Jason Ringenberg - Demolishing Stages & Storming Barns since 1978

With the forthcoming release of his memoir Both Sides of the Line, Jason Ringenberg establishes beyond doubt that he is one of the defining recording artists and performers of his generation. Published by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in partnership with the University of Illinois Press, the book has been lauded for its authenticity and honesty. Giving details and insights never shared in public, Ringenberg tells of his musical odyssey from his boyhood on an Illinois hog farm to his present reign as “The Godfather of Americana,” according to Mojo.

Ringenberg lived an almost mythical life from the start. He was Americana before there was a name for it. He taught himself harmonica while listening to the trains roll by on the Rock Island Line, which bordered the family hog farm. He spent his teenage summers working on a railroad tie gang and his winters as a guide at a hunting club. Music was his guiding passion and he spent every spare minute learning the art of music creation and performance.

He started as a folkie singer-songwriter modeled after his hero, Bob Dylan. Ringenberg started playing rock ‘n’ roll with his first college covers band, Shakespeare’s Riot, then a neo-rockabilly outfit called The Catalinas, both based in Carbondale, Illinois. Ringenberg loosely attended college at Southern Illinois University there.

In 1981, he realized he had taken his music journey in Illinois as far as it could go. He loaded his 1971 Ford Econoline and headed to that music Mecca, Nashville, Tennessee. He’d never set boots in the town and didn’t know a soul there. Still, he jumped in feet first, jamming at every dive or party that would let him have the mic. Within months, he launched Jason & The Nashville Scorchers and never looked back. Widely considered one of the most influential Americana/Outlaw Country bands in history, Jason & The Scorchers tore up stages all over the planet. One UK journalist called their 1984 show at The London Marquee “one of the Top 5 gigs of all time.” The band would eventually make eight studio albums, with 1984’s Fervor and 1985’s Lost and Found generally considered Americana classics. Rolling Stone said, “Jason & The Scorchers singlehandedly redefined rock ‘n’ roll in the South in the 1980s.”  Two decades later, the Americana Music Association gave the band the Lifetime Achievement Award for Performance.

Ringenberg started his enduring solo career in 1992. He began with Capitol Nashville and then went completely independent in 2000 with his landmark acoustic album, A Pocketful of Soul, which the Associated Press named Record of the Year. Two more solo albums, All Over Creation (2002) and Empire Builders (2004), firmly established Jason as a bona fide singer-songwriter; a fearless performer, his solo shows still rocked, even with one acoustic guitar.

Around that time, Ringenberg created an “identical twin brother” called Farmer Jason, a children’s music character. This earned him several nominations and one Emmy Award for his PBS video program called It's a Farmer Jason!  His Rockin’ in the Forest with Farmer Jason album won the coveted Parents' Choice Award.  The Farmer Jason duets album Nature Jams  contained guests ranging from Brandi Carlile to Todd Snider. Grass doesn’t grow under this singer’s feet: he developed a unique touring system of performing Farmer Jason kids shows in the day and Jason Ringenberg club shows at night.

In 2015 Ringenberg co-created Victory Road, a dance program using Jason & The Scorchers songs. Developed with producer Lucy Bowen, the program played at The Kennedy Center, then toured the country in several performing arts centers. Ringenberg and Scorchers guitarist Warner Hodges played the dance soundtrack live at those shows.

In 2016 Ringenberg was asked to be the artist in residence for a month at Sequoia National Park. His role was to perform concerts in the campgrounds and write songs about the experience. His cabin housed a family of possums that stole his food every night. He regularly explored the Sierra Nevada mountains and Sequoia groves. Songs poured out of him. Those became the foundations of two albums: Stand Tall (2018) and Rhinestoned (2020). No Depression said, “He’s an expert at going straight to our hearts with a lyric wrapped in a tune so danceable that the words linger long after the song’s finished.”  

Closing out a productive run of Jason Ringenberg records, in 2024 he released a UK album of duets with Victoria Liedtke, using songs by Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, called More Than Words Can Tell.  Uncut named the album Americana Record of the Month.

With all that to consider, his new book Both Sides of the Line dives deeply into Ringenberg’s life story. It pulls no punches. He tells the story with honesty and truth, often admitting his own mistakes and regrets, as well as illuminating the enormous highs of being a performer. The reader learns the inside story of what Jason says it is to “ride the bucking bull that is the music business.” The book contains more than 150 photos from Ringenberg's own archive, some never before seen, as well as an extensive index of many artists with whom Ringenberg shared the stage. Steve Earle wrote the foreword. Enthusiastic early readers include Peter Buck from R.E.M., who said, “Jason's new book is a great read, a musical memoir chronicling the times he lived.” And well-known Norwegian author Jo Nesbø proclaimed, “There are artists whose importance only becomes clear with time. Jason Ringenberg is one of those artists.”

October 2026

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