Jesse Dayton is a man who seems to rarely sit still. Having been on the road for nearly sixteen months, celebrating the wonderful Grammy-nominated ‘Death Wish Blues’ album he created with Samantha Fish, Dayton is now down under to play a series of shows. And this week the Fish/Dayton combination head to WA before wrapping up in Adelaide & Melbourne this coming weekend.
A highly anticipated solo album ‘A Hard Way Blues’ is also set for release on May 31st and once again Jesse will hit the road for a US tour to promote it. We caught up with Jesse as he packed his touring cases readying himself to head to Australia. Dayton was keen to talk about the natural song writing partnership with Samantha Fish, his new album and his many influences…
Jesse: Hey, man. How are you doing?
Sean: I’m good, Jesse. How are you?
Jesse: I’m good. I’m good.
Sean: Well Jesse, thank you so much for your time. We are so excited to see you guys coming over with Samantha doing the Death Wish Blues shows at long last. Probably the last few that you’re going to be wrapping up that wonderful album with on the live circuit.
Jesse: Yeah, I mean, this is it, man. We don’t have anything else on the books in terms of what we’ve released. And we’ve spent, you know, the last… I don’t know, 16 months, you know, joined at the hip doing this show together. So it’ll be kind of a, you know, melancholy but exciting thing.
Sean: It’s been such an incredible ride and, first of all, a huge congratulations on the Grammy nomination. It must have been a little bit out of the blue, because when I spoke to Samantha recently and she said, “You know, it was a bit of fun and we put our heads together, came up with this great album.” And for something that started as a bit of fun, there you are getting nominated for a Grammy. So, hopefully the follow-up album will get over the line. Hint, hint [laughs].
Jesse: Well, I hope we do one, too, at some point. I don’t know when that’s going to be. But, you know, it’s kind of hard to even think about it now. But we were so shocked, I mean, about the Grammy thing. I think everybody’s kind of, you know, you’re always kind of a little blown away, because you know, that there are 130,000 records that are submitted, you make it to the four, you know. But Samantha and I were actually on a music cruise at the time of the nominations. So we were kind of the last ones to get to know. We didn’t have cell phone service. Finally, our phone, we got cell service. It was like your birthday time. It was like, you know, one in a million.
Sean: Fantastic. Because you’re both so busy anyway, that must have been quite challenging, putting the tracks down and writing the album.
Jesse: Well, it was kind of a crazy thing, because once we started, it just was like a freight train. I mean, I had come back from Australia. I played like four gigs over in Australia. And I think like 24 hours after getting home, I was in New York with Samantha. And we were starting this record. And then, before the record came out, you know, we’re in L.A. playing The Whiskey. And it just never stopped. So it was great. And luckily we have a really great working relationship. So, you know, it wasn’t all Fleetwood Mac, as they say. You know what I mean? It wasn’t a big dysfunctional mess. It was like, actually, we had a lot of fun. And, we just had to kind of learn how to live together, because we lived together the whole time on the tour bus for, like, 16 months. So yeah, it was a trip.
Sean: Well, of course, we get to see you over here from May the 16th onwards. The fantastic Blues on Broadbeach as well. You’re playing up there and then we get to see you pretty much middle of the tour in Fremantle, which is a great venue you’re playing down there. So I’ll be at that one. I can’t wait to see it.
Jesse: Yeah, I’m excited to come back. You know, I’ve got good friends there. You know Australians are so similar to Texans. I’ve never met any Texans who’d been down under who didn’t immediately remark, that there’s a lot of similarities in the whole kind of
outlaw freedom thing. And, you know, I think a few of the guys at the Alamo, they got thrown down in Texas because their grandfather’s nicked a watch in Kentucky or whatever. [laughs] So it’s kind of like there’s some funny through themes, but I can’t wait to get back, man. Plus I’m a huge fan of the music, you know, I’m a big AC/DC fan and I love The Saints and, you know, there’s some cool bands, Midnight Oil and there’s a lot of great music.
