Modern Dance Meets Live Country Rock: Bowen McCauley Dance Performs to Jason and the Scorchers

By Buzz McClain

“Everyone in Nashville I mention this project to,” says Warner Hodges, “they all say: Cool.”

There might even be some envy involved, even among the coolest denizens of Music City. Not many country rock bands have, out of the blue, an award-winning modern dance company choreograph a performance piece to one of their ballads, and then give it a lush world premiere at the internationally famous Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Now that’s cool.

Guitarist Hodges and his bandmate, singer and songwriter Jason Ringenberg, are the core of Jason and the Scorchers, an influential proto-cowpunk outfit that rewrote the rules for country rock in the 1980s with their dynamic fusion of high-energy vocals and Hodges’ blistering runs on the fretboard. It’s fitting they named one of their albums “Fervor.”

The band continues to tour and has fans around the world, but until February they’d never played the vaunted John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, home of the National Symphony Orchestra. Opera and ballet, yes; hard- core, pogo-inducing country rock, not so much.

And then came the call from the Bowen McCauley Dance company in Arlington, Va. Apparently there’s a fan in the firm.

For the Scorchers’ Terrace Theater debut, the company selected the 1985 ballad “Far Behind” to set to movement as part of a program of performances called “An Evening to Love.” With a piano and violin in the orchestra pit, Ringenberg—resplendent in a red duster, red cowboy boots and with sparkles on his cowboy hat—and Hodges, most certainly the first guitarist at the Kennedy Center to wear spurs on his boots, stood slightly to the side of the stage apron and performed an acoustic version of the song as dancers Ilana Goldman and Gabriel Williams brought the languid lyrics of separation and searching to symbolic life.

Note to Nashville: Yes, it was cool.

But it was brief! The combination of earthy, lyric-driven, guitar-based live country rock and the elegant movements of the Bowen McCauley dancers, who, by the way, uncannily conveyed the small town, rustic flavor of the music, was irresistible. The appetite thusly whetted, one began to crave an entire program of Scorcher dance numbers, including a few set to the uptempo, fervor- induced songs the band has been known for since the early 1980s.

For his part, Hodges says he’s onboard should that happen: “It’d be cool.”

Buzz McClain was a music critic for the Washington Post for 10 years and did his first interview with Jason Ringenberg in 1983.