Gypsies Now - Press Release

PRESS RELEASE: New Jason biography

For Release of "All Over Creation" (Courageous Chicken
Records, 2002)
Media Contact: Lori Timm
Courageous Chicken's email: courageouschkn@cs.com

JASON RINGENBERG: THE ROCKINEST FOLK SINGER THAT
EVER LIVED

With a sense of the future and a grasp on the past, Jason Ringenberg
defies definition. Melding old and new musical styles, he has fashioned
a unique sound - and stymied radio programmers and record store
clerks who needed clear-cut categories. He has spent two decades
writing and performing music that, no matter what the label, earns
respect.

"Twenty years ago Jason Ringenberg was the pioneer of what then was
called 'new sincerity.' Now he is feted as alt-country's elder statesman,"
John Aizlewood wrote in the British daily THE GUARDIAN.

Nowhere is that more in evidence than Jason's latest album, which
celebrates his diverse musical friendships by unleashing duets with
Steve Earle, BR5-49, Tommy Womack, Kristi Rose, Todd Snider, The
Wildhearts, Lambchop and still others. The aptly named ALL OVER
CREATION, which is garnering 4-star reviews on both sides of the
Atlantic, contains songs that range across the musical map. Jason
touches every corner of his musical compass, from expressive ballads
and fiddle-tinged Americana to footstomping rockers and the honky-
tonk universe.

The project reunited Jason and co-writer Steve Earle for a stark,
compelling recasting of the Scorchers classic "Bible and a Gun." And a
chance to work with Jason reunited the Wildhearts for a spirited
recording of "One Less Heartache," with its searing guitar work. The
atmospheric "Mother of Earth," the poignant "Erin's Seed" and the high
harmonies of "I Dreamed My Baby CameHome" can stand tall against
any songs in the current "roots music" resurgence.

"ALL OVER CREATION marks a spectacular return to form by one of
the most overlooked country-rock pioneers in the business," said
David Sinclair in THE LONDON TIMES. "Ringenberg has gained a reputation
as one of the most dynamic live performers of his generation."

Audiences who awaited Jason's solo acoustic shows in 2001 probably
weren't sure what to expect without the Scorchers, his electrifying
band of two decades. One guitar and one microphone hardly seemed
enough to transmit his coiled energy and powerful vocals. Turns out
that Jason, armed only with his charisma and a wide-ranging repertoire,
enthralls crowds as intensely as the tilt-a-whirl Scorcher shows that
brought him fame.

THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES crowned his live performance as the BEST
SOLO SHOW OF 2001, saying Jason "proved he could still rock without
the heat of the band."

"A night never to be forgotten," NO DEPRESSION magazine's James Kelly
wrote of Jason's Atlanta show. "The crowd stood in awe and soaked up
some of the most heartfelt and genuine music ever played."

"Since I traveled and performed completely alone for my solo album A
POCKETFUL OF SOUL, I reckon I became much more social than is normal
for me," said Jason. "I found myself jamming with other bands and
musicians at every opportunity. It seemed only natural to carry that
convivial spirit into this new recording."

Personal in a completely different way, ALL OVER CREATION is the kind
of album that takes 20 years to make. It came to life in e-mailed
songwriting sessions, extended jams with kids in the next room,
homemade baked goods and the community that springs up among
talented, creative people. It is an aural scrapbook of the relationships
and respect that Jason has built with people all across the musical
spectrum. Every part of it is infused with the vibrant traditionalism
listeners have come to expect from Jason Ringenberg. ALL OVER
CREATION, as with all his best work, touches on eternal themes of
heritage, heartache and things hell-bent.

An organic music

Jason grew up in a small Illinois town between the Mississippi and Illinois
rivers. He spent a bucolic youth whiling away the hours on the shaded
towpaths of an old canal, hiking through backwaters with antiquated
names like Devil's Slough, and working early hours on the family hog
farm.

The Ringenberg place sits just outside Sheffield, Illinois, a community
with an almost blessed geography. Anchored by historic churches and
country cemeteries, bordered by the Rock Island Line and an interstate
highway, it was a perfect place for a young man to develop an
appreciation for things that should be remembered, and a curiosity for
what had yet to be discovered.

"I loved the farm life and atmosphere but I always felt drawn beyond
that world to something over the horizon," Jason said. "I spent so much
of my teenage years driving the back roads listening to Bob Dylan and
Hank Williams Sr. To this day I remember how good that music sounded
filtering out over the Illinois cornfields."

