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 Best Tracks and Side Tracks 1979 - 2007

Net Rhythms.co.uk
May 2008
by Mike Davies
 What it says on the tin, basically. A gathering of recording by Ringenberg culled from both Jason & the Scorchers and his solo releases. Except it’s not strictly the originals, since he’s reworked or remastered some of the material. Which, means it’s not cheating completists who want the rare stuff but already have everything else.

As you’ll likely know, Ringenberg’s staple musical diet is rebel rock country with gunslinger guitars, yeehaw vocals and basic good time tunes interleaved with more melancholic balladry. And it’s well served here. The Best Tracks set opens with a rework and rewrite of Scorchers classic Shop It Around which works well unlike the new slower bluegrass version of Broken Whiskey Glass with The Woodbox Gang. Along the way you get re-recording of Life Of The Party (because he couldn’t licence songs from One Foot In The Honky Tonk), and a remix of Farmer Jason’s Punk Rock Skunk. Otherwise, the rest of the disc, featuring such tracks as Steve Earle duet Bible and the Gun, Wildhearts collaboration One Less Heartache, She Hung The Moon, Born To Run (the Paul Kennerly one not Springsteen’s) and Chief Joseph’s Last Dream are all taken from the original recordings and sound, for the most, as fresh as the day they were minted.

Side Tracks is a rather more uneven proposition. Personally curated by Ringenberg, it’s a set of rarities, some of which (a rockabilly pre-Scorchers Help There’s A Fire, Who’s Gonna Feed Them Hogs?, rejected for a Tom T Hall tribute as being ‘horrid’ and the ‘eccentric’ Lovely Christmas with Kristi Rose in which he clatters a punk chorus between the crooned verses) should probably have remained so. But you do get a little more Webb Wilder for your money on the Farmer Jason meets Sam The Sham Moose On The Loose, a live honky tonk weepie version of Cappuccino Rose, a fine live radio show take cover of John Prine’s Paradise with RB Morris and Tom Roznowski sharing verses, and a hitherto unreleased The Sailor’s Eyes which ranks with the best stuff he’s ever done. Interesting, but probably not the best place for newcomers to begin.