Jason & The Scorchers

In early March I had the opportunity to talk to the legendary Jason Ringenberg at his home in the quaintly named Bon Aqua, Tennessee about the launch of HALCYON TIMES; the first studio album from Jason and the Scorchers since 1996. Bearing in Jason has a successful solo career and Warner E Hodges has been filling his time in playing for some pretty hot bands; whose idea was it to go back into the studio as Jason & the Scorchers? I enquired.
“Mostly Warner’s; he’s been nagging me for a couple of years—when ever we’d meet up at gigs or at Awards Ceremonies—he’d keep telling me that the Scorchers still had ‘one great album left in us.’ I was less sure; basically because we never really sold a lot of albums in the first place! Plus, we were both busy with our other projects; Warner had been playing and recording with Stacie Collins and Dan Baird and I’ve been writing and touring on my own, and there was also my Farmer Jason TV programme, taking up a lot of time; so I took some convincing. The Scorchers had never really split up; just evolved over the years to tour occasionally and play Awards Ceremonies where we keep receiving Life Time Achievement prizes!”
“This version of the Scorchers has been pretty solid for a couple of years now; Warner had been playing alongside Al Collins in the Stacie Collins Band and he first joined the Scorchers in 2008 after Kenny Ames left. I liked him straight away. Warner introduced him as a guy that ‘got’ the older records and appreciated Jason and the Scorchers place in the Rock hierarchy [JR chuckled]; plus he’s a monster bass player! Soon after he joined we were preparing for a tour of Europe and a friend introduced us to Swedish drummer called Pontus Snibb and he fits in like a dream. Al and Pontus give us an energy and drive that we haven’t had since the early days.”