JASON & THE SCORCHERS: HICK'RY SMOKED HEAVY METAL

JASON & THE SCORCHERS: HICK'RY SMOKED HEAVY METAL

by

L.E. Agnelli

“We’re in France, in Toulouse, I think. It’s the morning after the gig, and we’re all getting in the tour bus to go to our next gig. And I notice Ronnie and Jeff (Johnson, Scorchers’ bassist)—who always room together—are giving each other these knowing looks, and whispering to each other, and shit. each other, and shit. So Ronnie comes over to me and says, ‘Listen, no matter what happens, just go along with us. You don’t know anything.’

“So the band’s sitting there, nice, hands folded on the table, ready to leave. Ronnie and Jeff are sitting there smiling, you know. Then our tour manager, Alan Morris, big British guy, comes on the bus and says, ‘All right, who knows about the furniture?’ Ronnie and Jeff look at each other and go, 'What furniture?.’

“Alan takes everybody off the bus, gesturing at us to come with him. So we go around to the side of the hotel, and here is a pile of furniture on the sidewalk, all busted up, just sitting there. Somehow, all the furniture made its way out the window from Ronnie and Jeff’s room on the seventh floor. Nobody says anything. Alan’s, like, ‘OK, who knows about it?’ Then Ronnie speaks up: ‘You know, as far as I can remember, there wasn’t any furniture in that room when we walked in.’ Everybody laughs, we get in the bus and drive away, and that’s it.”

Just one of many entertaining road stories, compliments of good ol’ Francis, ex-Scorchers’ soundman, whose favorite band to this day (even though he no longer works for ’em) is Jason & The Scorchers. Why? They got that r’n’r ye ne sais quoi—a soul, an edge, the nitty and the gritty. Francis also gave character sketches of the fellers, in a nutshell:

THE SCORCHERS ACCORDIN’ TO AN EX-SOUNDMAN

(All paraphrased truths!) Well, that Jason Ringenberg’s one sincere dude, who’s real honest, warm, polite, and down to earth. A very moral guy, he’s justmarried and doesn’t fool around. Has no known fave city.

Bassist Jeff Johnson is very much the opposite: wild and uncontrollable, he’s the band’s rock ’n’ roll spirit...Likes to drink and pick up girls and travel. Voted “most promiscuous’’ Scorcher. Fave place: New York City.

Drummer Perry Baggs is real talented and sensitive: lives for love—the Scorchers’ resident romantic/smooth operator (goes for the r’n’r girls). He’s crazy in the way all drummers are crazy. Fave place: Los Angeles.

As for guitarist Warner Hodges, he’s a larger than life bonafide character, selfprofessed “staunch Republican,” and “football fanatic.” I know him as a noisecraven r’n’r animal, yet a responsible human being, and a chainsmoker. (I was most impressed by his...punctuality...). Warner has a serious girlfriend: hands off him, too! Fave place: Nashville!

THE ACTUAL PURPOSE OF THIS ARTICLE

Well, originally, I did it for the money, and then I wrote it because I like to write. Actually, I felt like giving you readers a taste of the ’80s rock life without payin’ the price (at least $3.79/lb.). Eventually, Jason & The Scorchers paid me to write this article.

Without further delay, then, here’s an exclusive interview with 25 percent of this Nashville-bassed aggregation of pinknecked maniacs.

WARNER HODGES—FANATIC

For starters, Warner Hodges looks like a football player.

“Yeah, well, I played college ball. Yeah, I went to college for three years. You’re surprised. You wouldn’t know it by looking at me. I quit college, dropped my (then) girlfriend, turned in my car and quit my job, all in the same day—a week after I met Jeff Johnson. That’s when I decided to dedicate my life to rock ’n’ roll.”

It’s been said of Warner Hodges’s guitar playing that he may not be the best guitarist in the world (though close), but he sure as hell is the hottest. One of the founding fathers of Keel, as a wee tot Warner went along on world tours with his mom and dad, who played with the likes of Lefty Frizzell and Johnny Cash.

Having myself been in bands for most of my adult (?) life, my next question to Warner comes from direct experience:

“Do the guys in the band hate each other’s guts?”

“No, we just don’t hang out as much as we used to. But that’s also because we’ve been together so goddamned long. Even as the Scorchers, we’re workin’ on our fifth year. I mean, Jeff and Perry and myself have been together 10 years now.”

BAND HISTORY SECTION (OPTIONAL)

“And then Jason come along five years ago and put the whole thing back together...” (Before Jason, Jack Emerson, Scorchers’ current manager, used to play bass, with Jeff Johnson on lead vocals, Perry Baggs on guitar, and Warner Hodges on drums! True!)

