Jason and the Scorchers - Lost Highway / Take Me Home Country Roads

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The last two songs of Perryfest, the benefit reunion of Jason and the Scorchers at the Exit/In in Nashville on June 2, 2007 for Perry Baggs.

This second video is the end of the show. By now, the band has been playing for well over three hours. If you know anything about Jason and the Scorchers, you know that the energy of their live shows took a back seat to no one. If Warner wasn't pinwheeling in multiple 360s with his guitar parallel to the ground, he was throwing it over his shoulder, catching it again to play, and then kicking his boots to prowl his area. Jason was a leaping, swirling, careening mass of elbows and knees and boots and that hat, circled by a mic cable, a singing dervish who moved in perfect counterpoint to Warner's spinning.

They'd kept up this pace for 3+ hours, not just a song here and there. Past members of the band joined in for stretches - Kenny Ames, Ken Fox, Pontus Snibb, and Fenner Castner - but the most astonishing part of the story was that Perry was out there for the lion's share of the show. If he wasn't behind the kit he was to the side singing, sometimes playing guitar but he was there, rail-thin but enjoying every moment and finding a way to channel all the love in the room into a will that would not be denied.

At the beginning of this clip Perry takes over the kit from Fenner for what was the last in a long line of encores, 'Lost Highway.' By now it's steaming on toward 2am and the delirious energy has started to consume itself. They've left it all on the stage this night, and they say their goodbyes and thank yous to the audience.

But Perry won't leave. The stage is clear, but Perry is back behind the kit, pounding away. He knows what's going on - we all know what's going on, this is very likely the last time he'll ever play drums with Jason and the Scorchers and he's not letting it go, not yet. He keeps pounding, calling out the band. "Where y'at? Where y'at?" he scolds, until they come back for one more, one last grabbing of the rail to ride that jolt as long as possible.

After this last song, the band filtered out into the club to sign autographs and greet friends. Jason was so spent he had to excuse himself and sit at a table before he passed out from exhaustion. Warner's clothes were sweated through, and the others had that wide-eyed stare that was a mix of exhiliration, disbelief and bone-weary fatigue, almost as if they'd weathered a hurricane and came out survivors. Perry was laid out in a hospital bed backstage for 45 minutes before he was able to speak to anyone.

That display of a sheer force of will, how Perry took what the audience was giving and lit a fire inside strong enough to conquer the effects of his illness for those hours was something I'll never forget.