Vintage Review: Jason & the Scorchers’ Midnight Roads & Stages Seen (1988)

Nashville’s favorite sons knocked a local audience on their collective backsides last November with the two nights of performances that make up Midnight Roads & Stages Seen, the Scorchers’ first, and long overdue, live set. The band has long been a favorite in tape trader’s circles for years, with classic vintage shows from the eighties swapped on a regular basis among an international audience. With the release of this double-disc set, Scorchers’ fans across the globe finally have an authorized live set to whet their musical appetites.

Jason & the Scorchers’ Midnight Roads & Stages Seen

For most of their career, Jason & the Scorchers have delivered solid studio albums, but it’s been their live shows that have won them a hard-earned and well-deserved following among even the most hard-core rockers. Lead vocalist Jason Ringenberg’s country-inflected drawl, boundless energy and manic on-stage gyrations are matched only by guitarist supreme Warner Hodges’ razor-sharp riffs, instrumental acrobatics, and dizzying dervish pirouettes. Drummer Perry Baggs has always been a steady keeper of the beats while the latest addition to the line-up, bassist Kenny Ames, has meshed nicely with the founding members of the band. Over fifteen years of performing across the United States, Canada, Europe and even “down under” have made the Scorchers a powerful live band. The chemistry enjoyed by the guys is such that, on any given night, they’re the best rock ‘n’ roll outfit playing anywhere – a claim not many bands could make.

If you’ve seen the Scorchers play live anytime during the past couple of years – or even during the past 15 years – then you’re probably aware of what the band is capable of on-stage. If not, then Midnight Roads & Stages Seen is the album for you. Recorded at Nashville’s famous Exit/In, the 23 songs chosen from two nights of shows are a veritable catalog of the Scorchers’ “greatest hits.” Classic cuts like “White Lies,” “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” “If Money Talks” or “Broken Whisky Glass” are provided an appropriate rave-up treatment. Other more understated songs, like “Somewhere Within” (from the A Blazing Grace album) or Jason’s collaboration with Todd Snider, “This Town Isn’t Keeping You Down,” are performed live here for the first time. The energy level displayed here is astounding, with every cut carefully crafted with equal parts of loving workmanship and reckless abandon.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

If there was any justice in this world – which, as we all know, there’s not – Jason & the Scorchers would be superstars of the biggest kind. There’s seldom been a harder working group of guys in a band, nor an outfit that has managed to persevere through three record labels, bankruptcy, and a brief break-up to subsequently create some of the best music of their career, as have the Scorchers. The band’s influence on the current crop of alt-country hopefuls and young rockers is enormous. Midnight Roads & Stages Seen captures the band at the peak of their career, the Scorchers still making great rock ‘n’ roll almost two decades since the day they first played together. (Mammoth Records, released 1988)

Review originally published by Live! Music Review