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Scorchers
News - March 2002
      
JASON, SCORCHERS?
Jason Ringenberg is near completion of his next solo album, named “All
Over Creation.” Jason will release it on his own Courageous Chicken
record label, and it will be available in May 2002 - in Europe. We don’t
have a US release date yet, but I guess it won’t be far behind
Europe’s. This is the 21st century, after all.
Jason will probably tour some in 2002 to support “Creation,”
as he did in 2000-2001 for “Pocketful.” Bookmark this site,
or www.jasonringenberg.com, for his tour dates as they become available.
Regarding the Scorchers, their future is still unclear. Their 20th anniversary
shows have demonstrated that their music and fan base are still intact,
and their new CD release means that the band is still an important part
of their lives.
Yet the realities of families, jobs, and maturing viewpoints encroach
upon those who would saddle up and pile into the van one more time.
Jason and Warner are married with children, and each take their non-musical
working responsibilities very seriously. Kenny has his capable hands
in several different projects, as one might expect of a musician in
a town where session work and cover gigs pay many a rent. And Perry
continues to hold down a steady job and to monitor his health.
There is also the real issue of whether Jason Ringenberg will have the
inspiration to write songs for Jason and the Scorchers again.
Jason told Sonicnet.com in September of
2000:
"Where I go with my writing from here, I don't know. I have vague
plans for a children's record, maybe even a gospel record. We'll just
have to see what's down the road."
He said this simply to Miles of Music.com
in 2000:
“But as far as [the Scorchers] making new records...I don't know
if that'll happen. It might, it might not.”
Jason has gone on record in other interviews as saying that he does
not want the Scorchers to turn into an “oldies” act. Ideally,
he likes the band to be growing, changing, and taking on new challenges.
This was one of the major reasons he made a big push for 1996’s
“Clear Impetuous Morning” to be an intense band effort. Yet
if Jason does not have the inclination to write new songs for the band,
there will necessarily be some stagnation of their repertoire.
We also have to look at the current chilly climate within the music
business, especially for alt-country musicians. However popular “Americana”
is with those who already believe in it, Todd Leopold hit the nail on
the head in his excellent article for CNN.com. (See above for the link
to this article.)
"If alt.country is lacking something, it's radio support. If artists
don't get played on so-called "Americana"-formatted stations,
they often don't get played at all."
These sobering points are not meant to throw cold water on an outlook
into the Scorchers’ future. They are meant to place the future
in more stark relief to the optimism fans such as myself invariably
display toward the band’s music. If one asks the question, ‘what
will the future bring for Jason and the Scorchers?’ one should
look at what similar artists have survived, and how they have accomplished
that. Neil Young, Lou Reed, Steve Earle, Link Wray, and Jerry Lee Lewis
are solo artists who kept playing high-energy rock into their forties.
Jason has also referenced Bob Dylan as an artist whom he looks up to,
for his longevity and his work.
Only a few bands have maintained their sound over twenty years, when
their work combined alternative rock, punk, and roots influences, whether
those roots were American or another country’s. Those bands are
Midnight Oil, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Los Lobos, the
Go-Go’s, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and Jason and the Scorchers.
You might add Blue Rodeo, Canada’s finest, in there, since they
have been together for 17 years. Many people would put U2 and REM in
this group, but the roots influences I heard in those bands died out
a decade ago. I would argue that REM is strictly an alternative band
now, while U2 is a commercial band.
Each one of the above groups has undergone dramatic changes, and more
than one have broken up and reformed: the E Street Band, the Go-Go’s,
the Scorchers. Only Midnight Oil has chugged along through it all, like
the mighty train that they are, with few personnel changes and continually
great music.
All that is a way of mapping the landscape in front of us fans. I think
a “landscape” analogy is an appropriate way of looking at
the situation. On one hand, we have a group of four explorers, with
a strong supporting cast that believes in them. They know where they
have been and have a fearless leader, but the leader has other journeys
he has to take, as well. On the other hand, you have the unknown landscape
of roots music in America today, with many more friendly stops on the
trail for those engaged in techno-, rap, and other such forms of music.
The landscape might be beautiful, or treacherous, for our four explorers
if they decide to venture out there. But they have done it before, and
have rescued each other time after time.
Will they go out there and explore again? We don’t know; we’re
not them. I do suggest that when they take a few steps down the trail,
people lend them an ear and a hand to help make their journey worthwhile.
If you’ve read this far, perhaps you really do care about our site,
or the band ¯ so, thanks. We think jats.com had a good first year
in 2001, and the responses we received back this opinion up. Most people
visiting this site are repeat visitors ¯ on average, 85%. That
means many of you have bookmarked us, and we thank you for doing so.
We did take some time off to start 2002. The longest you can expect
us to take in between updates to the site ¯ whether for news, more
articles, or something else ¯ is two or three months. In 2001,
we added material nearly each month, which was necessary because we
were building from scratch and had the December shows as a target date
to have the site presentable. In 2002, we will be on a slower pace,
because programmer Jenny Wise and I (James Benkard) have increased working
commitments.
Jenny and I are looking forward to a long relationship with you, the
fans, and are committed to building jats.com up to a point where it
holds its own with some of the finest websites. Much of our work in
2002, though, will be less flashy than what you saw last year. We’ll
add text to the “Learn” section ¯ articles, reviews,
essays and interviews ¯ because this work is easier for a web designer
than anything else. We have lots of press on the band, especially from
the eighties, that you all haven’t seen. We will put up as much
press as we can, because I believe in the printed word, and through
the years it has been a strength of the band.
If any newspaper or magazine whose article we have reprinted here wishes
us to remove it from our site, we will do so immediately. Simply email
us at jasonandthescorchers@sunflower.com,
and we’ll take it off.
What you will soon see on the site, before the additional press, is
Canadian Graham Young’s terrific pictures of the band from the
New Year’s Eve show. Graham did a bang-up job shooting the Scorchers
as they careened off each other, and we’ll put up 20 or 25 of his
shots. One of those will replace our band shot on the “Welcome”
page. Hopefully, we can also arrange to have a few printer-friendly
jpegs of the band shots Graham did available for you, whether you are
in the media or a fan.
The other parts of the site that we will tackle, in order, are:
1. General Store. (We won’t
be a vendor, but will sort out for you where you can buy the Scorchers’
CDs, and some memorabilia.)
2. Lyrics.
3. Look (older pictures).
4. (more) Links.
5. Discography.
I don’t know how far we’ll get into this list in 2002, but
I hope we can get through #4. The Discography page will be a challenge,
and I hope to have help from you all to flesh out that essential section.
2003 will bring more fleshing out of the site. Toward the end of next
year and into 2004, we’ll launch the Diesel Café. Hopefully,
if we can swing it, it will be an interactive virtual hangout. This
section is full of surprises, but since it’s down the road, I’ll
hold off on describing it. For now, I hope the bulletin board and the
mp3s that are up now are enough to keep all the multimedia fans happy.
It’s very possible that this year we will add some live mp3s to
the section of the D. Café that is up.
We will continue to make jats.com a user-friendly site, with no annoying
pop-up windows or soulless advertisements. I have entertained the idea
of engaging sponsors for the site, but am inclined to leave our site
free of those. I hope you will find jats.com easy to navigate and free
of clutter. We are also reliable: Verio.com, our server, has been excellent
to us.
Please email us if you have any questions or comments.
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