Jason Ringenberg
All Over Creation
Yep Roc Records

by William Michael Smith

Through 20 years of shows and albums, Jason Ringenberg and his seminal cowpunk band The Scorchers could always be counted on for one thing. An explosion. They didn't ease into anything, bursting through the speakers on their albums just like they burst through the stage door. Like bank robbers after the alarms have been tripped and the sirens are approaching, they started everything with both guns blazing and didn't lay down their arms until all the ammunition was spent.

Even though Ringenberg's latest release isn't a Scorchers' affair (and in fact doesn't even include any Scorchers in supporting roles), old habits die hard, and Ringenberg opens All Over Creation with a rousing cowpunk blaster, "Honky Tonk Maniac From Mars." And if Scorchers' guitarist Warner Hodges is one of the edgiest if-I'm-goin'-I'm-goin'-down-in-flames guitarists ever to explode on the alt.country scene, Ringenberg has enlisted the manic, incendiary acoustic player Hamill on Trial in place of Hodges on this stomper that so typifies the Scorcher style. Leave it to the old Scorcher to see how a manic acoustic run through a Marshall stack that would do Hendrix proud fits right into his show.

He staggered out of the sky on a hot summer Saturday night
In a spaceship shaped like a bottle of rock and rye
He had a shiny metal beer keg body
And a head like a Mason jar
He was honky tonk maniac from Mars

Boy, if this was a Scorchers' review, you could almost stop right there.

But the truth is this is not a honky tonk maniac album and it bears more resemblance to the quieter side of Ringenberg's Scorcher work (like "Pray For Me, Mama, I'm A Gypsy Now") than the full-blast, burn-it-down, atomic cowpunk side. Following up the surprising success of his previous independent solo release, A Pocketful of Soul, Ringenberg has returned with a set of duets that incorporate a broad range of artists in the alt.country field and some that are completely out of the field altogether: Steve Earle, Tommy Womack, Todd Snider, Lambchop, BR-549, England's Wildhearts, and Hamill. While there are some rocky, edgy tracks, other material here is folky and traditional. Call it a mixed bag.

The duet with Earle on what has long been a Scorchers' standard, "Bible and a Gun," is certainly a standout. It is hard to imagine two less harmonious voices based on their individual work, but not only do the voices work beautifully together, Earle gives a drop-dead vocal performance. Ringenberg's previous album signaled he's capable of experimenting with what defines "traditional sounds" and producer George Bradfute's twanglin' banjo and murky cello working with Fats Kaplin's Ozark hillbilly fiddle infuse the track with the sinister sense of impending doom and futility that co-writers Ringenberg and Earle obviously intended.

Ringenberg has always had an abstract poetic lyrical streak in him, and on the rootsy twanger "Too High To See" (it's not what you think!), he and Tommy Womack catch lightning in a lyrical bottle with "You run, a flower in your gun, into the cold wishing/ Alabaster lust crumbles in the dust and leaves me here to say/ How can you love me, you're so far above me?"

While "James Dean's Car" is anything but abstract, with Todd Snider's vocals and Bradfute's surprisingly deft pop style arrangement it is the sunniest track of the set. Bradfute's bright trumpet riffs are just the touch for this fun track that is just another demonstration that Ringenberg has more musical personalities than we often give him credit for.

Scorcher fans won't have any problem getting a handle on "One Less Heartache." Recorded in London with The Wildhearts, this is power-chording, drum-pounding Scorcher standard issue. Ringenberg's duet with the Pulp Country mistress Kristi Rose pays tribute to fallen comrades from his seminal days in the music business with an eerie echoing version of Gun Club's "Mother of Earth," which he dedicates "to Richard Lancaster and all those intrepid survivors of the early 1980s." Both as a writer and performer, Ringenberg has always had a dramatic, mystical side and "Mother of Earth" is a fine example of these traits.

Ringenberg was an early supporter of BR-549 and their understated version of the Loretta Lynn's classic "Don't Come A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)," featuring Don Herron's tasty steel guitar leads, is vintage backalley hillbilly Nashville. The country funk hoedown version of Paul Burch's "Sun Don't Shine" also hits a thumpy hillbilly groove long ago shoved into the background by the commercial powers but kept alive by true believers just such as these.

The most complex track is the historical epic "Erin's Seed" Ringenberg wrote with childhood friend, historian Dr. Christopher Phillips. It explores the fate of Irish immigrants fighting on opposing sides in the Civil War. Ringenberg notes that writing the song "challenged me like I hadn't been challenged in years."

Up on the Heights of Fredricksburg two armies spent their hate
There the men of Ireland would meet the strangest fate
For across that deadly field they stood against each other
They sang songs of Ireland and drew aim on their brother

A serious student of popular music, Ringenberg ends with a poignant perspective of one of the great music towns with "The Last Train to Memphis." Bradfute's production, with layers of brooding cello and Kaplin's fiddle over the simple arrangement, gives the track the sense of drama Ringenberg's penetrating lyric deserves.

I'll take the last train to Memphis because rock it may be dying
Time to pay my last respects and do my last goodbying
I'll walk down Union Avenue and visit Jerry Lee
I'll say a prayer for Elvis and I'll say a prayer for me

A diehard Scorchers' fan, All Over Creation took some time to grow on me. Subtlety and beauty usually do. But like a smallpox vaccination, once it took hold in my bloodstream, it was there for good. Ringenberg has proven once again he's not just a pioneer and a legend, he's also a seer who tells where we are going by reminding us where we've been and what we'll need where we are going. All Over Creation may not knock us to our knees the way Fervor or Lost and Found did, but it is a work that will prove to be just as lasting, if not more so. This is Ringenberg's best solo project yet. He's still a scorcher.

I knew when he had one for the road
He was gonna go far
He was a honky tonk maniac from Mars

* Available through www.yeproc.com or at www.jasonringenberg.com

Contact William Michael Smith at: wms-at-rockzilla.net

 
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