Even after he went off to college at Southern Illinois University, Jason
would bring his friends - bandmates in particular - back home to play
music over the rolling farmland. He began to distill the sounds and sights
of his own experience into an organic music - and looked for ways to
solder that to the energy he heard in punk songs. "Even in those days, I
wanted to play everything really fast and loud," he said with a laugh.

Jason was determined to find a group that could fuse all his passions:
landscapes, images, stories, country's emotional power and rock's
visceral energy. He was a country boy who traveled to the big city with a
dream, who engendered critical praise and enjoyed stirring success, who
watched it ebb and is riding a crest again.

Greetings from Nashville

Befitting an archetype, Jason set out to seek his fortune on an
auspicious date: Independence Day, 1981. Not long after he pulled into
Nashville, he met a similarly ambitious young musician, Jack Emerson,
who went on to manage the Scorchers and today co-owns E-Squared
Records with Steve Earle.

From their collaboration and connections grew Jason and the Nashville
Scorchers: Bassist Jeff Johnson and drummer Perry Baggs brought the
thunder and virtuoso guitarist Warner Hodges brought the fire. In the
center of it all was Jason, a towering whirling dervish in a cowboy hat
and boots. Emitting a plaintive wail, he flailed across stages, clambered
up flagpoles, scaled the rafters and plunged back to earth.

Without a bona fide rock scene, Nashville scarcely knew what to make of
the Scorchers, but the band found a way to reach listeners. Just a week
after their live concert debut on New Year's Eve 1981-82, they released
their first album, the raw RECKLESS COUNTRY SOUL. Their music - and
stage show - became the stuff of legend; one Nashville parking-lot
performance drew 5,000 fans.

The 7-song FERVOR, with a Scorcherized cover of Bob Dylan's
"Absolutely Sweet Marie," captured 1983 EP of the Year accolades from
the NEW YORK TIMES and the VILLAGE VOICE. Journalist Jimmy Guterman
wrote that in less than 30 minutes of music, "the Scorchers rewrote
the history of rock and roll in the South." FERVOR still stands in
Guterman's ROLLING STONE GUIDE TO THE 100 GREATEST ROCK 'N' ROLL
RECORDS and THE COUNTRY MUSIC ASSOCIATION'S 100 GREATEST
COUNTRY RECORDS.

Touring constantly through the 1980s, the band burned up stages in
Europe and America. The power of the live show drew breathless
accounts from music journalists. The publication NEW MUSIC EXPRESS
proclaimed that attendees at the Scorchers' 1984 performance at the
Marquee Club in London "probably saw one of the top five gigs of all
time."

Jason and the Scorchers crafted a string of albums that still energize
listeners today. These include 1985's LOST AND FOUND, which set the
standard for frenetic rock with a country undercurrent, and STILL
STANDING (with the hit "Golden Ball and Chain") in 1986. By the time
THUNDER AND FIRE was released, the band had edged toward the rock
end of the country-rock equation. (A 1989 photo shows the Scorchers
dressed in the hair-band style of the day, with only Jason clad in a
cowboy hat and string tie, looking resolutely at the camera.) Tracing
the trajectory of so many of their influences, band members parted
company amid internal disputes, record label complications and
substance abuse.

In these new circumstances, Jason moved firmly to the country end of
the country-rock equation and recorded ONE FOOT IN THE HONKY TONK,
an attempt at a more mainstream-Nashville album. "It was a nice place
to visit, but I didn't really belong in the commercial country world," he
said later.

So when the original Scorchers murmured about reuniting, Jason
signed on for the band's second wind. A BLAZING GRACE heralded their
return in 1995 with a unique take on "Take Me Home, Country Roads"
that amounted to the ultimate oxymoron: a blistering John Denver
tune. Critics hailed the follow-up album, CLEAR IMPETUOUS MORNING,
as the band's best work of the 1990s, and the best live band in America
proved it with a double disc, MIDNIGHT ROADS AND STAGES SEEN,
recorded during concerts at the band's Nashville home stage, the
Exit/In. A national television audience saw the magic for themselves as
Jason and the Scorchers performed on LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN
in the spring of 1998.

The town that wasn't quite sure what to do with the Scorchers in 1981 found the question easier to answer 20 years later. Visitors to the
Country Music Hall of Fame can see Jason and the Scorchers memorabilia alongside items from heroes George Jones, Hank Williams
and Jimmie Rodgers. Still performing together a few times each year
and unofficially "semi-retired," the Scorchers released two discs last
year: WILDFIRES + MISFIRES: TWO DECADES OF OUTTAKES AND RARITIES,
as well as ROCK ON GERMANY, a formerly bootlegged disc of a 1985
concert performance in Cologne.

