Austin-based guitarist/singer/songwriter Jesse Dayton has gigged with the greats of country music, and has forged a respectable solo career, utilizing some great guitars and amps to accomplish such. Perhaps not surprisingly, he relies primarily on Telecaster variants in the studio and on tour. His particular brand of music has been dubbed "turbo-country" by some listeners, and his most recent offering, Country Soul Brother, (on Dayton's own Stag label) exemplifies why such a descriptive term is appropriate. Moreover, some fans of unique cover songs may consider the yee-haw version of the Cars' "Just What I Needed" alone to be worth the price of admission. Dayton produced the album as well.

In a recent cordial conversation, Dayton discussed his history, gear, and the appearance of Redd Volkaert, another "Telecaster master", on Country Soul Brother. Jesse was born and raised on the Texas Gulf Coast, in Beaumont, and that locale cranked off our conversation.

VINTAGE GUITAR: What kind of musical environment did the Texas Gulf Coast offer a budding guitarist?

JESSE DAYTON: Beaumont's next door to Port Arthur; it's part of the "golden triangle", which is where Clifford Antone is from; (Janis) Joplin, too. I grew up down the street from the Winter brothers; my dad was in high school with George Jones; the Big Bopper went to the same school. I was listening to a lot of Cajun AM radio, and AM country, or Oldies---we didn't get our first "rock" station until '79. All of the country stuff and the blues stuff and the zydeco stuff was all kind of the same; a real gumbo. The lines were very blurred, and the styles became kind of ambiguous. You'd get three different versions of "Matilda"---a black version, a country version, and maybe zydeco/rockabilly/whatever version.

Was Johnny Winter an early influence?

He used to come up to the Dairy Queen and freak us all out; he was like a ghost. When I got to be about 15, I got to where I could go see him, with my older brother. At that point, (the influences) would have been Johnny Winter and Billy Gibbons. They got me excited about playing guitar.

Was Gibbons in the Moving Sidewalks or ZZ TOP at the time?

ZZ TOP; they were on their third or fourth album when I first heard 'em. I met a guy named Granville Cleveland, who played guitar in Edgar Winter's White Trash, but Johnny played in it as well. Granville, and a guy named Mac Minor, who was Mance Lipscomb's cousin, were the two guys that showed me how to play. I didn't really take lessons; I just watched 'em.

The first guitar I had was a Silvertone archtop acoustic. I learned how to play bass lines on it; nobody had really shown me anything. I would play the root notes of songs. Once I kinda got that down, I got an electric Silvertone with an amp in the case. The action was really brutal, and I can remember learning to play slide, out of necessity! (chuckles) I saved up, and got a Fender Mustang. So my guitar progression sort of started at the bottom; my old man and his family were all working class, so they couldn't go out buy me a new Tele or Stratocaster.

Did you start any regular gigs around that time?

Once I got the Mustang, I started playing around in every band I could get my hands on. I remember spending one summer where I literally walked around wearing a guitar! I'd also listen to my older brother's 8-tracks, and he was also a good buddy of Clifford Antone, who had a lot of cool stuff to listen to. I listened to an Elvis live in Las Vegas album, with James Burton on it, and Buddy Guy's A Man and the Blues, and The Essential Jimi Hendrix---those were my three favorite records when I was a kid, and I sat and listened to them over and over, learning everything from 'em that I could.

What kind of amp did you get for the Mustang?

I got this Gibson amplifier with a cool tremolo pedal that was kind of over-the-top; it sounded more in-your-face than a lot of Fender tremeloes did; I could do all of my Ike Turner licks better. I started playing in country bands, rockabilly bands, rock and roll bands, zydeco bands I was in a punk band for about five seconds. I'd go over to Lake Charles, Louisiana, and play all night in a zydeco band. If you want to get your right hand in shape, play rhythm guitar in a zydeco band. I mean, James Brown ain't got nothin' on that ****!

Fair to say that you first attained some notice when you formed the perhaps-appropriately-named Road Kings?

Yeah; all I really wanted to do was play hopped-up country. The neat thing about the Road Kings is that we were a hybrid; we weren't ever imitating or mimicking our heroes. We would always have two or three different styles rolled into one, and we were hell-bent on that. We did pretty good; we went to Europe all the time, and to Australia and Japan. We toured in the U.S. with everybody from Social Distortion to Chris Isaak; played some shows with Jimmy Buffett and Ted Nugent. We still have a pretty big national following.

What was your primary setup with that band?

I had a late '50s blond (Gretsch) Country Club, which I got from Fred Gretsch; I worked for (veteran vintage dealer) John Brinkmann when I was younger, and I met a lot of neat players that way. When John found out my band was taking off, he got me a great deal on the Country Club, which was one of Fred Gretsch's "private collection" guitars. It has two DeArmonds in it, a gold Bigsby (vibrato), and a big tweed case. I used that with two Ampeg Reverb-O-Rockets which I would run in stereo, and a tube Echoplex, which was like having an old flathead Harley---I had to clean the tape heads before every show. (chuckles) But I would crank things up, and it sounded phenomenal.

