Wells Fargonauts

Jason and the Scorchers: Fervor (EMI)

Cynthia Rose; New Musical Express, London, England
April 21, 1984

Copyright 1984-2004 New Musical Express

Even allowing for the Women’s Wear Daily pop-corn which often passes as critical comparison in rock I can’t help but loathe this catchall term ‘cowpunk.’ Like, here we are in 1984 - with three different, potentially great bands (Rank & File, Lone Justice and this quartet) carrying the torch of real country-rock with a passion unheard since Gram Parsons’ sin-fearin’ salad days. And they get lumped in with every rockabilly aggregation or thrash outfit solvent enough to cop a Stetson and/or sequins.
To each his own and all that, but this album was titled in earnest: its evangelical contents burn with the purest constituents - possibility, peril and payments for decisions made - ever extracted from classic C&W to form the art of the Flying Burritos or even The Band. (No accident that the cut which lengthens this EMI release of the indie voted top mini-LP of ‘83 by a landslide in the US is a redhot railroading of Dylan’s ‘Absolutely Sweet Marie’).
Originally these guys were billed as Jason and the Nashville Scorchers: C&W’s Rhinestone Capital is home to all but 23 year-old vocalist/founder Jason Ringenberg. (Ringenberg was raised on a hog farm in Illinois; Scorcher Warner Hodges, no slacker on the lap steel or electric guitar, is the son of N’ville’s noted guitarist/singer team Ed and Blanche Hodges). It took them two years to earn the respect of Music City’s establishment - a sloppier EP of punked-out country classics, ‘Reckless Country Soul’ preceded ‘Fervor’ without making much of a dent - but three of these tracks were set down in Sam Phillips’ legendary Memphis premises.
What’s most outstanding about ‘Fervor’ is its sense that this is just the beginning of a new music, which may use country’s chord patterns and phrasing but which aims for and honest confrontation with contemporary reality. And by that I mean consequences: the one thing it’s oh-so fashionable to shun in favour of slogans, costumes, or that slightly new angle on the deities of our past. A Gilded Palace of Then ‘Fervor’ most definitely is not. Like the work of Rank & File or Lone Justice (or the John Fogerty of another day), this is music for people intending to involve real emotions in real decisions - adhering to real principles, whether or not anyone else is watching.
Ringenberg’s only solo writing credit attaches to ‘Harvest Moon’ - an economically poetic plaint about spiritual poverty which (next to the raw and steaming Dylan cover) happens to be my personal fave. Two other tracks co-authored with bassist Jeff Johnson (‘Hot Nights in Georgia,’ on which REM vocalist Michael Stipe chimes in, and slow-dance special/honky-tonk narrative ‘Pray for Me, Mama’) employ scenarios set in the past to make new points. But a crackling ‘Help There’s a Fire’ kids the best of Dylan’s talking blues with its lead persona of a lover longing for a dollar to “buy a Popsicle/take her to the disco,” and ‘I Can’t Help Myself’ recalls the simple but sexy double entendres whoopee of Rank & File’s ‘Amanda Ruth.’
Forget all those Yip Yip Coyotes, Rubber Rodeos, ossifying revivalists, leftover redneck rockers and drugstore (aka cocaine) cowboys...it’s through the raffish, roughneck dedication like that of this band that the West ever stands to get really wild again. But we gotta hang in there for ‘em - with fervor.

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