Jesse Dayton!
Schedule
Fri Sep 24 2021 at 09:00 pm
Location
The White Water Tavern | Little Rock, AR
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The great Jesse Dayton returns to the White Water Tavern on Friday, September 24th! His first show here in 2019 was incredible; we are thrilled to have him and his band back in the house. Advance tickets are available for $15 at www.whitewatertavern.com.
Proof of vaccination or negative 48 Covid test required at the door.
Equally steeped in Texas / Louisiana blues, old-school country and punk-rock, Dayton might be the world’s best-kept secret, hiding in plain sight as a guitarist for Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Ryan Bingham and L.A. punk pioneers X. He tours with and plays alongside artists like Lucinda Williams, Social Distortion, and countless more.
www.jessedayton.com
“If you open your arms to the world, it’s amazing what will come back atcha,” drawls East Texas native, singer/songwriter/filmmaker/author Jesse Dayton, who has a bunch more homespun wisdoms where that came from. A veteran of more than 30 years as a musician, Dayton was discovered as a young teenager playing “a toilet dive” in his hometown of Beaumont by legendary club owner Clifford Antone, who booked him into his famed Austin venue, then immediately shifted him over to the honky-tonk Broken Spoke, where the likes of Willie Nelson, George Strait and Ernest Tubb have had residencies.
After releasing 11 studio albums and an EP as a solo artist, Dayton’s new album, Mixtape Volume 1, is a series of 10 cover songs he thoroughly makes his own, reinterpreting and revisiting them in a brand-new way. On the first track and single, Jackson Browne’s “Redneck Friend”, Dayton takes the song to a place where it would be equally at home on the first two Eagles albums or as a Rolling Stones collaboration with Gram Parsons. He transforms Neil Young’s “Harvest” into a country plaint complete with pedal steel guitar and hurdy-gurdy piano, while offering a majestic take on Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind”. Brought up on his older sister’s Laurel Canyon folk records, the FM album rock and punk he listened to as a teenager plus the array of country acts who used to tour through Beaumont – including Johnny Cash, Johnny Paycheck, David Allen Coe, Conway Twitty, Hank Jr., and George Jones – Dayton has managed to create a genuine hybrid that takes alt-country and Americana in new, exciting directions.
“The world doesn’t need another outlaw country singer covering Waylon Jennings,” he says of his stylistic mix. “Everyone where I was growing up had no idea Neil Young wrote Waylon’s ‘Are You Ready for the Country?’ or that George Jones’ ‘Bartender’s Blues’ was written by James Taylor, a stoned junkie at the time.”
Turned on to the music’s possibilities by attending an early Clash/Joe Ely tour, Dayton transforms the U.K. punk icons’ “Bankrobber” into a kind of Bo Diddley shuffle, just as The Clash similarly turned Bobby Fuller Four’s “I Fought the Law” into a three-chord rave-up. He relocates the roots of ZZ Top’s “She’s a Heartbreaker” on the Texas/Louisiana border with some sawing Cajun fiddles, while AC/DC’s “Whole Lotta Rosie” gets the harp-honking Jimmy Reed treatment. The Cars’ new wave ditty, “Just What I Needed”, is reimagined as a George Jones honky-tonk lament, while Bruce Springsteen’s “State Trooper” combines Johnny Cash gravitas, Jim Morrison’s dark bravado and the Boss’ own New York punk duo fave Suicide’s doom-laden theatricality into a compelling whole.
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Where is it happening?
The White Water Tavern, 2500 W 7th St, Little Rock, AR 72205, United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
