The Tim “Napalm” Stegall Substack Interview: Jesse Dayton, Part One

Punk blues, Grammy grins, and a country backlash. And one of the most outspoken and honest hombres around.

Jesse Dayton and Your Humble Host at SXSW a few years back, after seeing the always amazing Joan Jett! (pic: Emily Kaye)

Jesse Dayton, the Austin-by-way–of-Beaumont honky tonk hero making waves with a blues record with Samantha Fish, the Jon Spencer-produced Death Wish Blues, has no choice to be true his own damned self. Or rather, “He’s so freakin’ true to his Telecaster soul  that the Ernie Balls practically vibrate with his honesty.”

He’s never been some Nashville-flavored, rhinestone-encrusted caricature, though I do believe he has a Nudie suit or two in his closet. This is Texas lightning in a pair of Noconas. But having seen The Clash as a kid, and worked with Mike Ness, The Supersuckers, John Doe, and stood in for Billy Zoom on an X tour? His inner punk rocker’s about 10 ft. tall. He's been pogoing to his own outlaw beat since Waylon Jennings was still singing about outlaws livin' in mansions.

His style of honky-tonkin’ comes from a genuine place. Following the demise of his modern-day rockabilly band The Road Kings, he learned the craft of playing real country music backing the masters – Waylon, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Ray Price. He spent years making boots scoot to traditional Texas honky tonk at The Broken Spoke every Thursday night, until he felt straight-jacketed by the demands of the genre. So he left the cushy weekly gig, assembled a hard-driving three-piece, started his own label and hit the road 300-nights-a-year all over the world. And built a hardcore international fanbase for his 21st century outlaw sound.

He follows his creativity wherever it takes him. He always wanted to make a horror film, so he made one, Zombex. He wrote a semi-memoir a few years ago, Beaumonster, because someone at Hatchette Books liked his frequent, brutally honest Facebook rants on politics that pissed-off the Trump-loving elements of his fanbase. When he made a covers album a few years ago, Mixtape Volume 1, there wasn’t a lick of C&W on it, save for some of the arrangements and his molasses-thick Golden Triangle drawl. But there were versions of songs by The Clash, Dr. Feelgood and ZZ Top. (There also was, unfortunately, a Gordon Lightfoot cover that still grinds my damned gears!)

Now comes Death Wish Blues. It’s a sexy damned record, full of sweat and funk and contempo garage magic. And Jesse’s letting his inner Albert King wail. It’s netted him and Samantha a Grammy nomination, for Best Contemporary Blues Album, and taken him to the festival circuit, playing for thousands. At the time of this interview, August 2, 2023, the album sat at Number One on Billboard’s Blues Charts. For three weeks.

For all his troubles, his old trad-country fans are not terribly thrilled with him.

He’s unfairly getting deemed a sellout, a genre-hopper, a traitor to the twang. He needs this like he needs his spleen pulled out via a hole drilled in his side, minus anesthetic. Hence this reason to let Jesse’s tongue loose. Not that he needs any reason to advise us what is exactly on his mind. He's always got something to say, and it’s never a slow ballad sung by candlelight. Anything he says comes straight from the soul of a man unafraid to piss off a few folks if it means playing the music or stating the truths that burn in his bones.

So buckle up, brethren and sistren. We're about to get schooled in the gospel of Jesse Dayton, where the blues bleeds into country, punk rock throws a haymaker, and honesty kicks down the saloon doors. Hold onto your hats, 'cause this ain't your average country interview. This is a Texas-fried truth bomb, and Jesse Dayton's the fuse.

(NOTE: Normally, this would be behind the paywall. This installment is open to the public, to see the kinda informative and action-packed writing you get as a paying subscriber to The Tim “Napalm” Stegall Substack. Please consider a paid subscription, or upgrading from your free sub, as Christmas gift to yourself now, while we’re taking 20% off both paid or monthly subs for life! )

JESSE:  We’ll just wing it, like we always do everything else.

TIM: (chuckling) Yeah. We've gotten to be pros at this shit now, haven't we Jesse?

