Scorchers
News - October 2001
Here is the news for which you all have been waiting.
Two Scorchers shows have been announced. We will hope for more, but
for now these are the only two confirmed dates. So make them if you
can.
JASON AND THE SCORCHERS
December 29, 2001
Memphis, Tennessee Hi-Tone Cafe
1913 Poplar Avenue (901) 278-8663
http://www.hi-tonecafe.com/
December 31, 2001
Nashville, Tennessee Exit/In Club
2208 Elliston Place (615) 321-4400
http://www.exit-in.com/
PBS filmed Jason
in August for their production "The Appalachians."
Jason played a few songs at his farm in Tennessee on August 17th with
Paul Burch and Fats Kaplin for the PBS crew working on the documentary
film "The Appalachians." Click here to see a press release
from Evening Star Productions, the film's production company. Jason
said this about August 17th:
"The 17th was a cool thing. We set up in my old shed with Fats
on fiddle and Paul Burch and me on guitar and vocals. We did all old
mountain songs and then had quiches compliments of our chickens!"
If you view the press release, you will see that one of the songs Jason performed was "Wayfarin' Stranger." This is a neat coincidence, for one of my other favorite artists, Maria McKee, recently performed that song on the David Letterman show after contributing it to the "Songcatcher" soundtrack. Maria started her career in 1983 in the group Lone Justice, and they joined the Scorchers as one of the most powerful roots rock groups of the 1980's.
"The Appalachians" is a mammoth undertaking. Evening Star describes it as "a special television event, book, boxed CD set, and educational guide." Their crews are traveling extensively in the US and England to film musicians performing in various traditional styles. They will whittle a hundred hours of footage down to four. "The Appalachians" will air on PBS next spring and perhaps be released on DVD. We'll all cross our fingers, hoping for the DVD release.
Evening Star Productions also asked me for a tape of the Scorchers' May 29, 1998 appearance on NBC's Conan O'Brien show. I sent this to them, and included on there other Scorchers performances. So, perhaps some Scorchers highlights will make it into the production.
Kenny Ames has left Dash Rip Rock.
There seem to be a few reasons this happened, Kenny's commitment to the Scorchers being one of them. Kenny told me that Dash Rip's manager relayed the information to him. Apparently the manager for Dash Rip told Kenny he was tired of people mentioning Jason and the Scorchers to him. Also, the other two members of Dash Rip apparently wanted a more "committed" bass player. Knowing Kenny as I do, that latter charge seems leveled at the wrong individual.
Scorchers fans obviously owe Kenny a debt of gratitude for sticking with the Scorchers despite their dormant status. Kenny might have improved his situation in Dash Rip Rock by distancing himself from or quitting the Scorchers, but it sounded to me as though that never crossed his mind. So, if you are at one of the December shows and have a chance, please give Kenny a pat on the back for being a true Scorcher.
Kenny is keeping busy by playing some gigs with commercial bands on weekends. When we spoke, he was learning yet another new set of songs. I would think Kenny knows every song in the book by now. Kenny also mentioned he has an iron or two in the fire regarding upcoming auditions with well-known bands.
As a footnote to the Dash Rip Rock situation, the URL for their website has recently been taken over by someone with less than scrupulous intentions. So, don't go there expecting to learn about the band. We'll take that link off our site.
Jason wrote a new folk song in Ireland this spring, "Erin's Seed."
He wrote it with Chris Phillips, a friend of his and a fellow Civil War expert. This is a gorgeous song. It is traditional, haunting folk sung with a lilt. Jason does some nice finger work on it, and his voice is really heartbreaking.
Here is an excerpt from Jason Ringenberg's May 29, 2001 show in Charlotte, NC.
"What I'd really like to do now, if you don't mind - I'd like to do a brand-new song. You'll have to bear with me, because I haven't sang this for an American audience yet. I wrote it on my last trip, when I was in Ireland.
