENBERG: I think it was both. It was philosophical in that it was the easiest way to get a record out. I didn’t want to go deal-hunting. I just wanted this project to be fun. Now I’m so profoundly glad I’ve done it this way; it’s really invigorated my whole creative life and the way I look at music. Now I see myself as being able to exist in the world, no matter what happens. If no one wants to release a record by me, I can still put it out. ND: Obviously, you’ve put out a solo record before, but this seems much different in a lot of ways. JR: [laughs] I can’t imagine any more different of a situation. The first one was completely corporate, completely Music Row. There are points of the record I like. I enjoyed it. But it was a Music Row version of Jason Ringenberg - or Jason & the Scorchers. ND: Would you say this record is more reflective of where you are now in your life? JR: Absolutely. No doubt about it. When I made my first solo record, I was going through a divorce and the Scorchers had just broken up. It lent itself real well to the honky-tonk country thing. This record represents my life now - more down-to-earth, more satisfied with things. Family is way more important to me now than it ever has been. ND: Amid all the personal stuff, you included a couple of cover songs. Why’d you do “Lonesome Pines”? JR: I’ve always loved that song. I’ve always wanted to record it. But if you want to get really deep with it, when my mother-in-law first heard “Lonesome Pines”, she said, “That song’s about Kelsey, isn’t it?” I thought, “Wow, that’s probably true.” I miss Kelsey a lot. I see her a lot, too, but she doesn’t live with me. It’s sort of the answer to the Addie song. I also think Fats Kaplin deserves a lot of credit for how that song turned out. Those twin fiddles - man. ND: “Trail of Tears” (from Guadalcanal Diary’s 1984 debut Walking In The Shadow Of The Big Man) might be even more unexpected. JR: I remember hearing that song the first day it came out. I was just blown away by it. So I’ve sung it for years. It just seemed to fit a place the record needed. I’d written “Price Of Progress”, which covered the gothic Southern aspect of who I am as well. “Trail Of Tears” is a sort of companion song to it. ND: Why does it fit? JR: It takes the Southern mythology even deeper than I’ve done in the past with “Still Tied” and “Harvest Moon” and songs like that. I needed more of that on the record. I’ve written about the South before, but never in a way that went back to the Cherokees. The Cherokees ruled the South until the white man came. How that changed, and how they adapted to that, is quite an amazing story. It’s a very sad story, of course. After the white man came, they built up their own culture. They were really the only tribe to do it; certainly the only tribe in the South to do it. They had their own languages and they were contributing to the economy of the South. Then they were forced to move. It’s an incredibly sad story. II. WE SOMETIMES FORGET THAT WE HAVE SUCH A RICH HISTORY ND: You mentioned ‘Price Of Progress.” The opening line (“Some people have the nerve/To say you get what you deserve”) really jumped out at me the first time I listened to the album. Where’d that come from? JR: I wrote “Price Of Progress” in Ireland on the last Scorcher tour of Europe. I went over a week early. I was walking the Moors and feeling the connection between Celtic Ireland and the Celtic South. I had this general idea about a Southern farmer whose farm was slowly being flooded by the TVA dams. I thought that was such an evocative story. I don’t think it had been written about in a song; it may have been in short stories. So I wrote a story about a Southern farmer whose generational homestead is slowing being flooded because they built a dam. ND: That sense of history has been heard in your songs from the start of the Scorchers. JR: When I was 5 or 6 years old, I’d hang out in an old barn, and I’d really get what was cool about it. So I’ve always been interested in history, and lately it’s been Tennessee history before the white man arrived. It’s pretty fascinating stuff, with the mound builders and all. The South is so dominated historically by the Civil War. It’s so strong that we sometimes forget that we have such a rich history long before that. ND: You’re living on a Tennessee farm now, right? JR: It’s a 1940s farm-actually, a chicken farm. That’s part of why I call the record company Courageous Chicken. Everything ties together on this record with the farm and the family. A big part of what I’ve done in the last three years is turning this farm into a working farm. I’m building a barn now. The land has a real deep character to it. There’s some old trails, an old creek. ND: How big is it? JR: Five acres. Really small. We’ve got chickens, a huge garden, we’re getting a potbellied pig. I’ve always envisioned being able to make a farm like what I remember farms were when I was growing up. They had these big tractor tires with petunias painted on them. Barns with white trim. There was no real reason to do that stuff. Those farmers were really busy and money was really tight. But that’s the environment they wanted to create for their families and their children. Now I know the work it takes to do that because I’m doing the same thing: White picket fences, long wood fences, a chicken house with white trim, a little horse stable. I’m building it all myself. III. I REMEMBER NORMAN ROCKWELL AMERICA ND: As you said, family songs are a big part of the album. Let’s talk about “For Addie Rose”. JR: That’s one of my favorite songs I’ve ever done. I wrote that for my daughter, period. It rolled out in one day. I’m so glad people are getting it. Sometimes those kinds of songs are so corny. But people are saying this song is the best one on the record. I think that’s because I wasn’t trying to write a song for the record. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it again. If I wrote a song for Camille or Kelsey, I’d be more aware of what I was doing. ND: I take it that “A Pocketful Of Soul” was written for your wife. JR: “A Pocketful Of Soul” was written for Suzy. It’s very literal. Suzy is a really special person. So many people love her. So what I tried to do with that song wasn’t to write a love song from me to Suzy. What I wanted to do was write a love song from the people who love Suzy to Suzy. There’s a lot of lines in there that I got from other people. And some of them are from me. I don’t think I know anybody who has more friends and is a better friend to people. ND:“Merry Christmas My Darling” is another family song, only it’s not about your life. Still, it comes from the perspective of a father with a family. JR: Actually, I wrote that song years ago, in ‘83. It’s an old thing I’ve wanted to record for years. I tried to picture myself in the early 1960s, before the changes of the ‘60s and ‘70s. There’s the images of the jacket hung by the sewing machine, the rifle, the fishing pole. At the same time this guy is stuck in Vietnam in a prison camp. A lot of soldiers went to Vietnam who weren’t drafted who thought they were fighting for the old Norman Rockwell vision of America. They thought they were fighting communism. In that respect, they were doing a noble thing. Whether that was what they were doing or not is not the question. From their point of view, it was a real honorable thing. So the guy in this prison cell is remembering the life he left behind. He’s remembering these beautiful things: Snow in the lane, grandma’s cooking, grandpa whistling - Christmas in rural America at the time. I wrote it at a time that I was losing the sort of innocence that I brought into the world, and I was remembering all that stuff- not as a Vietnam soldier, of course. But I remember Norman Rockwell America. IV. THE REST OF US HAVE TO WORK AT IT ALL THE TIME ND:“Under Your Command” is as directly a spiritual song as you’ve done. JR: That’s just pure, good ol’ gospel with a modern twist. In a way, I was conjuring Todd Snider. I wrote with him a little in those days. So, yeah, that song is really spiritual. But I wanted it to have a modern kick in the lyrics. I wanted it to be from a person like me. I’m not as perfect as I’d like to be, and that song is about the imperfection that a lot of us have. I know some saints, but I don’t know too many. ND: The line about lighting a truer fuse sounds like it came from someplace real. JR: I think that’s real appropriate to what a lot of musicians face. The line in there about the hotel Bible, I think a lot of musicians relate to that, too. They’re in a hotel and have nothing to do for five hours. You’re separated from your family, everything is unreal, and all of sudden here’s this Bible. I wonder how many musicians have turned to the Lord because of that little Gideon’s Bible? I really wonder that. How many have been on the road and found solace in that, in the saving grace of the Bible? It’s a cool thing. ND: Is that something that’s happened to you? JR: Oh yeah, man, hundreds of times. That’s also what the song is about. It’s an ongoing process. There are some people who are blessed to be saved. The rest of us have to work at it all the time. I think especially if you travel, you have to work at it all the time, whether you’re Christian or Muslim or Jewish or American Indian. It’s a uniquely American Christian idea that you can become saved and then everything is OK. That’s a very modern idea. I don’t quite understand it. ND: That gets at something that’s part of this album, I think, that you try to get at something that’s true to you. There’s a big part of the American songwriting tradition that’s just about writing entertaining songs. But you’re part of that line of songwriters that’s trying to get at something that reflects your experience. JR:You know, I include myself in a heritage of writers who are like that. It’s a great group to be a part of. None of us make any money [laughs]. Or very few of us do. But we are all on this path. We’re never going to get there - that’s the cool thing about it. Steve Earle is never going to get there. Lucinda Williams is never going to get there. Jimmie Dale Gilmore is never going to get there. Kevin Welch is never going to get there. We will never get there, but we will always be on that road trying to get there. It’s the primary focus of all of our lives. Economics is secondary. If we can make money at it, that’s fabulous. But it’s the journey that’s the important thing. ND: All of those people you mentioned have a certain reputation - they’re not the most famous musicians, but they’re going to be listened to for generations. That idea of glory without fortune, have you reconciled with that? JR: Glory without fortune? [laughs] That’s a good line. Internally, when I first got into music, I never thought about the commercial aspects of music. After I got into the Scorchers, especially in the middle point, I thought about it way too much. I think Warner said it the other day, “I didn’t make the money, but I got the longevity.” What’s the old saying: A Frenchman admires a man of culture, an Englishman admires a man of breeding, an Italian admires a man of taste, an American admires a man of wealth. I think that’s an awful thing. I don’t like that about America. We put way too much emphasis on money. We need to pay more attention to what’s in our hearts. 2000-2001 — No Depression Magazine— All Rights Reserved

	The Diesel Cafe l Meet Us l Links l Home l Search