Somewhere along the line, I got a '60s natural Tele Thinline, and I liked the fact that it was a semi-hollowbody, because if I wanted to get feedback on certain notes, I could stand in front of the amp. I could also get that on the Gretsch, but with the Tele Thinline, it was a lot more controlled. I just became a Tele freak, because I didn't like working on the Gretsch all the time.

What was your first "name" gig?

The Waylon (Jennings) record (Right for the Time). I was on a Crook and Chase TV show in Nashville; (Kris) Kristofferson got me on there, and before I left to go back to Austin the next day, a producer called and said Waylon had cut his hand the night before, cooking with Jessi (Colter), and would I come down to Music Row and play guitar for him on a song he was cutting with Johnny Cash? I was down there before you could throw your hat in the creek! I spent the whole day with Cash and Waylon, and it went really good.

About two weeks later, Waylon called, saying "Hey, hoss, wanna play on my record?" So I spent two weeks at Woodland Studios in Nashville. That's an older studio, and a lot of great music has been recorded there. When I was there, he introduced to everybody who stopped by. Any amplifier I wanted, they'd bring in. I think I used a Matchless and a blackface Fender Deluxe, and I used Waylon's guitar, the one with the leather tooling, on almost every cut, except for a blond '59 Tele on a couple of songs.

Did recording with Waylon lead directly to your gig with the Ray Price Orchestra?

It sure did, but I was supposed to Lollapalooza with Waylon, and he started not feeling good, so that was the end of that. Between the Waylon record and Ray Price, I'd scored a solo deal with Justice (Records), and I made Raisin' Cain. We had Flaco Jiminez and Doug Sahm on it; Kenny Aronoff on drums, Steve Smith on bass, Johnny Gimble on fiddle---a real all-star band that Justice put together for me. If you look at my picture on that album you can tell I'd been hangin' out with Waylon, 'coz I've got bell-bottoms and long hair; I looked like I'd been smokin' plenty of Mexican lettuce.

When it came out, it went to Number One of the Americana charts, and sold real big in Europe; did moderately well here, for not having a huge hit song on it. It kind of "cemented" my cult following. Then I was on tour with George Strait; he'd seen me at the Continental Club here in Austin, playing a Jim Lauderdale song.

It's my understanding that there was a follow-up release recorded for Justice, but it got shelved, and wasn't released for a long time.

That was Hey Nashvegas. It finally came out about two years ago, on my own label. Before that, I spent some time with Ray Price, and my lawyers got me out of the Justice thing, and some other label deals, and I came back to Texas and made Tall Texas Tales in five days, for $3200; recorded it basically all live except for some obvious things like harmony parts. I put it out on my own record label, Stag.

That album has a lot of '59 maple-neck Tele, a blackface (Fender) Super Reverb, and a Guild acoustic. I'm crazy about Guild acoustics; I think they're "sleepers", and I can get both warmness and high end out of 'em. When I play a Martin, I feel like there's too much high end; when I play a Gibson, I feel like it's too muddy.

How long has your band featured an upright bass?

Pretty much since the inception; I've always liked somebody who can switch from doing that '60s flatwound Tele Bass thing to getting a really nice "pushin' air" upright sound, like a lower French horn.

The title track to Country Soul Brother features doubled vocals and a noticeable amount of tremolo at one point.

I'm a big Exile on Main Street fan, and I cut a bunch of those vocals with a Shure 57 with no windscreen, no microphone stand, nothing. We got rid of this and that; it was very unconventional, by any studio's standard. One thing we tried to on the record was lose all of the so-called "social mores" of cutting records.

For most of the record, I used a '66 blackface Pro Reverb, and I got Mark Pollack from Charlie's Guitar Shop to trick it out. He put a Mender Box inside; it's a variable gain switch, and it soaks the gain out of the tubes. On most of those amps, you've got a reverb channel and a dry channel. This Mender Box lets you change to the dry channel, but you've still got reverb. I took my vibrato (tremolo) switch and took the thing out that means a momentary delay when you want to cut the tremolo on and put in a touch-sensitive switch, where when you take your foot off, it's gone. That's one reason there's a lot of tremolo on the record, but another reason is I wanted to get some of that Ike Turner-Duane Eddy thing into it, to show people that old rock and roll sound. Most tremolo guitar things aren't "busy"; they're single-string parts, and they're melodies, which means I'm also a big fan of Ennio Morricone; I love any of those spaghetti Western soundtracks.