"And I wrote it about - in the 1840's in Ireland, there was a terrible famine. And almost a third of the country emigrated to either Australia or the United States. And a strange thing happened when the Irish immigrants came to the States. Most settled in New York or Boston, but also a lot of them came to Georgia and North Carolina, as a matter of fact, to eastern North Carolina.
"And during the American Civil War, at the battle of Fredericksburg, there were Irish units on both sides of the war. And a quirk of fate actually put them right across each other at the battle of Fredericksburg. And they had to - they saw, because they had the green flags of the Irish companies and brigades - and they started yelling back and forth at each other, like trading news from home, and stuff. And they even started singing some Irish songs. And then they had to fight each other. So, I wrote this song about it.
"And I sang it, actually, for the first time in Ireland. It was quite an experience for me. It was kind of - it was a song written about the Irish, by an American, written in Ireland, about the Irish in America, sung for the first time in Ireland. (laughter.) It's called "Erin's Seed." Erin, of course, is Gaelic for 'Irish.'"
"Erin's Seed" (Jason Ringenberg/Chris Phillips 2001) (3:35)
Erin's seed left their
homes in Ireland's hills and dales
Driven by the famine, for America they sailed
A land of opportunity, far from English reign
Far from all that sorrow, and far from all that pain
Started up new lives,
and worked and raised their families
They thought they'd never see again war and tyranny
Most settled in the Yankee north, but some went to the south
They prayed they'd never see again famine's gaping mouth
(chord change)
Now Erin's seed lie scattered on America's sweet soil
Growing up and onward, through honest work and toil
Growing up and onward, the heaven's brightest rays
Forgetting all the sorrows of those bad old days
(return)
Then in the spring of sixty-one, a fragile peace was shattered
The North and South could not agree, and war was all that mattered
Erin's seed, those Irish sons, heard the warbird's cry
And for each respective side, Irish boys would die
Upon the hills of Fredericksburg
two armies spent their hate
And the men of Ireland would meet the strangest fate
For across that narrow field, they stood against each other
They sang songs of Ireland as they shot each other
(chord change)
Now Erin's seed lay seeping in Virginia's sweet earth
No longer will it bloom and grow, and foster a rebirth
Our civil war did finish what their famine had begun
And in the end they crossed themselves, and went to meet the Son
In the end they crossed themselves, and went to meet the Son
We are continuing to update the site.
We will be adding to the site for the rest of 2001. The "Learn" and "Look" sections will receive the most frequent updates. These are the virtual bread and cheese portions of the site: articles, interviews, reviews, and pictures and other scans.
We are also working on a tour date database, and with the help of the folks on the Reckless Country Soup mailing list, we've been able to pin down 500 Scorchers tour dates. Our goal is to create a comprehensive tour history for the band, and we can use any fan's help for this effort. Once we put the list of dates we know on the site, we will correspond with fans who have additions and corrections to make to the list.
We will have a bulletin board functioning on here soon. It will be in the "Diesel CafÈ" section, and perhaps it will already be working by the time you read this. We recently purchased a license from Infopop, a company in Seattle, Washington, to use their bulletin board software. I found their "Ultimate Bulletin Board" while browsing the Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers' site. It blew me away, and immediately I wanted it for jasonandthescorchers.com.
Posting to this bulletin board requires registering and adopting a user name. Please don't be daunted by this. All it requires is five minutes, and a working email address. Registration on this board allows you to sign on with a user name, so you are anonymous. No one will know your email address unless you give it out. You can send people messages, through the board, without revealing your email address.
We at jasonandthescorchers.com certainly won't give out any email addresses, so you need not worry about unsolicited advertisements. I'm not even sure if I'll have access to them. There will be a learning curve for everybody as we adjust to this software, and I'm really excited about it.
If you have a moment, please send a kind email to our fabulous programmer, Jenny Wise, at webmaster@jasonandthescorchers.com. And I'll see y'all in Nashville on New Year's Eve.