JESSE: Every time I walk off stage, I'll think to myself what Johnny Bush used to tell me: “We fooled them again.” You know, here's this guy with this beautiful, operatic voice, next-level Ray Price voice. And he's joking about it.

TIM: Well, it seems like all the greats were definitely self-deprecating about their own talents. 

JESSE: Yeah, I think there's a lot to that. I think you can see when people are kind of forcing it. You can kind of feel when people are forcing that self-deprecation. And when people really feel it, you know. You always felt like there were a few guys that really meant that. 

TIM: Yeah, but you've always had a certain boisterousness. You know what you can do, and you're not afraid to say so. 

JESSE: I'm not afraid to say so, no. I do also think I'm kind of an easy target, too. Because after a while, how long can the charade keep going? After you get to a certain age, you're like, “Well, I must be good at this. They're still inviting me to the reindeer games.” I wasn't always like that. When I was a kid playing in The Road Kings in Houston, I was very self-conscious and hot and confident and all that stuff. But that was what was cool about having punk rock to kind of lean on a little bit. Not that we were punk rock, but we all loved that music and we were all still listening to it daily in the road gigs.

TIM:  Well it's part of your DNA. It's one of the reasons you and I connected. It's like today, earlier in the day I interviewed Joey Shithead from DOA. [NOTE: That one will begin running next week, faithful ‘Stackers! – TIM] Now I'm interviewing you. That makes sense. That says a lot about what Tim does.

JESSE: Yeah, isn't that funny? So true. It's like the second gig I ever played with Samantha Fish, we played at the Whiskey a Go-Go in Hollywood on Sunset Strip, no pressure, Second gig ever. And Joe Bonamassa came out to see Samantha, and Glenn Danzig came out to see me. So, you talk about a weird backstage dressing room. But it all kind of makes sense. I think I look at it like that old show business kind of thing, where a lot of different people are put together on talk shows and stuff like that. You know, if you were riding around with Waylon in his car in the early ‘90s, he was probably listening to either Dire Straits or a soul singer. It's never what people think. He wasn't driving around listening to Hank Williams Sr. the whole day.

You know what I mean? I think there's something to all that. I don't really know what we're talking about right now, but I think it's awesome. Because what we're talking about is almost as ambiguous as the subjects we're trying to slate in there. And there's just something to that in terms of different music styles connecting. 

TIM: I was thinking about a certain famous anecdote about somebody I know you and I both love, Buck Owens. You might remember, I think it was about 1965-66, he published a full page ad in some country music magazine saying, “I will never write a song that isn't country music. I will never perform a song that isn't country music. I will always be faithful to country radio,” or whatever. Then the next day, he puts out a cover of “Memphis” by Chuck Berry. That strikes me as something that you would do, Jesse.

JESSE: (laughing) Well, I guess thank you. But it's funny, I have these bootleg recordings of Waylon in Phoenix when he was playing with the three-piece band. He's playing guitar. He just had a bass and a drummer. And they're playing at a place called JD's in Phoenix, and he does like six Chuck Berry covers on it. I mean, like a lot. And you're like, “Whoa! This dude's really into Chuck Berry!” But I mean, come on. If you can't hear some jangly Beatles in the Buckaroos, then you're not paying attention. Because Don and Buck were listening to the songs that John and Paul were writing, you know? And vice versa, obviously. Ringo cut “Act Naturally.”

So in the punk bands, I was always more attracted to the bands that could really play. I mean, Glenn Danzig — say what you want, that guy could sing anything. John Doe, same way — great singer.  When I heard John Doe singing things like “Silver Wings.” Great singer. And, you know, what's his name from The Damned? [NOTE: Here’s Part Two of that Captain Sensible interview. Part One linked in the band’s name.] Dave Vanian. Dave was another one with a really good voice. Billy Idol, another one with a really distinctive voice. It might have been somewhat limited, but it was very musical, you know what I mean? 

TIM: Oh, yeah, These are the things that you and I have always agreed on. 

JESSE: Yeah, I think so. I think we kind of see the bits and pieces in each thing and how they relate.