Sean: We’ve also got some wonderful news about your new release, which is very, very, very quickly coming up. We’ve had a few tracks teased to us throughout the year so far. When did you find time to get this album done? It sounds like it’s been an incredible whirlwind two years ago.
Jesse: I actually did it before I did the Death Wish record. Shooter Jennings produced the record and I met Shooter Jennings when he was 16 and I was playing guitar for his father, Waylon Jennings. And I was playing guitar on a record called ‘Right For The Time’ and I was closer to Shooter’s age than I was to the guys in Waylon’s band. And so I was like 23, 24 and Shooter was like 16, I think. And fast forward 20 years later and Shooter’s a big Grammy award winning record producer that’s done all these huge bands and huge acts. And I just called him up one day and I said, Hey, I think he’s done a great job. And I’m like, you know why I’m calling? And he started laughing. He’s like, yeah, let’s do it. Oh, we did that record real old school, man. We went into a really cool, um, uh, studio, funky little studio in Los Angeles where Neil Young had cut a bunch of stuff. And I think Lucinda did ‘Car Wheels on a Gravel Road’ there.
And we went in with the band, everybody in the room and we cut the record. And we did the record in five days. And that was it. I’ve been wanting to do that for a while and, I’m at that place in my career where you get what you get. I’m not going to like go in there and try to make perfect records cause I think they’re kind of boring and, you know, I wanted all the scars on it and I’m at that point where I play what I play and I sing what I sing and that’s what you get. And, you know I didn’t want to go in there and spend weeks trying to paint my master piece as Mr. Dillon says, you know what I mean? Like I wanted to go in and just see what we got in the room and just let the songs depend on performance.
Sean: So were you kind of running through the songs and recording live for the album?
Jesse: Yeah. I mean, I was just literally me and Shooter were writing the arrangements as we recorded. Me, the drummer and the bass player and the keyboard player, and we’re just all in there. And most of the vocals on the record are live. Most of the guitar stuff’s live. I mean, I did a few, some overdubs, you know, did some harmonies and put some other guitar parts on it. But, you know, we cut that record in no time. I mean, if you look back at some of the great records that we all grew up with, that’s the way those records were made.
Sean: They’re are great songs. I love ‘Nightbrain’ and loving those lovely dirty guitar sounds on the new material. Of course ‘The Hard Way Blues’ is out 31st May and then you are literally heading out of Australia and out on tour again.
Jesse: Yeah, we were playing the West Coast and, you know, we’re playing The Whiskey in LA, Great American Music Hall in San Francisco and all the legendary places on the West Coast. So, I was doing a headlining tour for my solo band and I just went and did some shows in the Midwest with my solo band. It was the first time I played with them in a very long time. And it was great. I mean, it was a lot of fun, you know, there’s so much freedom. Everything that I do with Samantha is very much a team collaboration. And I love it and we always remarked to each other, you know, one of the great things about having this Deathwish Blues thing together is that we get to get away from it and miss it and then come back to it.
So by the time we come back to it, she’ll have just played with the Rolling Stones at Jazz Fest. And I will have just played on stage trading songs with Lyle Lovett. I just finished doing this thing with Lyle Lovett that was amazing and he’s cool. And for me, you know, that’s, I mean, me and Sam, we both love rock and roll. We both love the blues. I have this whole kind of singer songwriter world that I live in. Although I will tell you, I’m trying to get her to come and do some shows with me for some stuff because I think my audience will love her so much. I mean, what’s not to love. She’s brilliant. But what was so cool about this is that Samantha could put on acoustic guitar and sing a Townes Van Zandt song and sing the hell out of it. So, you know, it’s exciting for us. We’re both coming back off of some really cool stuff.
Sean: I would love to talk a bit about your song writing, and where you find the time because you’re always so busy. Is it something that comes to you naturally? You’re walking down the street and you get an idea in your head and you sort of get the
phone out or is it something you have to really sit down and apply yourself to do?
