Rhinestones, Leather Jackets, Bombed-Out Stages…
The Rise and Fall, and Rise Again of Jason & The Scorchers
Rolling Stone once said, “Jason & The Scorchers in the 1980s single-handedly redefined rock ‘n’ roll in the South.” That is not all they redefined. People who had the privilege of seeing the band in their prime, or even after it, were permanently changed. Describing their live show in 1984, a writer for Billboard stated, “Jason & The Scorchers might do a mediocre show, but it won’t be in this lifetime.” Their ability to combine the best aspects of country music – great songs, sincerity, and real stories – with the ferocious attack of modern punk rock has never been equaled.
Part 1: High On The Hog In Music City…
The band’s story started July 4, 1981, when a skinny, fresh-faced farm boy arrived in Nashville like thousands before him, with nothing but a van filled with music equipment and a heart filled with dreams. Jason Ringenberg, the son of an Illinois hog farmer, grew up walking the Rock Island Line railroad tracks that bordered their land. He played in country and psychobilly bands like Shakespeare’s Riot and the Catalinas in Illinois, but felt compelled to move to Nashville, that mecca that eventually draws all music dreamers. His vision was to combine traditional American roots music, especially country, with a modern punk rock energy and ethos. Little did he know just how dramatically that vision would be realized.
As fate would have it, he got an apartment behind Cantrell’s, Nashville’s only club that allowed punk rockers through the door. Immediately he met Jack Emerson, then a Vanderbilt University student. Ringenberg explained his vision to Emerson, who instantly committed to this earnest young man’s idea, offering to play bass and to help put a band together. In two weeks they did just that, christening the band Jason & The Nashville Scorchers. With Emerson on bass, law student Will Tomlinson on guitar, and a Sex Pistols tribute singer on drums, they found impressive gigs from the start. Their first was opening for Carl Perkins, with their second opening for a young Athens, Ga. band named R.E.M.
That version of Jason & The Nashville Scorchers was obviously a development in progress. But two fundamental components of Nashville’s nascent rock scene came to a show and sensed a kindred spirit in Ringenberg. Warner E. Hodges was the son of country musicians Blanche and Ed Hodges, who were living in Nashville after retiring from the military. Warner Hodges had played drums as a boy for his parents’ USO bands. He knew country music inside out. As a teenage rebel, he got hooked on early AC/DC and the first wave of punk rockers, waving that flag with high-decibel pride. In Nashville’s schmaltzy country pop-atmosphere, he stood out like a pig in a perfume shop. He played in punk and rock bands with his friend Jeff Johnson, a tough street punk who was always ahead of the curve. They gained local notoriety as crazy, decadent rockers but they never could rise above “the Nashville Curse,” a persistent local belief that a rock band in Nashville would never make it beyond Music City’s legendary streets.
When the first version of Jason & The Nashville Scorchers fell apart, Johnson offered to take up the bass and he brought Hodges in on guitar. (Emerson moved to manager duties, eventually going on to become a major music executive in the Americana world.) Hodges then brought in his high school buddy, drummer Perry Baggs, and the epic band was born, playing its first show on New Year’s Eve 1981. In a matter of weeks the pioneers were packing rooms around Nashville and had released their first recording, the four-song Reckless Country Soul EP, on Emerson’s Praxis label. Many point to this as the first true alternative country record in music history. After its release the band traveled the country relentlessly in Ringenberg’s 1971 decrepit Ford Econoline, assaulting any stage that would carry them.