From cowpunk to kid rock on the farm

WHAT made alt-country rocker Jason Ringenberg transition from singing about broken whiskey bottles to guitar-picking chickens? One long tour and three little girls.

In 2002, Ringenberg, who fronted the pioneering cowpunk band Jason and the Scorchers, was promoting a solo album and desperately missing his daughters. “I had 250 dates and was gone so much that I thought what a fun thing it would be to make a little record for them to listen to,” he says via phone from his Tennessee farm. So while in Europe he wrote a batch of songs about something else near and dear to his heart: farm life.

Born and reared on a hog farm in Sheffield, Ill., Ringenberg, 47, currently lives on a hobby farm in Bon Aqua, outside Nashville. It was natural for him to transform into “Farmer Jason” and write about critters, tractors and corn.

“I did have a personal experience with all the things that I sang about,” Ringenberg says. “It brought back a lot of childhood memories for me actually writing these songs about animals and growing corn and things like that. It took me to a pretty special place.”

He thought these fun tunes would amuse his daughters and maybe be something to sell at shows and over the Internet. But the Farmer Jason music has taken on a life of its own. Even with more than a dozen albums (either with the Scorchers or as a solo artist) to his credit, Ringenberg now is more popular in America for his children’s music than for his cowpunk -- not that he minds one bit.

“I have the coolest job in the world,” he says. “It’s been an absolute gift for me, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I know it sounds corny, but it’s true.

“You’re at this wonderful crossroads in these children’s lives, having an influence on what they do and think.”

He stocked his album “A Day at the Farm With Farmer Jason” with delightfully humorous barnyard ditties -- He’s a hog hog hog/He likes to root root root/He has a ball of mud/stuck on his snoot snoot snoot -- but he introduces these tunes with little lessons about farming, responsibility and life. It is all part of his goal of making Farmer Jason albums an entertaining experience that leaves kids a “little better people for it.”

Over the last few years, Ringenberg has performed as Farmer Jason across America, Europe and even the Shetland Islands. These shows attract new Farmer Jason fans along with parents familiar with Ringenberg’s old band and solo work. People frequently bring Farmer Jason discs with Scorchers vinyl records for him to autograph.

“There’s not a lot of difference playing to a room of loud 5-year-olds and playing to a drunk adult audience,” Ringenberg says with a laugh.

However, he has learned that performing children concerts holds some unique challenges. He no longer can stop to tune his guitar or else the kids will wander away. He also discovered that his arms can become mighty sore from all the hugs he gets and gives to the children after a show.

As he will Sunday, Ringenberg now often plays a daytime children’s show followed by a nightclub gig for adults. It isn’t rare for Farmer Jason requests to be shouted out at evening shows, and he has closed gigs with a rousing rendition of “The Tractor Goes Chug Chug Chug.” Ringenberg says in Spain his fans don’t even consider Farmer Jason songs children’s music.

Ringenberg, currently working on his second kids album, “Rocking in the Forest With Farmer Jason,” draws inspiration from being a family entertainer. Performing for children, he says, is “like being in a room of little angels; you leave these shows with hope for what humankind can be.”

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Farmer Jason

Where: McCabe’s Guitar Shop, 3101 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica

When: 11 a.m. Sunday

Price: $6

Info: (310) 828-4497

As Jason Ringenberg

Where: Molly Malone’s, 575 S. Fairfax, L.A.

When: 8:30 p.m. Sunday

Price: $5

Info: (323) 935-1577