Jesse: I’m always, always thinking about songs, you know, there’s always something brewing in the back. It might be something somebody says in a bar or something I read in a book, something I hear in a movie or it might be a guitar riff. You know, I had that riff for ‘Nightbrain’ because I was like listening to all these East Texas recordings of Mance Lipscomb and he was doing this droning string thing, and I’m always looking for something in the blues rock world that can be different because I think that is probably the most stagnant genre in terms of just, you know, you can’t swing a dead cat without hearing Stevie Ray Vaughn licks, you know? And I love Stevie Ray. I saw him when I was 15, he was playing in a band called the Cobras with Paul Ray. And he was amazing. I saw all that stuff back in the day and nobody loves him like me, but there’s so much other blues stuff out there that’s not being… I won’t say exploited, cause that sounds a little, you know, dark, but that’s not being, you know, like you just don’t hear it, like you don’t hear this country blues, I guess now because of, you know, The Black Keys and stuff like that. That North Alabama, North Mississippi thing. And a lot of that stuff is, you know, RL Burnside and that kind of stuff. And I love that stuff too but I just think there’s a lot of stuff that we can do. So I’m always looking when I’m writing songs, I’m always looking for kind of like, how can I just do this different instead of like painting by numbers and, and really, you know, the thing that’s really safe.
What’s saved my career is I put 10,000 hours into writing songs and not just like, Hey, let’s get through this verse so that the guy can get to the lead guitar part. The whole package. I mean, I really studied all these great songwriters from Texas and it has been a tremendous, like saving grace for me because I seem to be able to apply it to whatever. And I think that’s what we did with death wish when we wrote those songs.You know, I brought a lot of that baggage in and yeah, it was like, you know, I mean, I love John Bonham and I love, you know, Steve Ray Vaughan and I love all those big sounds that all those guys get. I mean, I’m a total Zeppelin freak and record nerd. And vinyl, I’ve got, you know, 5,000 records of vinyl in my house, but I wanted to do something different, you know, I wanted to do something like sonically different and I think we’ll get that on Death Wish.
Sean: You mentioned a few of your influences there, but what was the music you was hearing first of all, as a kid? And was that being played round the house being or was it at school when you first got involved in music?
Jesse: Yeah, it was everywhere. I grew up on the Texas Louisiana border and there’s no place like that. I mean, especially when I grew up there, cause I’m in my mid fifties now. So I grew up there in the late seventies, early eighties, when radio was still explosive and it was colloquial and it was regional and you had Cajun DJs that actually spoke French 24 hours a day and they would play Zydeco music and there were black owned rhythm and blues and Zydeco stations. They were honky talk full on. I mean, I’m not talking Country and Western. I mean, they had full on honky tonk stations that were going, that played pedal steel guitar and twin fiddles. And then we had, you know, the coolest rock and roll stuff because I was literally right between Houston and right between New Orleans. So I mean, you name it, I mean, I had all the usual suspects, you know, I listened to my older brothers. You know, the first five ZZ Top records were like the soundtrack of our life until we figured out, you know, this band called The Clash and we went and saw The Clash. And so what was weird was I got older and I didn’t realize when I left Beaumont that there were all these rules. I didn’t realize that they had all these rules that, Hey man, if you’re, you know, if you’re a big Zeppelin or Stones fan then you can’t be into this punk rock stuff. You know, like there was all these rules. I thought it was all just total insanity because you know, for me to make a living playing guitar, I had to learn to play all kinds of stuff. I really did. And when I mean that I was playing blood buckets, I mean, I was playing like places that were like highly questionable that my mother would never walk in. And, you know, there was a lot of felons, they were all strapped. They all had guns and that deep gear and, and we played crazy places. We played these biker places and we played these redneck joints and, you know, sometimes we play these rough ass Zydeco clubs where I was the only white boy there and you know, it was crazy.
