THE
ORIGINAL ROOTS-PUNK BARNSTORMER
It has been written that most of us go to our graves with our
music still inside us. Jason Ringenberg has nothing to fear.
He’s been hailed as an alt-country luminary, creator and
aggressive cow-punk perfector, and now a tireless, barnstorming
roots punk solo performer and children’s music favorite.
Heck, some folks even call him “dad” these days.
But when one spends over two decades traversing this old orb,
in the trenches of transience where the beer is soaked right
into the wood, eschewing the commercial cookie monster for an
honest night’s sleep even if it was in the back of a van,
it can either go one of two ways: You go utterly butter-lip
mad, or you whip out your pen and gain a helluva lot of wisdom.
Thankfully Jason chose the latter, which has never been made
clearer than with EMPIRE BUILDERS, his latest release on Yep
Roc Records. Almost elemental in its percussive Nashville bliss,
Ringenberg uses the depth of his vision and the dauntlessness
of his six-stringer to shuffle-kick the margins of your daddy’s
country into the post-modern, the new uncertainties of the American
Dream. And with EMPIRE BUILDERS that dream burns with the intensity
of a structure fire and is never more resolute than when Jason
is on that endless ribbon of tarmac, especially abroad and vulnerable
to the various nefarious preconceptions and stereotypes of U.S.
progeny. EMPIRE BUILDERS acknowledges the viability, perhaps
even the necessity of transience and transcendence in the songwriting
process, seeking out the recalcitrant little anomalies beneath
our bloody soil, articulating the idea that true happiness is
sweetest when it’s just a little unsettling or even tinged
with sadness. But Jason’s legacy has been many years in
the making, continuously cultivating his new efforts, arms spread
upward and wide to receive the blazing noonday sun.
SEEDS ARE SOWN..
Born in 1958, our barnstorming brother grew up near Sheffield,
Illinois, a rural patch of that Prairie State, raised on the
sweat equity of production agriculture and its tenacious sensibilities.
At an early age he learned to play guitar and harmonica in the
rustic cornfields of his small town, the morning hours spent
tending to the family’s hog raising operation near the
Rock Island Line Railroad as his father’s sun-cured careful
hands placed him on the plow. An honest living that embraced
practicality, it would provide the basis for the staggering
work ethic that would soon become young Jason’s calling
card. But whatever it is that keeps a young man local –
the family, the crisp air that settles at the back bottom of
your lungs tastes like so much rich soil and potable water,
the lucid, redemptive howl of Opry echoing across the plane
never found purchase in the boy, at least not to plant down
permanent roots. For just beyond the horizons of Bureau County,
where the seemingly endless blue sky meets the sprawling expanse
of corn, wheat and soy, something was calling. And country music
would never be the same. Ever the pragmatist, Jason dutifully
attended Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 1977,
where he and his friends were exposed to the explosive might
of the first punk rock movement, England’s Sex Pistols
and The Clash, America’s Ramones. There he refined his
budding musical largesse into an agent of fortune, a medium
maximum that harnessed that raw power and infused it with donkey-punch
honky tonk right into Mother Nature’s sweet story-telling
bosom.
ROOTS ROCK RADICAL...
It only seemed logical that Jason should take that ripening
convergence of sound, image, landscape and land-speed trial
to the next reasonable level: Nashville, Tennessee. In a deliberate
gesture, he set off for the music capital of the world on July
4, 1981, in search of soulmates, willing craftsmen to buoy his
hunger for something that was loud, fast, heartstrung and poisonous
if swallowed. He found what he was looking for in guitarist
Warner Hodges, drummer Perry Baggs and bass man Jeff Johnson,
each one all too willing to indulge Jason’s heavy duty
leanings, and Jason and the Scorchers was born. As Nashville’s
incendiary red-headed stepchild, the Scorchers summoned the
ghost of Johnny Horton as he marched through the Battle of New
Orleans and star-cross’d that fate with Johnny Thunder’s
vulnerable but uncompromising swagger. The unholy union of country
and punk rock was met in some circles with turbidity, but was
ultimately upheld and critically acclaimed by anyone with a
soul as “TNT from Tennessee.” The Scorchers commenced
to laying waste to venues both at home and abroad, bringing
their infamous, eviscerating live performances to indefatigable
heights and gladly throwing themselves over the proverbial edge.
Their aptly dubbed first EP, FERVOR, gained the attention of
the majors, but it was LOST AND FOUND, the band’s first
smoldering full-length LP, that set Nashville on its ear. The
album received rave reviews and earned them a spot on tour with
then-radio giants R.E.M.. The single “White Lies”
in particular proved to be an important hit for the band. MTV
old timers might even recall catching the video for “Shop
It Around,” in the days before spring break programming
limped into every brainwashed delinquent’s psyche. But
the all-too-common pressures of the recording industry, coupled
with the normative rock and roll excess, split the band prematurely
in 1989. Jason found time to rediscover his country roots with
his 1992 solo venture ONE FOOT IN THE HONKY TONK, a record that
dabbled in the judicious Nashville mainstream, perhaps with
our hero not fully aware that this joint would foreshadow the
future towpath he would soon slink on down with his daddy long
legs and good sheriff Stetson. The Scorchers regrouped to unleash
slew of stark, arse-crumpling LPs in the mid-90’s, including
the magnanimous A BLAZING GRACE and CLEAR IMPETUOUS MORNING.