What has been the reaction of the cover of the Cars' "Just What I Needed"? When they first hear it, a lot of listeners might be thinking something along the lines of "shades of NRBQ."

(chuckles) It's been the fourth-most-added Americana chart song here in the States. We're also getting played on a big rock station out in L.A. All of these people that don't like country music that grew up partying in the back of a Trans-Am, listening to the Cars are getting another interpretation of it. It may be a slow realization, but all of sudden you say "****, man, that's a Cars song!" The thing is, I don't think the world needs me to mimic another Merle Haggard song. I'm not really "anti-mimic", but I like "hybrid" ideas.

What inspired you to record a version of that song?

I was on tour with a Seattle band called the Supersuckers; I'd recorded an album, Must've Been High, with them at Sub-Pop studios up there. A friend of mine in Galveston who was drunk left a message on my answering machine, singing "Just What I Needed", and another friend said it would be a great country song---he said (the lyrics) sounded like something Ray Price would do. We got Redd Volkaert to play guitar on it, and Eric Hokkanen to play fiddle.

And you ought to see the reaction at live shows! About halfway through the song, we can see the crowd start recognizing what it is, and they go completely ape-****. We also do a fast rockabilly version of "Don't Think Twice" by Bob Dylan, and a Johnny Cash-type version of "I'm On Fire" by Springsteen, which has got slap bass.

What else did Volkaert do on the album?

Redd showed up with a '51 Nocaster, and played a '55 Tremolux tweed amp, serial number 0004. We played twin guitars on "All Because of You," and that's Redd playing the nice, jazzy stuff in the verses of "Just What I Needed."

He's probably my favorite guitar player, among the contemporary guys. He's so innovative; he's beyond scales or anything like that. It's just all pure expression; it goes straight from his heart to his fingers. He's got maybe the deepest musical pockets of anybody I've ever seen or played with. I just saw him at the Continental Club, playing a country gig with Eric Johnson. You get a lot of that in Austin.

Instruments and amps used on the new album?

We used a blonde '58 Telecaster, a '70s Telecaster B-Bender, a '66 sunburst Strat and the'50s blonde Gretsch Country Club Hollow body, plus a '70 Guild acoustic on all the acoustic tracks. We used a '62 Fender Deluxe Reverb on almost all the record, except for one track we recorded with an old mid-'60s Marshall 50-watt half stack to get a more "English"-sounding thing. I used the B-Bender a lot; it's a custom freak show guitar, with a '61 DeArmond pickup in the front, jumbo frets; it's funky.

But I don't travel with any of these instruments on the tour. I was "cased" by professionals about two years ago in Kansas, and had a '62 Tele stolen, as well as a Gibson 335 that I used on Ray Price's big band album, Prisoner of Love. The good news is a stolen Gretsch 6120 that I got from Brian Setzer---we had the same manager at the time---was retrieved by none other than the Hell's Angels, and overnighted to me while I was still on tour. That was unbelievable...like something out of a Hunter Thompson novel; call it Fear and Loathing in Lawrence, Kansas.

The credits state that you played electric bass.

I played a '75 bone-colored (Fender) P-Bass with flatwounds through a flip-flop Ampeg amp, on just about every song except "Country Soul Brother" and "Jesus Pick Me Up." We only used an upright on "Jesus Pick Me Up" because it's full-on bluegrass. Since this record has more of what I'd call " '70s country soul/classic rock/blues", I decided to go more with an electric.

Current tour gear?

Mostly, I'll use two Fender Hot Rod Devilles that I'll run in stereo, and some kind of slap-back pedal I found when we were on tour in Italy. I don't even know what kind it is; I think it's Russian. It's tube/tape device, like a mini-Echoplex. For guitars, I use a Tex-Mex Tele; I have three of those. although I'll use that freak show B-Bender for gigs around Austin.

Tour plans to support Country Soul Brother?

We just finished a tour of the West Coast; we just a new bus and a national tour deal with Jim Beam, so they're promoting us hot and heavy. We plan on touring the Midwest, and early in '05 we'll be going to Spain, France, Holland, Belgium and England.

And we're looking at possibly doing a video for "Just What I Needed" for CMT; we've talked to Kid Rock's video director, and he wants to do it.

Jesse Dayton's eloquent, rapid-fire Telecaster work is all over Country Soul Brother, as are his sharp arrangements. It's a commendable effort from someone who's had more experience than one might realize, but the confidence with which Dayton delivers his music shows that he's been a trouper for quite some time, and he looks forward to promoting the new album. Dayton's also an eloquent songwriter, but still, one can only wonder what Ric Ocasek might think of the Jesse Dayton Band's cover of "Just What I Needed" if and when the erstwhile Cars guitarist/vocalist/songwriter hears it

Willie G. Moseley is the senior writer for Vintage Guitar Magazine, and is the author of seven books. All rights reserved