Record company executive

Both discs came out on Courageous Chicken, the record label Jason
founded to release his solo disc A POCKETFUL OF SOUL. The label's
name is a nod to the poultry that inhabit the farm he shares with his
wife and daughters in Nashville; it's also a wordplay on Jason's
sometimes conflicted feeling toward the business side of music. Jason
has jokingly called his solo work "a folkabilly blitzkrieg," but he really
prefers writer Dave Purcell's title: "The Rockinest Folk Singer That Ever
Lived."

Folk - and family - were the driving forces behind POCKETFUL. He
started writing the album in hopes of playing it for his own relatives and
friends, then began thinking of it as a "nice record people could play for
their own families." It far surpassed that expectation, ending up among
the Associated Press' Top 10 country discs of 2000 and winning critical
praise for Jason's skillful songwriting.

Along with Johnny Horton and Guadalcanal Diary covers, POCKETFUL's
songs include "The Price of Progress," about a common man fighting
the Tennessee Valley Authority, "O Lonesome Prairie," an ode to his
Midwestern home, and a lovely song for his daughter, "For Addie Rose."

Daughter Camille's tribute appears on ALL OVER CREATION, and she'll
probably be the only person who quickly decides on the best song. This
is an album where your favorite track changes with each listen. It's a
rare disc that contains a shot-swilling-space-alien romp, a twangy
Loretta Lynn cover and an academically researched Civil War ballad.
ALL OVER CREATION closes with the reflective "Last Train to Memphis,"
Jason's nod to his past and those who influenced him.

It's not the last word on his 20-year career, of course. ALL OVER
CREATION captures the ongoing work of a musical wanderer who
continues to attract new fans, and whose longtime admirers will follow
him in anticipation of the next landscape.

(A former newspaper reporter and editor, Lori Timm writes about all
things Midwestern in a small house about 60 miles south of the Hennepin
Canal. She first experienced Jason and the Scorchers' live performance
in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1987; marveled at the reunited band's
test gig in Bloomington, Illinois, in 1993; and witnessed the best solo
show of 2001 in Chicago. She often sneaks away from her job in
corporate communications to see and hear Jason and the many artists
who have been influenced by his music (even though they rarely tour 60
miles south of the Hennepin Canal).)

