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Empire Builders Amazon.com (customer review) (five stars) September 24, 2004 Woody Guthrie is alive and well. . ., . . .in the person of a youngster named Jason Ringenberg. The local college radio station's nightly "Americana" music program featured him last week, and I ordered his new album "Empire Builder." Best cut, so far as I'm concerned, is "Rebel Flag in Germany," reflecting on the fact the Confederate battle flag has been taken up by skinheads and neoNazis who aren't allowed to flaunt swastikas. The song ends with the line "Hell, I don't even want to see that flag in Tennessee." Ringenberg, like Guthrie, has a tendency to turn pieces of American history most of us don't think about enough into songs, as with ""Tuskegee Pride" (about the Tuskegee airmen of WW II) and "Eddie Rode the Orphan Train." (If you don't know what an "orphan train" was, Google it and learn about a very dark and sad story.) Then there's "Chief Joseph's Last Dream." There's an old Merle Haggard tune ("Rainbow Stew") included on the CD, but most of them are written by Ringenberg. Even an old-fashioned love song called "She Hung the Moon Until It Died." And I'm convinced this sort of stuff is where Woody Guthrie'd be, if he were young and alive today. Electric guitars and a few weird noises and all. Great CD. Highly recommended. Only eleven cuts, but every one of `em's a ringer. Bob Sloan Rowan County, KY