Jason & the Scorchers Benefit Show for Perry Baggs

Legendary Nashville rockers Jason & the Scorchers will reunite for one night in June, a benefit show for the band's drummer Perry Baggs. The show will take place at Nashville's world-famous Exit In club (www.exitin.com) on Saturday night, June 2nd. Baggs has suffered from diabetes for years and is currently in need of a kidney transplant. All profits realized by the show will be used to defray some of Baggs' mounting medical costs.

Baggs plans on performing at the show, with Fenner Castner, the Scorchers' drummer since 2002, picking up the slack. Former band members Andy York, Ken Fox and Jeff Johnson will also appear at the benefit. Singer/songwriter Stace England, from Illinois, will open for the Scorchers. The show will start promptly at 8:30 PM and the Scorchers will perform two sets.

Jason & the Nashville Scorchers were formed in 1981 when Jason Ringenberg, the son of an Illinois hog farmer, moved to Nashville fresh out of college. With guitar in hand and an itch to form a rock & roll band, Ringenberg subsequently met Jack Emerson and Perry Baggs, the original bassist and drummer for the band. Realizing the band's potential and knowing that he wasn't much of a musician himself, Emerson became the Scorchers' manager, and Baggs recruited guitarist Warner Hodges and bassist Jeff Johnson from local Nashville rock band the Electric Boys.

Together the foursome would record a four-song 7" EP, Reckless Country Soul, in 1982 for Emerson's independent Praxis Records label. Gigging around the Southeast, the band built up a loyal following, and released Fervor, a six-song 12" EP, on Praxis the following year. The critical acclaim heaped upon Fervor, along with the buzz building around the band's dynamic live performances, prompted EMI America to sign the band in 1984. EMI dropped the "Nashville" from the band's name, lest they sound too regional, and subsequently reissued Fervor, adding a red hot cover of Bob Dylan's "Absolutely Sweet Marie" to the EP.

Jason & the Scorchers would record two more albums for EMI - Lost & Found in 1985, which yielded college radio hits in the songs "White Lies" and "If Money Talks;" and Still Standing in 1986, which featured a blistering cover of the Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown." For all the positive press the band had received, neither album sold well and EMI dropped the Scorchers from the label. Johnson left shortly afterwards to pursue a career in photography. The Scorchers added guitarist Andy York and bassist Ken Fox to the line-up and recorded Thunder & Fire for A&M Records in 1989. The album was under-promoted and the band worn out from too many miles on the road and so a year later, as Hodges later said, "we didn't break up, we fell apart."

Fast forward a couple of years, to EMI America's 1992 release of the Essential Jason And The Scorchers compilation. Pairing Fervor with the band's debut, Lost & Found for the first time on CD, the label hoped to recoup some of its investment in the Scorchers. Hearing the CD, Jeff Johnson thought "why can't we benefit from this" and badgered the other original members into a series of reunion shows. The shows went so well that the band starting writing songs, eventually recording A Blazing Grace, released in 1995 by Mammoth Records. During the band's absence, alt-country and roots-rock had begun to edge into the mainstream, led by bands like Uncle Tupelo that were influenced by the Scorchers' original high-octane mix of honky-tonk country and hard rock played with punkish attitude and energy.

The Scorchers followed up A Blazing Grace in 1996 with Clear Impetuous Morning for Mammoth, and Johnson left the band again in '97, retiring from the music business for good. The Scorchers added Kenny Ames to the band's ranks and finally delivered the live album demanded by fans since the band's inception. Midnight Roads & Stages Seen, a two-CD release by Mammoth, was recorded over two rowdy nights in November 1997 at Nashville's Exit In, and featured material from the band's 15 years together.

Entering the new millennium, members of the Scorchers pursued individual projects. Vocalist Jason Ringenberg has released a number of acclaimed solo albums; guitarist Warner Hodges formed the Disciples Of Loud with Nashville rocker Todd "Toddzilla" Austin, bassist Riq Lazarus and drummer Fenner Castner, and also plays guitar with singer Stacie Collins' band. Kenny Ames played for a while with Louisiana's Dash Rip Rock and Perry Baggs has been writing songs and performing in Nashville area clubs.

In a statement about the show on his web site, frontman Jason Ringenberg states, "this will be a benefit concert, with all profits earmarked to help pay the medical expenses for Perry Baggs. Perry is courageously fighting diabetes and kidney failure, and is on dialysis three days a week. He is the original Scorchers' drummer, harmony singer, and songwriter of some of the band's biggest songs. His courage in the face of his illnesses is a great inspiration to many in the Nashville music community, as well as other diabetes and dialysis patients."

Warner Hodges will also perform with Stacie Collins in a benefit show for Baggs on Friday night, June 1st at the Exit In, along with special guests to be named later.