Those years saw some personal changes for Jason, who remarried
and settled down on a farm west of Nashville with his wife and
children. It was also slowly becoming clear that the road show
of faith and madness that Jason and the Scorchers delivered,
while still a virulent rodeo circuit machine all wholesome and
hellfire laden, was slowly running its course.
FAITH HEALER...
With that kind ghost of the Scorchers finally exorcised in 1999
(Jason prefers the term “semi-retired”), it was
time to set out building his future, and people, he likes to
build it tall, with all killer/no filler spring-fed country
goodness. The new millennium saw the release of A POCKETFULL
OF SOUL, a stripped-down affair chock full of bricks-and-mortar
countryside themes – finding it, keeping it, losing it,
giving it away. It also marked the creation of Jason’s
very own Courageous Chicken Records. The CD reconciled his past
with his present and refocused his moral compass on what was
slowly opening into a gracious parasol of musical prose that
shed and bled light upon the pages of his own history and how
those experiences colored his perception of American history
at large. That legacy was expanded with ALL OVER CREATION, which
provided collaborations and duets with everyone from Steve Earle
to Swan Dive to UK rockers The Wildhearts, adding essential
hues to Jason’s eclectic prism of light, sound and history.
Seeking and finding critical acclaim on the same level or better
as that of the Scorchers, it redefined his career. The response
was so favorable that the tour went worldwide, again his capacity
for road wear unfathomable with over 300 shows in 18 months.
That’s more than the Rolling Stones have played in 20
years, for those out there keeping track. The live shows featured
Jason on guitar and harmonica, the new bark shop folkster, but
even alone he burned with the intensity of a dozen radioactive
cattlemen. No, not your daddy’s country. But daddy would
surely approve behind momma’s back. And then, of course,
just when you figure you had him nailed, the man up and hits
you smack in the breast plate with a 180-degree paradigm shift.
Hoping to leave his young ones with something personal when
duty called him to England, Germany, Norway or France, Jason
assumed the persona Farmer Jason to create A DAY AT THE FARM
WITH FARMER JASON for children of all ages. With three kids
of his own, our man found it easy to assume his alter ego, engaging
youngsters with classic sing-a-longs like “A Guitar Pickin’
Chicken” and “Whoa There Pony!” Was this a
respite? A chance to relax for a man who so entirely deserved
to do so after 20-plus years in the original soul-stealing business?
Naw, it was really a means by which he could double-book himself
across the United States, doing public schools and libraries
for kids during the day, and hitting the drinkin’ venues
by street lamp!
A NEW ETHNOGRAPHY...
And now before you, gentle public, is the culmination of Jason’s
past two years in pursuit of the new American sunrise. EMPIRE
BUILDERS is Americana, Hosana, trifecta and confection. This
is the real new deal, and he will take you down easy so you
can taste the grass of the plains, smear the coal of the trains
on your face and swoon with all the loving elegance your watering
eyes can withstand. EMPIRE BUILDERS has a personal touch rarely
witnessed in today’s product-driven marketplace. Nashville
pros like George Bradfute and Fats Kaplin lend their seasoned
chops to the pulmonary rhythm of Jason’s songwriting throughout,
including the heartfelt soliloquy “Half the Man,”
a touching and simple tribute to his father, far removed from
your typical AOR ballad. Also consider the clarity and poise
with which the man offers “She Hung the Moon” or
the sardonic, parade-float glib of “New Fashioned Imperialist.”
Whether pig-callin’, testifyin’, crooning or eulogizing
the Nez Pierce as a whole in “Chief Joseph’s Last
Dream,” Jason Ringenberg is a true and glorious voice
for these uncertain times. Jason has also chosen EMPIRE BUILDERS
as a means by which to divulge the songwriting process by indicating
the inspiration for each song and disclosing where it was written.
This gives the listener/reader a unique insight and an opportunity
to connect the dots themselves. It’s what those literary
types call the “objective correlative,” if you will.
He gives no answers, instead asking all the necessary questions
so we can draw our own conclusions. This is the art of storytelling.
The sermon on the beatific, deep, dark wherever. And with it
he transcribes how abundant, how magnificent and munificently
beautiful American life can be, and how our sometimes sordid
past as a free nation continues to inform our society and others
to this day.
Bill Ketzer, 2004
Bill Ketzer is a freelance writer from Upstate New York, and
is a regular contributor to Metroland Magazine, an Albany-based
alternative newsweekly that somehow allows him to write anything
he wants about his musical heroes and anti-heroes. An avid car-hater,
Ketzer is also a celebrated features writer in the popular cycling
forum Dirt Rag. By day he is an agriculture analyst for the
New York State Legislature, helping to increase opportunities
for rural communities. In his college days he was the recipient
of numerous literature awards that no one cares about. |
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