Ringenberg is the man with the most history here: the leader of ground-breaking cowpunk band Jason & The Scorchers, torch bearers for a movement in the early 1980s that fragmented when record companies discovered the music wouldn't sell in sufficient amounts to keep the accountants satisfied. Hence the red pen scrawl through Ringenberg's name, casting him out of the loop. Yet here he is - tall, rangy and Quaker-like, looking not as beefy as he once did, curiously thinning instead of thickening as the years go by.
As he tells it, he more or less gave up on the music lark, settling down, buying a farm, getting married, having kids and investing whatever money he had into setting up his own record label, the paradoxically-titled Courageous Chicken. Issues of a more personal nature may have entered his life, but you'll be pleased to hear that his passion remains as clear, potent and direct as a rabbit punch to the solar plexus. Helped out occasionally by a small coterie of his Nashville mates, Ringenberg barely manages to restrain himself from kicking over the monitors, amps and sound equipment, locking into the transcendent moment of the song as if nothing else on earth mattered. Which, of course, it didn't.
His songs range from complaints of social injustice (The Price Of Progress) to the heartbreak of infidelity (The Life Of The Party Is Killing Me). Covers range from Hank Williams (You Win Again) to Bob Dylan (Absolutely Sweet Marie). A song he had written the morning after his arrival in Kilkenny was aired, the words on paper taped to the mic stand - Erin Seed, a narrative about Irish famine emigrants fighting against each other in the US Civil War. It was exactly like the man himself: genuine, humble, emotional, clearly close to God.
At the close, he and his friends joined together to blast out another cover - a thoroughly sloppy but great version of The Band's The Weight. "It doesn't get much better than this," prefaced Ringenberg before surging into the song. No one in the room could disagree.
