It's circa ’82, in a small zydeco club called The Boulevard in Beaumont Texas not
far from the Louisiana/Texas state line. Austin blues impresario Clifford
Antone, (who discovered Stevie Ray & Jimmie Vaughan, Charlie Sexton, Doyle
Bramhall Sr. & Jr. & just about every other guitar player from Austin),
has made a special trip from his own venue, Antone’s Blues Club, along with his
bodyguard Sugar Bear, to see a very young Jesse Dayton play. "Who the hell
is this kid? He can play it all, country, blues, zydeco!" he tells the
club owner. Clifford walks to the stage, pulls out a napkin with his number
written on it and tells young Dayton he has an open invitation to come to Austin
and play at Antone’s. Sure, there we're small country & western gigs at the
State Fair, mandatory family piano lessons, a few private parties for kids and
Shriners, but the invite from Clifford Antone is how it all started for Jesse Dayton
and he's been playing live ever since.
Today, Dayton’s pedigree is not only impressive, but varied, to
say the least. He played all of the lead guitar on Waylon Jennings record Right For The Time and on Ray Prices'
record Prisoner of Love. He’s also
recorded with Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Johnny Bush and played live with
Kris Kristofferson. Dayton played the lead parts alongside his personal hero
Glen Campbell, right after Campbell was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. His
exploits are not solely within the country genre either, Dayton has jokingly declared
onstage, "The Clash & X saved me from going to Foghat
concerts!" So it's not surprising
that he ended up playing guitar on the Supersuckers biggest selling record Must've Been High, which frontman Eddie
Spaghetti admits was directly influenced by Dayton himself. Dayton ended up
producing and playing all of the guitars on Eddie's solo record, The Value of Nothing and also appears on
the new Supersuckers record Get The Hell.
After touring with Mike Ness from Social Distortion, then playing with punk
icon John Doe from the band X, (the two appeared on David Letterman), Dayton
got the call to play guitar for X on the bands entire North American Tour,
filling in for Billy Zoom while he was in cancer treatment.
A lot has happened since Dayton’s first solo record, Raisin’ Cain, was released in ’95 and went to #1
on the Americana charts. He followed that success with soundtracks for Rob
Zombie’s films The Devils Rejects, Halloween 2 (in which Dayton played the
part of Captain Clegg) and Zombie’s animated film The Haunted World of El Super Beasto. Dayton used that experience
to write and direct his own feature film called Zombex, starring Malcolm McDowell, Lew Temple, (Walking Dead), and
Sid Haig. The “zombies take New Orleans”
horror film was picked up for distribution by Barnholtz Entertainment and now
has a worldwide cult film following. Dayton says, "after directing Zombex and making a little money, I
ran as fast as I could back into the arms of the music business!"
His new record, The Revealer, is a
barn burner gumbo of country, blues and punk, all mixed together into what
would now be called Americana. Produced by John Evans and engineered by Steve
Christiansen at the legendary Sugar Hill Studios in Houston. It was quite a homecoming for Dayton,
returning to the Houston studio where he did his first recording session there
at 18 years old, playing on a session for hit producer Huey P. Meaux with a
zydeco band.
Returning to the recording studio, Dayton brought what he calls,
"my best batch of tunes yet.” Dayton, along with Evans and Christiansen,
recorded the majority of the record live. "You could feel the ghost of
George Jones, Freddy Fender, Doug Sahm & Jerry Lee Lewis (who recorded
there with producer Huey Meaux), in the room while we were working!" Dayton
says, "I wanted to get great live root-sy sounds, like the records I loved
growing up, but with a real Texas songwriter, story-telling, approach to
the lyrics." Dayton has certainly gone back to those roots, that
Texas/Louisiana border feel, with The
Revealer. His latest album starts with a bang titled "Daddy Was A
Badass" a driving piece recalling about the hard charging life of own
father and uncles. This opening track explains a whole hell of a lot about who
Jesse Dayton is and why he sounds so different from the current wave of
Americana artists. The songs are personal, about his family and where he's
from. Never opting for the typical lyrics, you can hear Dayton is a big
Bob Dylan & Townes Van Zandt fan. There will be no writing about
pink Cadillacs & poodle skirts. "It
seems like most of the retro stuff I hear these days,” Dayton explains, “is
very paint by numbers, not personal or vulnerable. I love what Dylan did on a
few of his later records, where he would do a smokin' R&B or country song,
but with real story lyrics." The
Beaumont native, turned Austin-ite also says, "this record is more
guitar-centric, more stripped down and all about my guitar playing; very little
piano or any other instruments". Collaboration can be the key to many success
stories, so to here on The Revealer. On
one of those tunes, "Three Pecker Goat” Dayton co-wrote it with longtime
friend and Americana star Hayes Carll and later, he duets on "Match Made
In Heaven" with Austin songbird Brennan Leigh.
Dayton’s upcoming tour schedule is insane. He just finished
performing aboard the "The Outlaw Country Cruise" with Lucinda
Williams, The Mavericks and Steve Earle. Dayton’s music was such a hit, he's
already been asked back for the next cruise. His tour dates go non-stop into
next year. Come on out and listen to
this tall Texan take you on a zydeco-flavored trip through his musical mind,
you will not be disappointed!