On the eve of a UK tour by the legendary Ringenberg, THE Jason of Jason & The Scorchers, it’s heartening to hear this latest album from him and even more heartening to report that it is a humdinger. It fairly zips along with typical pizzazz, country, folk, and punk licks all rolled into little balls of fire with his familiar voice at the helm. What’s not so heartening is the revelation in the liner notes that Ringenberg had resigned himself to never recording again in this “internet driven music world.” His ennui was dispelled when he was given the opportunity to be artist in residence at Sequoia National Park in California. He spent a month in the wilderness, dwarfed by the arboreal giants, tracked by bears, and found songs tumbling out of him. Energised, he returned to his own roots in Southern Illinois and recorded most of this album with chums he’d played with back in his college days there before finally completing it in Nashville.
The album opens with a tune obviously indebted to his month in the wilderness, the wonderfully cinematic instrumental Stand Tall. It’s music for a western movie with Morricone and Tiomkin like splendour, banjo, fiddle and twangy guitar battling it out with a horn section over a galloping beat. The splendour of the sequoias informs the gentle folky rhythms of Here In The Sequoias with Ringenberg saluting the majesty and tranquillity of these giants while John Muir Stood Here is a scorcher (sorry) of a song which commemorates the famous Scottish naturalist who kick-started nature conservation in the States.
Elsewhere Ringenberg tears through some cracking country rock as on Looking Back Blues with its searing pedal steel and Almost Enough, a song written by an old Illinois comrade, Hugh Deneal, while Many Happy Hangovers To You is a wonderfully loose-limbed confection with squirreling guitars and pedal steel driving the song along. In a gentler mood, he turns in a fine reading of Jimmy Rogers’ Hobo Bill’s Last Lament while Dylan’s Farewell Angelina closes the album. He recalls his own past when supporting The Ramones on a tour back in 1983 on God Bless The Ramones, a punk infused blast with some scorching (sorry again) lap steel playing while the excellent John The Baptist Was A Real Humdinger basically recasts the hapless water dunker as a wild west hero. Overall, we should be grateful to those sequoias for inspiring the man to record again as Stand Tall is an excellent album.
Jason Ringenberg is touring the UK in March including a Glasgow show on 28th, all dates here.