As they say in the bio, “The son of an Illinois hog farmer, Jason Ringenberg taught himself to play harmonica while roaming the tracks of the famous Rock Island Line which bordered his parents’ farm. Jason fronted several rockabilly and country bands and even played banjo in a bluegrass group before quitting his job as a railroad laborer and heading for Nashville.”

The rest, they’ll say, is history. Still, even before their illustrious career as a world-touring Capitol/EMI recording rock group with country flavoring, Jason & The Scorchers had a tough time getting signed to a record deal. Warner said Jason got mad at him “because I.R.S. Records didn’t want us; said I played too heavy metal. This was four years ago, before we got signed to EMI...And, you know, EMI passed on us quite a few times. Everybody had passed on us a few times...” So much for instant success for even the scorchingest band around in the 1980’s.

THE NEW TRADITIONALISTS AND OTHER WAYFARING STRANGERS

The likeliest place for the Scorchers to be based is Los Angeles, what with all the newfangled country punk stuff coming out of there in the past few years: Blood On The Saddle, the Knitters, the Long Ryders, Lone Justice, Dwight Yoakam (Mr. “Too Country For Nashville”). However, none of those bands have the ear splittin’ energy and gonzo revivalist edge of the (Nashville) Scorchers, or the thrill of a live J&S show. I’ve seen ’em twice, and both times they were so loud and infectious I danced my way to bleeding ears and LIKED it! Jason & The Scorchers have brought the most spunk and soul to any so-called neo-country rock hybrid since Gram Parsons and the Flying Burritos jammed with the early MC5! All this, and charisma to burn\

ELPEE NUMBER THREE

Oddly (or fittingly) enough, the Scorchers recorded basics and mixed their new Capitol/EMI LP, Still Standing, in L.A.’s Cherokee Studios, “a really cool place,” according to Warner. However, the vocals and guitar overdubs were done at Nashville’s Scruggs Sound, where the vital down-home terrorizing also took place in the spring and early summer of 1986. Also fittingly, the release date was September 17—Hank Williams, Sr.’s, birthday!

All told, Still Standing took only seven weeks to record and mix—but everything was spread out over three-and-a-half months. Jason had to take time off to get married, and then to get well after an illness, then his grandma died...

“Tom Werman produced (Cheap Trick, Motley Crue, Ted Nugent), and I was the only guy from the group who was there the whole time,” says Warner. “But I didn’t get an associate producer credit because Tom Werman doesn’t need any help.” Sorry, dude! Since the start of this album, Warner figures he’s been across the country 15 times!

Still Standing sounds more like a Scorchers’ album than a Jason album—his vocals are generally low in the mix. Yet, Jason is still the main writer and lead singer, so...you’ve gotta admit, he’s Mr. focal point. But, hey, if you want to hear an incredible hickory-smoked heavy metal record, this is one platter you can’t miss. Besides, there’s absolutely no synthesizer—Warner despises it. There are, however, some tasteful organ licks on “Good Things Come To Those Who Wait.” There’s an incredible drum and bass sound on this record—ditto for the Hodges’s guitar army, stompin’ and blitzing everything in its path. “When It All Comes Crashing Down” has more country kick than metal bite, with a beautiful, almost Byrds-esque melody on the chorus. “Shotgun Blues” has a total Led Zep intro ripoff (from “Rock & Roll”), with desperado vocals, harmonica howlings and yodelling.

TURN TO PAGE 56

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 41

The soulful acoustic ditty, “Ocean Of Doubt,” features Donald Spicer on slide guitar and Kenny Lovelace on fiddle (Jerry Lee Lewis’s band). “Ghost Town” is an angry, despairing bleater with searing leads about a guy whose life’s a ghost town without his lover. It’s also Ted Nugent’s favorite! “Ghost Town” is one of the first songs Jason’s ever co-written with partners outside the Scorchers (except to do a Dylan cover on Fervor, and a Hank Williams cover on Lost & Found), in this case D. Malloy and S. Brannan, both super-hit Nashville songwriters. Most of Still Standing’s songwriting came from Jason, but Jeff and Warner and Perry had a hand in some of it, with “a few surprises in there too.” Far be it for me to spoil a surprise! Buy the damn album yourselves and find out!

PARTING GLANCES

In pointy black cowboy boots, black jeans and a black leather jacket, longhaired Warner Hodges, Mr. Heavy Metal Spaghetti Western, walks off into the New York sunset, his spurs a scrapin’ the ground in a jingle-jangle bowlegged strut. A couple of hardhats yell: “Hey, cowboy!” Out of pride or out of deafness, he jes’ don’t hear ’em, period.