former frontman for Jason and the Scorchers brings his solo act to Dover

“Here you go hon.”

The waitress gracefully slides a plate of eggs, sausage and white toast under your nose in one swoop, then speeds off to tend to some other hungry customers with three more plates skillfully perched along her left arm, her apron strings swinging with her hips. The toast shines with butter, the eggs with grease from the griddle. You rub the sleep from your eyes and twist your achy back slowly as you stretch. That couch wasn’t so good last night, but the coffee sure helps you feel human again. Soon enough you’re back in your car with a tummy full of grub and an eight-hour drive ahead. Your second-day, cigarette smoke-filled clothes cling a little too much to feel clean, but at least you got a shower this morning. A quick check of the map, a dial of the iPod and you’re off. Ten hours later you’re on stage in the corner of the next beery, smoky bar. The hot stage lights bathe your face in color. It feels good. You’re back in your element, and all the day’s monotony slips away. There are enough people here tonight to make some dough, maybe. Perhaps you’ll get rid of a few CDs, and if you’re lucky, gain a few new fans. Anyway, the sound is good, and there’s enough of a guarantee that you’ll sleep at the local Motel 8 tonight.

So goes the life of the independent musician on the road. Sleep, eat, drive, rock, repeat. That’s been Jason Ringenberg’s routine for more than 20 years, first with the seminal alt-country act Jason and The Scorchers, and now as a solo act (and as his alter-ego, children’s performer Farmer Jason). Friday night, May 19, Ringenberg brings his inimitable hick rock to Biddy Mulligan’s in Dover. The Digbees will join Ringenberg for a rocking set after some of his solo tunes.

“There’s no other parallel in life,” Ringenberg said of being a musician on the road. “You really are alive for the hour or two on stage.” Last year he logged 200 shows all around the globe in support of his latest solo release, “Empire Builders” for Yep Roc Records. This after more than 15 years of the same with The Scorchers. Pacing yourself with a schedule like that is important, and drive time is when Ringenberg recharges. “You can’t keep it burning all the time,” he says with a smile audible over the phone line. “I kinda shut down.”

The affable alt-country pioneer is way too humble to lay claim to being a legend, but he doesn’t have to.  Legend is what you get when you mix Ramones with Hank Williams, The Clash with Merle Haggard. Folks like Rhett Miller, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy (and especially his former band Uncle Tupelo) and X’s John Doe owe a debt of gratitude to Ringenberg and his band mates who made up Jason and The Scorchers in the 1980s and ’90s. The Scorchers were among the first to combine high energy punk rock influence with country music with incendiary results, the likes of which hadn’t been since Elvis and his contemporaries showed up with another country/rock mix called rockabilly.

“People had no idea what to make of us,” says Ringenberg of the band’s beginnings in Nashville clubs in the early 1980s. “There’s a guitarist with a Mohawk throwing bottles at the audience or sticking a cigarette in his nose, and the singer was wearing a cowboy hat. You just couldn’t help but take note of the band and what we were doing.”

One of the band’s best known songs, “White Lies,” sounds like if Paul Westerberg and his compatriots in The Replacements had taken a more country route. Guitarist Warner Hodges’ gritty and aggressive guitar cuts into a riff as Perry Baggs and Jeff Johnson lay into an up-tempo big four beat. Ringenberg’s snarling, twangy vocals are right up front. It’s classic Scorchers—straight rock ’n’ roll magic with a hillbilly twist—and quite simply it’s cathartic. Ringenberg knew they had something special the minute that lineup got into a rehearsal together.

“I did come to Nashville to do some high energy roots music, but I don’t think I had as radical a notion of it until (that lineup of The Scorchers) came together,” he says. “Once that happened, that’s when it really gelled. The walls were melting it was so intense. When we got in to the same room it was a chemical explosion.”

Years of jumping from label to label, touring and the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle took its toll on the band, and they broke up in the late ’80s in spite of widespread critical acclaim. They did re-form in the 1990s, touring behind some of their best work, but ultimately they couldn’t find a foothold in the ever fickle music industry. They were always “too country” for rock radio and “too rock ’n’ roll” for country radio.

Ringenberg didn’t sit still for long after the band’s semi-retirement in the late ’90s. He put out a few solo recordings before signing with North Carolina’s Yep Roc Records, but it was his 2003 “A Day at the Farm with Farmer Jason” CD, a collection of original children’s music that Ringenberg created for his own three children, that changed everything. Now Ringenberg splits his schedule, playing solo and Scorchers songs at the bars and clubs at night, and performing as his alter ego Farmer Jason in the mornings at libraries, schools and daycares. He couldn’t be happier.

“Actually, I think the Farmer Jason shows have much more in common with the Scorchers shows than the solo shows,” he says. “They’re rowdy! There’s not much difference between the 5-year-old crowds and shows with drunken types.”

The kids shows come with the unexpected, too, just like the Scorchers shows of old. The difference is, now most of the bottles thrown into the crowd are likely to have apple juice instead of beer.

“A few months ago I had a show in Portland, Ore., and I had little babies crawling around behind me on the stage. I had to watch where to step,” he says, chuckling. “It was a total hoot.”

Life on the road solo has also brought a new perspective.

“Everybody knows what it’s like to be in a rock band, it’s this big, organized chaos. It can be very good when you’ve really got it rockin’. Now it’s more like I’m a monk, or a priest,” he says, smiling again. “I’m traveling alone, and when I do my shows it’s like holding some sort of religious ceremony. The communication between me and the audiences is pretty intense. We’re communicating on this very fundamental level.”

Good music doesn’t grow on trees and it’s not always on the radio. The best musicians and songwriters aren’t always chatting up some plastic host on TRL. Sometimes they’re eating at greasy spoons, sleeping in crappy motels and following their muse from bar to bar around the world.