(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

Jason Ringenberg (originally from Illinois) was one of the protagonists of the "cow-punk" movement in the 1980s. His band, Jason & The Scorchers, infested the saloons of Nashville, the home of country music, with the attitude of the rowdiest punk bands.

The trilogy consisting of the EP Reckless Country Soul (Praxis, 1982), featuring Reckless Country Soul and Pray For Me Momma, the EP Fervor (Praxis, 1983), and the album Lost & Found (EMI, 1985) stands as a milestone of the genre. The music is as rough as it is fierce, as bold as it is cynical.

Lost And Found (EMI, 1985) marked the band’s peak of wild spectacle. Jason and guitarist Warner Hodges applied punk radicalism to the honky-tonk tradition much like the New York Dolls had done with Merseybeat, forging breakneck thrash-boogie (If Money Talks) with peaks of cannibalistic rock and roll (Broken Whiskey Glass, Change The Tune). Jason sings like a Buddy Holly immersed in the pop-core of Husker Du (Last Time Around and especially the martial chorus of White Lies), yet is also capable of stretching into country-and-western elegies at a Celtic quadrille pace (Blanket Of Sorrow) and even merging Dylan-esque folk-rock with psychedelic rock (Shop It Around). Jason makes the Californian cowpunk bands seem trivial, infusing his sound with the raw, wild spirit of true rural music.

The second album, Still Standing (1986), drew them closer to more conventional heavy metal, but still delivered two highlights: Shotgun Blues and Ghost Town. Thunder And Fire (A&M, 1989) is a tired and haphazard work. The band dissolved shortly afterward. Ringenberg, whether drugged or deranged, even attempted to record a solo country album: One Foot In The Honky Tonk (Liberty, 1992).

Il quartetto originale si ricompose qualche anno dopo e sorprendentemente A Blazing Grace (Mammoth, 1995) e Clear Impetuous Morning (Mammoth, 1996) continuarono l'eroica cavalcata, il primo carico di tensione rozza e blasfema come ai bei tempi (Cry By Night Operator, Why Baby Why, One More Day Of The Weekend, Hell's Gates, American Legion Party), il secondo forte di Everything Has A Cost (con Emmylou Harris al controcanto) e dell'orecchiabile To Feel No Love, oltre che delle solite scorribande ubriache (Self Sabotage).

Il live Midnight Roads & Stages Seen (Mammoth, 1998) ha suggellato la maturita` di questa banda di irreducibili punk, esaltando vecchie canzoni come Harvest Moon e If You've Got the Love.