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News Meet The Scorchers Learn > Look		PRESS RELEASE: New Jason biography For Release of "All Over Creation" (Courageous Chicken Records, 2002) Media Contact: Lori Timm Courageous Chicken's email: courageouschkn@cs.com JASON RINGENBERG: THE ROCKINEST FOLK SINGER THAT EVER LIVED With a sense of the future and a grasp on the past, Jason Ringenberg defies definition. Melding old and new musical styles, he has fashioned a unique sound - and stymied radio programmers and record store clerks who needed clear-cut categories. He has spent two decades writing and performing music that, no matter what the label, earns respect. "Twenty years ago Jason Ringenberg was the pioneer of what then was called 'new sincerity.' Now he is feted as alt-country's elder statesman," John Aizlewood wrote in the British daily THE GUARDIAN. Nowhere is that more in evidence than Jason's latest album, which celebrates his diverse musical friendships by unleashing duets with Steve Earle, BR5-49, Tommy Womack, Kristi Rose, Todd Snider, The Wildhearts, Lambchop and still others. The aptly named ALL OVER CREATION, which is garnering 4-star reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, contains songs that range across the musical map. Jason touches every corner of his musical compass, from expressive ballads and fiddle-tinged Americana to footstomping rockers and the honky- tonk universe. The project reunited Jason and co-writer Steve Earle for a stark, compelling recasting of the Scorchers classic "Bible and a Gun." And a chance to work with Jason reunited the Wildhearts for a spirited recording of "One Less Heartache," with its searing guitar work. The atmospheric "Mother of Earth," the poignant "Erin's Seed" and the high harmonies of "I Dreamed My Baby CameHome" can stand tall against any songs in the current "roots music" resurgence. "ALL OVER CREATION marks a spectacular return to form by one of the most overlooked country-rock pioneers in the business," said David Sinclair in THE LONDON TIMES. "Ringenberg has gained a reputation as one of the most dynamic live performers of his generation." Audiences who awaited Jason's solo acoustic shows in 2001 probably weren't sure what to expect without the Scorchers, his electrifying band of two decades. One guitar and one microphone hardly seemed enough to transmit his coiled energy and powerful vocals. Turns out that Jason, armed only with his charisma and a wide-ranging repertoire, enthralls crowds as intensely as the tilt-a-whirl Scorcher shows that brought him fame. THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES crowned his live performance as the BEST SOLO SHOW OF 2001, saying Jason "proved he could still rock without the heat of the band." "A night never to be forgotten," NO DEPRESSION magazine's James Kelly wrote of Jason's Atlanta show. "The crowd stood in awe and soaked up some of the most heartfelt and genuine music ever played." "Since I traveled and performed completely alone for my solo album A POCKETFUL OF SOUL, I reckon I became much more social than is normal for me," said Jason. "I found myself jamming with other bands and musicians at every opportunity. It seemed only natural to carry that convivial spirit into this new recording." Personal in a completely different way, ALL OVER CREATION is the kind of album that takes 20 years to make. It came to life in e-mailed songwriting sessions, extended jams with kids in the next room, homemade baked goods and the community that springs up among talented, creative people. It is an aural scrapbook of the relationships and respect that Jason has built with people all across the musical spectrum. Every part of it is infused with the vibrant traditionalism listeners have come to expect from Jason Ringenberg. ALL OVER CREATION, as with all his best work, touches on eternal themes of heritage, heartache and things hell-bent. An organic music Jason grew up in a small Illinois town between the Mississippi and Illinois rivers. He spent a bucolic youth whiling away the hours on the shaded towpaths of an old canal, hiking through backwaters with antiquated names like Devil's Slough, and working early hours on the family hog farm. The Ringenberg place sits just outside Sheffield, Illinois, a community with an almost blessed geography. Anchored by historic churches and country cemeteries, bordered by the Rock Island Line and an interstate highway, it was a perfect place for a young man to develop an appreciation for things that should be remembered, and a curiosity for what had yet to be discovered. "I loved the farm life and atmosphere but I always felt drawn beyond that world to something over the horizon," Jason said. "I spent so much of my teenage years driving the back roads listening to Bob Dylan and Hank Williams Sr. To this day I remember how good that music sounded filtering out over the Illinois cornfields." Even after he went off to college at Southern Illinois University, Jason would bring his friends - bandmates in particular - back home to play music over the rolling farmland. He began to distill the sounds and sights of his own experience into an organic music - and looked for ways to solder that to the energy he heard in punk songs. "Even in those days, I wanted to play everything really fast and loud," he said with a laugh. Jason was determined to find a group that could fuse all his passions: landscapes, images, stories, country's emotional power and rock's visceral energy. He was a country boy who traveled to the big city with a dream, who engendered critical praise and enjoyed stirring success, who watched it ebb and is riding a crest again. Greetings from Nashville Befitting an archetype, Jason set out to seek his fortune on an auspicious date: Independence Day, 1981. Not long after he pulled into Nashville, he met a similarly ambitious young musician, Jack Emerson, who went on to manage the Scorchers and today co-owns E-Squared Records with Steve Earle. From their collaboration and connections grew Jason and the Nashville Scorchers: Bassist Jeff Johnson and drummer Perry Baggs brought the thunder and virtuoso guitarist Warner Hodges brought the fire. In the center of it all