TIM: It's how you and I became friends. I will never forget that one day, I'm having all this trouble because I talked shit about that band called (fun.). And I'm getting every 12 year old girl in the world wanting to kill me. You wrote me at Facebook, sending me a friend request and saying, “I like your style, Bubba.” [laughs]

JESSE: Well, you know, the thing about rants on Facebook is: A rant on Facebook actually got me a book deal. I mean, I was not looking, it just all happened. Next thing I know, you know, Ben Schaefer from Hatchett’s calling, and I got an advance during COVID, which I needed at the time. And it all worked out really well. A million things could have gone wrong. 

When you wrote about that, I read your stuff online. I have four or five, six people that I read online. It's refreshing. Some people view you as a contrarian when you disagree with them. Because it gives them a better position about how they feel about what they feel about it. It justifies their position to make you seem like, “Well, you don't really feel like that. You're just being a contrarian. You're just stirring up shit. You're trying to get likes or whatever it is.” And that's not the case, especially with people like you and I, who have spent our whole life nerding out on music that most people don't. I feel like if you're coming from a deep well of honesty, then it's not just about you being a punk online.

But some people will never see that I mean it, especially politically, But you know we all know how those people are. When social media first came out and the politics, they didn't rise to the point that they would later with Trump. But when it first came out, it was such a new thing that everybody had not learned, “Hey, it's really not worth your time. It won’t end well.” I think everyone was taking the bait. It was crazy.

TIM: You did have a lot of contrarians out there. You did have a lot of flippant, faceless opinions.

JESSE: Oh yeah. I frequently said in those days, “The worst thing in the world that you can say to me is, ‘Just saying.’” I'm not gonna lie. 

TIM: That's right. The reason I wanted to do this interview, as we talked about, is because you called me after you saw something I wrote about the Jason Aldean record. I said that country music needs Jesse Dayton a lot more than Jesse Dayton needs country music, at this point.

JESSE: Well, evidently so, because I'm about to have three blues records in the Billboard Blues Charts. 

TIM: Three? 

JESSE: Yeah! I produced this kid from New Orleans named Eric Johanson, who's a guitar slinger, blues kid. He doesn't sound anything like Stevie Ray Vaughan or any of the obvious bar room blues or ‘90s blues guys. His record just came out, and then the new record for Shiny Ribs is on my label, and that debuted at number three. And then Death Wish Blues with me and Sam, which was number one for three weeks, and it ain't nothing right. 

But you know my deal. I love country music with all of my heart, and I feel like I can sing it in an authentic kind of way. But I was also stuck within the parameters of what I could do within that tradition of arrangements and style. And not many people paint themselves in a corner and get out of it. I felt like I had to start getting out of it, like a few years before COVID, and start doing rock and folk and jazz and blues and punk and anything else I felt like doing.

TIM: Right. I mean, you did that great sort of Cajun record a few years back (2020’s Gulf Coast Sessions) that I just absolutely loved. 

JESSE: Yeah, that's the lil' lo-fi record I did with Clay Connell, and we did it all by ourselves. We brought in a Cajun accordion player and a fiddle player to play on half a song, but I played everything else on it. I played drums and bass and keyboards and guitar and all that stuff. So it was great, man. I mean, it was so liberating to just not have to worry about a band.

TIM: Right. You know, it sounded great. It had an ensemble feel to it. It sounded just like a band setting up in Cosimo Matassa's studio and just going for it. It was what it was supposed to be.

JESSE: Yeah, I was kind of surprised at how live it sounded after we did the first one. I was like, “Okay, we got to do some more of this.”

But yeah, I love country music, man. I love playing on a 15 watt blackface amplifier with a Telecaster, heavy strings on it, playing with a little bit of reverb and just playing Tic Tac guitar. You know, that Texas shuffle stuff. I love playing all that poppin’ Tele stuff. I love Roy Nichols and Jerry Reed and James Burton and all that. But I was at a point where I was like, ‘Well, am I just gonna keep repeating myself, doing this?”

End Part One. Next time: How politically ultra-liberal traditional country fans can be musically conservative, and a whole lot more, and much more. Tomorrow: Parade Of Great Guitarists shines the spotlight on The Cramps’ Poison Ivy!

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