I ended up writing a book during COVID because I was just bored. I started ranting on Facebook and this big literary agent saw my rant and said, Hey, I think I can talk to Hachette books in New York and get you a real publishing deal. And so they did. And I wrote this book called Bow Monster was around Beaumont, Texas, where I’m from. So it’s kind of a twist of phrase for where I’m from. And I wrote this book called Bow Monster and it’s got all these stories in it. And, you know, the stuff that I did before I met Johnny Cash and before I played with Waylon and before I started working with bands, rock bands, punk bands, country bands, you know, it was pretty crazy up until then. The music was there, you know, my parents were really cool. They were the first ones to make it out of the oil fields and go and become academics. They went to UT, University of Texas in Austin, you know, which was where all those crazy liberals in Austin in Texas, we all live in Austin, although we’re not liberal by we all own guns and you know what I mean? It’s not like, it’s not like fruity San Francisco stuff, but in fact, my grandfather used to say, the reason why Austin’s in the centre of the state of Texas is so the rest of us can keep an eye on you, you know? But all the hippies live there, man. And I wanted to be where the music was. And so, you know, that’s how I ended up in Austin. I mean, there was a lot of stuff, you know, you had the songwriters. I mean, I used to go see Townes Van Zandt. I used to go see Guy Clark. You know, I go see the Vaughn brothers play the blues. I’d go hear punk rock. I’d go hear, you know, Gibby Haynes and the Butthole Surfers. And then there’d be all the big rock bands, of course, I went and saw all the big heavy rock bands, you know, I loved all that stuff. I mean I think I’ve seen The Stones 28 times but I love all that stuff.
Sean: Jesse, I don’t want to keep you much longer because obviously, there’s packing to be done for everybody in the house tonight. I’d love to just finish off with some general questions, if I may. My restaurant question. If you could have dinner one evening with three musicians, dead or alive, who would you have join you?
Jesse: Oh, I don’t know, man. That’s a really crazy question because I already did get to have dinner with some pretty amazing people. But I say, if you’re going to dream, dream big. So I think I would love to have dinner in New Orleans with Louis Armstrong and maybe smoke a joint with him afterwards. You know what I mean? He’s kind of the godfather of American music and I’m sure he’s got some amazing stories. You know, Ray Charles would have been great to have dinner with. I had dinner with Johnny Cash. That was pretty amazing. Hendrix would have been cool. You get the vibe that Hendrix was a real kind of low key, kind of chill guy. And some of my heroes, I don’t want to have dinner with them because they were so completely out of their ever loving minds [laughs]. I don’t think I would have been disappointed. You know what I mean? I had dinner with Willy. That was pretty cool. So yeah, man, Robert Johnson, that would have been cool too, but ultimately I think he was poisoned by a jealous husband. So I think he would have probably been talking about girls the whole time. [laughs] You know what I mean? So who knows?
Sean: What was the last album you listened to?
Jesse: The last record that I listened to was… I think it was just like a couple of days ago I listened to ‘Infidels’ by Bob Dylan. There’s this 80s Bob Dylan thing where I’ll go down that rabbit hole every once in a while but I like all the guitar players Bob was always hiring, great guitar players he had. Charlie Sexton was his guitar player for a while from Austin Texas and so that was the last record I listened to – ‘Neighbourhood Bully’ and ‘What’s a Sweetheart Like You Doing in
a Place Like This’ and just… oh my God, just some killer songs man.
Sean: One very final question. If you could be credited with writing any song ever written, what song would you choose?
Jesse: I would say that I if I could be credited with writing any song it would probably be ‘I’ll Take You There’ by The Staples Singers and if you listen to ‘I’ll Take You There’ by the Staples Singers, it’s a white drummer and a white bass player with a black guitar player, Pop Staples so it’s integrated right, it’s American music done right, it’s gospel, it’s country, it’s funky and the lyrics are about… they’re sexual as you can imagine, I mean it’s baby making music man and it’s everything that’s great about America and it’s what I hope it still can be. You know the greatness of our country is about all of our different influences. It’s never about one thing – there wouldn’t have been black people and hillbillies and Jewish business people and songwriters and stuff like that if we wouldn’t have had all this amazing diversity, we would never had had this music, so listen to just a killer track man. Listen to ‘I’ll Take You There’ by The Staples Singers.
Sean: I will indeed. Jesse, I can’t begin to thank you for your time and wish you safe travels as you head over to us.
Jesse: Make sure you come over and say hello to me man. Maybe we’ll grab a pint together and catch up. Thanks Sean.