was Jason, a towering whirling dervish in a cowboy hat and boots. Emitting a plaintive wail, he flailed across stages, clambered up flagpoles, scaled the rafters and plunged back to earth. Without a bona fide rock scene, Nashville scarcely knew what to make of the Scorchers, but the band found a way to reach listeners. Just a week after their live concert debut on New Year's Eve 1981-82, they released their first album, the raw RECKLESS COUNTRY SOUL. Their music - and stage show - became the stuff of legend; one Nashville parking-lot performance drew 5,000 fans. The 7-song FERVOR, with a Scorcherized cover of Bob Dylan's "Absolutely Sweet Marie," captured 1983 EP of the Year accolades from the NEW YORK TIMES and the VILLAGE VOICE. Journalist Jimmy Guterman wrote that in less than 30 minutes of music, "the Scorchers rewrote the history of rock and roll in the South." FERVOR still stands in Guterman's ROLLING STONE GUIDE TO THE 100 GREATEST ROCK 'N' ROLL RECORDS and THE COUNTRY MUSIC ASSOCIATION'S 100 GREATEST COUNTRY RECORDS. Touring constantly through the 1980s, the band burned up stages in Europe and America. The power of the live show drew breathless accounts from music journalists. The publication NEW MUSIC EXPRESS proclaimed that attendees at the Scorchers' 1984 performance at the Marquee Club in London "probably saw one of the top five gigs of all time." Jason and the Scorchers crafted a string of albums that still energize listeners today. These include 1985's LOST AND FOUND, which set the standard for frenetic rock with a country undercurrent, and STILL STANDING (with the hit "Golden Ball and Chain") in 1986. By the time THUNDER AND FIRE was released, the band had edged toward the rock end of the country-rock equation. (A 1989 photo shows the Scorchers dressed in the hair-band style of the day, with only Jason clad in a cowboy hat and string tie, looking resolutely at the camera.) Tracing the trajectory of so many of their influences, band members parted company amid internal disputes, record label complications and substance abuse. In these new circumstances, Jason moved firmly to the country end of the country-rock equation and recorded ONE FOOT IN THE HONKY TONK, an attempt at a more mainstream-Nashville album. "It was a nice place to visit, but I didn't really belong in the commercial country world," he said later. So when the original Scorchers murmured about reuniting, Jason signed on for the band's second wind. A BLAZING GRACE heralded their return in 1995 with a unique take on "Take Me Home, Country Roads" that amounted to the ultimate oxymoron: a blistering John Denver tune. Critics hailed the follow-up album, CLEAR IMPETUOUS MORNING, as the band's best work of the 1990s, and the best live band in America proved it with a double disc, MIDNIGHT ROADS AND STAGES SEEN, recorded during concerts at the band's Nashville home stage, the Exit/In. A national television audience saw the magic for themselves as Jason and the Scorchers performed on LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O'BRIEN in the spring of 1998. The town that wasn't quite sure what to do with the Scorchers in 1981 found the question easier to answer 20 years later. Visitors to the Country Music Hall of Fame can see Jason and the Scorchers memorabilia alongside items from heroes George Jones, Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers. Still performing together a few times each year and unofficially "semi-retired," the Scorchers released two discs last year: WILDFIRES + MISFIRES: TWO DECADES OF OUTTAKES AND RARITIES, as well as ROCK ON GERMANY, a formerly bootlegged disc of a 1985 concert performance in Cologne. Record company executive Both discs came out on Courageous Chicken, the record label Jason founded to release his solo disc A POCKETFUL OF SOUL. The label's name is a nod to the poultry that inhabit the farm he shares with his wife and daughters in Nashville; it's also a wordplay on Jason's sometimes conflicted feeling toward the business side of music. Jason has jokingly called his solo work "a folkabilly blitzkrieg," but he really prefers writer Dave Purcell's title: "The Rockinest Folk Singer That Ever Lived." Folk - and family - were the driving forces behind POCKETFUL. He started writing the album in hopes of playing it for his own relatives and friends, then began thinking of it as a "nice record people could play for their own families." It far surpassed that expectation, ending up among the Associated Press' Top 10 country discs of 2000 and winning critical praise for Jason's skillful songwriting. Along with Johnny Horton and Guadalcanal Diary covers, POCKETFUL's songs include "The Price of Progress," about a common man fighting the Tennessee Valley Authority, "O Lonesome Prairie," an ode to his Midwestern home, and a lovely song for his daughter, "For Addie Rose." Daughter Camille's tribute appears on ALL OVER CREATION, and she'll probably be the only person who quickly decides on the best song. This is an album where your favorite track changes with each listen. It's a rare disc that contains a shot-swilling-space-alien romp, a twangy Loretta Lynn cover and an academically researched Civil War ballad. ALL OVER CREATION closes with the reflective "Last Train to Memphis," Jason's nod to his past and those who influenced him. It's not the last word on his 20-year career, of course. ALL OVER CREATION captures the ongoing work of a musical wanderer who continues to attract new fans, and whose longtime admirers will follow him in anticipation of the next landscape. (A former newspaper reporter and editor, Lori Timm writes about all things Midwestern in a small house about 60 miles south of the Hennepin Canal. She first experienced Jason and the Scorchers' live performance in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1987; marveled at the reunited band's test gig in Bloomington, Illinois, in 1993; and witnessed the best solo show of 2001 in Chicago. She often sneaks away from her job in corporate communications to see and hear Jason and the many artists who have been influenced by his music (even though they rarely tour 60 miles south of the Hennepin Canal).) The Diesel Cafe l Meet Us l Links l Home l Search