It was no joke. Solo acoustic shows can be horribly dangerous. You can’t hide in the mix on an off night, can’t look to the bassman to recite filthy limericks while you fix a broken E string.

For Jason Ringenberg, formerly frontman of the notorious Jason and the Scorchers, these concerns meant about as much as did the flimsy Raider defense for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Super Bowl Sunday. Ringenberg is the real deal, well-wheeled, well-heeled and forever stuffing the vanilla compass of popular country-rock up its pimple-ridden arse. His truth is a virulence, accompanying a compassion that makes him a gold-rush mahatma of sorts to his listeners. To them, here was one of the most durable members of the old guard, still burning it down on the cutting-room floor of roadhouse confessionals.

His tireless daddy longlegs shenanigans and blue moon howls have been the inspiration of many a Schlitz-drinking lonesome heart, and he lit up the downstairs hall at Valentine’s on frozen New Scotland Avenue like a barbeque gone horribly wrong. His cannonball anabasis across the globe promoting his latest CD, aptly entitled All Over Creation, is a firefall in its own right, with collaborations with artists like Steve Earle, Swan Dive and—holy crap!—former Albany music-scene mainstay Ed Hamell. The alt-country overseer got right down to business with the product of that latter effort, “Honky Tonk Maniac From Mars,” a 4/4 extraterrestrial rodeo bomber, and we knew it was party time. For Scorchers fans, it was a gig from the heavens, right from the majestic teat of Mother Nashville’s sacred crooked bosom.

“I only had an idea of what I wanted to do for the first few songs,” Ringenberg said. “So feel free to call ’em out. I’ll play ’em.” Amid the administering of standard Scorcher classics like “Bible and a Gun,” “Greetings From Nashville” and “200 Proof Lovin’,” our man also honored requests to expose his soft white underbelly with “Somewhere Within” and “My Heart Still Stands With You.” I called out my favorite from the new disc, “One Less Heartache,” and he graciously obliged, a sweet redemptive middle-of-the-packer recorded with the Wildhearts, who are quite possibly the single most ridiculously overlooked band in the world, or as Ringenberg said, “the last of the great British rock bands.”

Ever the statesman, local favorite Michael Eck offered up his Martin to Ringenberg after joining him onstage along with Glenn Weiser for Hank Williams’ testimonial “I Saw the Light.” Soon after, in the spastic throes of “Broken Whiskey Glass,” Ringenberg inadvertently unplugged himself, threw maintenance to the breeze and leapt into the crowd—“HI-YAAAAA!”—flopping on the floor, pole vaulting onto the bar for a chicken strut and taking the crowd hostage one last time for a monster version of the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated,” egged on by swaggering patrons and surrounded by dismantled gear. If love is blind, he’s a Seeing Eye dog (and a talented one at that).

Eck opened up the show with his perennially earnest tales of love, hope and malfeasance. This guy has seen it all before but gives you the nod and wink just the same, seeking out the sardonic little anomalies beneath Americana, articulating (quite loudly, I might add) the idea that true happiness is sweetest when it’s just a little unsettling or even tinged with sadness.

College Farm kicked it down, too, as a dynamic duo comprising Big Barn Burning’s Matt Pelletier and his brother Andrew, who handled the hillbilly hollow-body while Matt gave up the ho-down on his Telecaster. The guy has a way of phrasing his runs on that thing like a fiddle, and the years have treated those crazy fingers well indeed. It’s the kind of act you wanna see with amps and a grouchy drummer in tow, while you stomp your feet and triumphantly hurl behind the cider press.

Mentioned earlier, blues aficionado Glenn Weiser served up a timeless batch of blues, bluegrass and string-band standards, all the while showboating a downright alarming collection of harmonicas. They came in the sort of hardshell case normally reserved for explosive materials, which is, of course, OK by me. The popular instructor and writer just kind of sat and smiled and flawlessly did his thing. It was no joke.