Rock in the Countryside

JASON AND THE SCORCHERS: ‘A Blazing Grace’ (Mammoth)

DAVID HERNDON; Newsday
February 5, 1995, Sunday

Copyright 1995 - 2004 Newsday, Inc.

COUNTRY don’t get much rockier - and rock don’t get much countrier - than when folks who know the meaning of punk are on the case. That would leave out groups like the Eagles and leave in groups like Jason and the Scorchers and the Bottlerockets, whose new albums fall close to the roots-rock tree.
While the Scorchers hold the franchise on cranked-up, post-neo-Nashville country-fried rock, the Bottlerockets operate an outlet (est. 1992) that specializes in the beer-battered midwestern version.
Jason and the Scorchers made the most white-hot roots rock of the 1980s. Their legend was that Jason, romantic farm-boy with a Hank Williams complex, moved to Nashville, fell in with the wrong crowd, and found himself leashed to a team of hellhounds who played so hard and fast the whole thing was constantly in danger of exploding. The band’s incendiary live shows did nothing to dispel this image; neither did the lyrics, which told of trying to hold it together in times of no money, bad love and temptation. A musk of southern gothic sin hung heavy over the whole enterprise, which crumbled at the end of the decade.
“A Blazing Grace” picks up pretty much where Jason and the Scorchers left off. Punching in with “Cry by Night Operator,” the band immediately re-establishes its trademark pedal-to-the-metal, barroom bama-lama sound, and sustains it over a couple of titles (“One More Day of Weekend,” “American Legion Party”) that won’t push anything off the greatest-hits collection. But an insanely intense cover version of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” is a new landmark for the band. Guitarist Warner E. Hodges retains his ability to hog the spotlight with his metallic riffs, hot-dog leads, steel twang and sweet Nashville picking.
Jason Ringenberg’s high-lonesome tone has always lent itself to balladeering, and it might be a mark of age and experience that a couple of the album’s best songs gear down to make breathing room for heartfelt expression. “Somewhere Within,” written collectively by the quartet, sounds like the group’s new statement of purpose: “Somewhere within, we all find the place to start over again.” It’s the scent of salvation that lingers over “A Blazing Grace.”

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