Jesse Dayton

A self-styled Texas outlaw who adheres to the maverick country traditions of his adopted hometown of Austin, Jesse Dayton is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist who first gained fame through his association with Rob Zombie. The rocker-turned-horror director hired Dayton to write and record the music for Banjo & Sullivan: The Ultimate Collection, a spin-off from his 2004 film The Devil's Rejects. Zombie also had Dayton appear as the leader of the rockabilly combo Captain Clegg & the Night Creatures in 2009's Halloween II, but as his decades-long career proved, the country singer can't be defined entirely through the prism of Zombie. On a series of largely independent albums in the 2000s and 2010s, he turned out collections of original material and tributes to idols like Kinky Friedman, taking such detours as teaming up with kindred spirit Samantha Fish for a 2023 duet album produced by Jon Spencer, and working with Shooter Jennings on 2024's The Hard Way Blues.A native of the east Texas town of Beaumont, Jesse Dayton was raised on a combination of classic Texas country and punk. He first started playing music professionally in rockabilly bands, cycling through the Road Kings and the Alamo Jet before going solo with 1995's Raisin' Cain. Released on Justice Records, the album helped raise his profile within country circles and soon he was playing sessions and concerts with the likes of Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, Ray Price, and Supersuckers.Dayton parted ways with Justice in the late '90s but he continued to plug away in the early 2000s, releasing a series of albums on his Stag Records imprint. The first of these, Hey Nashvegas!, arrived in 2001, with Tall Texas Tales following in 2003 and Country Soul Brother in 2004. That same year, he received a big break when Rob Zombie drafted him to write and record an album for Banjo & Sullivan, a fictional country band who appeared in his film The Devil's Rejects. Released in June 2005 on Hip-O, Banjo & Sullivan: The Ultimate Collection was the start of a fruitful creative partnership, but Dayton kept grinding away on the road, churning out 2005's South Austin Sessions and Holdin' Our Own, a 2007 duet album with Brennen Leigh, before he appeared in Zombie's Halloween II in 2009. Dayton played the leader of the band Captain Clegg & the Night Creatures in the flick and cut an accompanying album under that name.In the early 2010s, Dayton returned to his country roots with the 2010 album One for the Dance Halls and Jesse Sings Kinky, a 2012 salute to Kinky Friedman that was inspired by Dayton's brief run as the Texan outlaw in Ted Swindley's play Becoming Kinky: The World According to Kinky Friedman. Dayton made his debut as a writer/director in 2013 with Zombex, a satirical horror film set in a post-Katrina New Orleans. In the mid-2010s, he was part of John Doe's orbit, playing with the singer on a 2014 tour and filling in for an ailing Billy Zoom on X's 2015 tour. He returned to his solo career in 2016 with The Revealer, which was his first album to be released through Blue Elan and featured his protest single "Charlottesville." The last years of the 2010s were especially prolific for Dayton, seeing him release The Outsider in 2018, with the live record On Fire in Nashville and the covers album Mixtape, Vol. 1 appearing the next year. The Gulf Coast Sessions EP appeared in 2020, with the full-length Beaumonster following in 2021. Dayton then teamed with blues belter Samantha Fish for 2023's Grammy-nominated Death Wish Blues, an album produced by punk-blues legend Jon Spencer. Pairing himself with another outlaw figure, Dayton began working with Shooter Jennings on a string of singles including "Baby's Long Gone" and "Angel in My Pocket." They were included on his Jennings-produced 2024 LP The Hard Way Blues.
© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

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