Dixie Lullaby by Mark Kemp

Author:Mark Kemp
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FABLES, 1982–1992

We can reach our destination,

but we’re still a ways away.

—R.E.M., “Driver 8”

Chapter 8

PUNK ROCK IN COWBOY BOOTS

JASON RINGENBERG had never felt so much like a damn Yankee.

His band, Jason and the Scorchers, was playing at a club in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1982, when a redneck-looking guy in the audience started to heckle the group’s twangy punk-rock clamor and thrashing stage antics.

“He clearly didn’t like us,” Ringenberg remembered. “So Jeff, our bass player, he calls him a pussy.”

It was an easy enough comment for Jeff Johnson to make from the pulpit of a dingy bar stage, with a bass guitar strapped across his skinny body like a shield, and a mosh pit full of punk rockers backing him up. Besides, Johnson, who wore his hair in a mohawk as pink as a preppy girl’s sweater, felt qualified to call the guy a pussy. Unlike Ringenberg, Johnson was a bona-fide southerner, born and raised in Nashville. All of the guys in Jason and the Scorchers were from the South—except for Jason.

“They were punk rockers, but they were also southern boys,” said Ringenberg. “Jeff grew up in a working-class area of Nashville and went to the rough West Nashville schools. Country, southern rock—that music was in his blood.”

The redneck guy in the audience didn’t know this, of course, and didn’t care. All he knew was that the bass player with the pink hair had just called him a pussy—onstage, in front of a club full of people.

“He looked pretty mad,” Ringenberg remembered. “But we just kept going.”

In 1982, punk rock was all about confrontation. Bands would bait their audiences and the audiences would heckle back, calling them names, spitting at the stage, telling the musicians they sucked. The musicians would sometimes stop in the middle of a song to return the insults; they’d spit back, throw drumsticks and beer cans at the crowds. It was all in good fun; it was about getting out aggression.

The Scorchers were no different from any other punk band in that regard. When they performed, Ringenberg would pogo about the stage like a rockabilly ragdoll and hurl his microphone stand into the air. Guitarist Warner Hodges would stand with his legs apart, like Johnny Ramone, and bash out simple, staccato power chords and squalling leads. Occasionally, he’d leap up and do one of those midair splits, like Pete Townshend of the Who, only with less precision. His leather jacket and untamed mop of black hair made him look as much like an old-school biker as a Ramone or Sex Pistol. Drummer Perry Baggs had spiked hair, but also wore a sleeveless T-shirt with the Confederate stars and bars on it. Johnson preferred skinny ties and sport coats—and, of course, pink hair.

“In those days, we were a pretty violent band—I mean, the music was violent,” said Ringenberg. “It was a very testosterone-fueled kind of thing, mixed with all kinds of artificial chemicals. On top of that, all these different kinds of people would come to our shows—punk-rock guys, bikers, what have you.

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