Call a rocker a farmer and you could have a fight on your hands. But for the former leader of Jason & the Scorchers, Jason Ringenberg, Farmer Jason is not just a compliment, it’s also an accurate description of his new lifestyle — and even his new sound.
Since becoming a father, Ringenberg has left his blazing country/punk past behind. The Scorchers preceded the alt.country movement in 1981 when Jason and his trio of hell-billy rebels put out a version of Dylan’s “Absolutely Sweet Marie” that sounded like an outtake from the Stones’ Exile on Main Street. Jason and the Scorchers created blistering, hard rock-tinged country that rocked the industry. Radio, however, wouldn’t play it, and clubs wouldn’t hire them because the music was ahead of its time. The band broke up in ’89, coming back in ’94 with A Blazing Grace, which featured a hell-bent version of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
But around ’02, the band was winding down again until Jason put out All Over Creation, which featured duets with Steve Earle, BR-549 and Lambchop.
“When I started that tour, it was dicey whether I was even in the music business or not,” Ringenberg said from Nashville, where he’s at work on his next record, Empire Builders, due out September 7. “And that record sort of changed a lot of things for me.”
The band toured Europe seven times, as well as the US and Canada, on the strength of the record. But the singer, who has three children, worried that his kids didn’t see him much.
“So I thought if I’m going to tour like this, the kids ought to have a CD they can listen to. I just made it to sell at shows and give to my friends. And it’s taken on a life of its own.”
A Day At the Farm with Farmer Jason is an album of children’s songs, but it’s not typical Barney fluff.
“We really tried on this record to not be insipid and annoying, which is so common with children’s music,” Ringenberg said. “We wanted a record that adults would like, too. And so in the lyrics and in the songwriting, I try to do that, and more particularly in the musicianship. We have some pretty good playing on this record for adults to listen to and go, “Wow, that’s a pretty cool lick.'”
Asked what rock & roll has taught him about dealing with children gets a big laugh.
“A lot of rock and rollers are children,” he says. “But I guess that’s about all I better say about that.”
These days Ringenberg wears two hats, his straw head-cover and a folkier one for his solo work. But lately he’s taken to mixing the music. “”The Guitar Pickin’ Chicken’ always works on my adult show,” the singer laughs. “The Tractor Goes Chug, Chug, Chug” is a frequent adult request as well for its call-and-response part, where the singer says “John Deere” and the audience hollers back “Deer!”
“In Belgium, they all yelled out BEER back at me — a great moment in Jason Ringenberg’s life,” he chuckles.
The record has been praised both by family-oriented organizations and the press for its forthright, no-nonsense approach to children’s entertainment. Farmer Jason knows of what he speaks; raised on a hog farm in Southern Illinois, he now lives on a farm in Nashville.
Even his kids approve of the new persona. His two younger daughters took to the Farmer stuff right away, but his 13-year-old now has a whole different attitude about the music. “Before this (record), Dad was really uncool,” says Farmer J. “But the fact that I’m not competing with the Backstreet Boys or trying to be a pop singer, that I’m doing something completely different, she thinks is really cool.”
And for those hung up on the past, Ringenberg won’t rule out a Scorcher revival. “We’re still together, still play a few shows, and do a few festivals when people offer us more money than we can turn down. But if anyone wants to see the band again and hears of a show, you better go see “em,” he laughs.
Jason Ringenberg performs two shows at the Evening Muse on March 14 — one at 3pm as Farmer Jason and another at 9pm as Jason Ringenberg.
This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2004.
