The Advantage Of His Texas Roots

Jesse Dayton

Cris Cohen: You said with your playing and your singing that your Texas roots come out no matter what. Was there ever a point where you tried to fight that, like the singers who try to sound like whatever is popular at the time?

Jesse Dayton: Yeah, a lot of people do what newscasters do. They learn how to speak without an accent. But that accent always helped me. It helped me get gigs. It helped me stand out. It gave me a personality.

And I wasn't even trying. I'm from Beaumont, Texas. My family's been on the Texas-Louisiana border for a long time. And I was engrossed in all that roots music. I grew up with 24-hour Cajun DJs talking French. We had a huge country scene. George Jones went to high school with my dad. There was a big blues scene. Johnny Winter lived two blocks away from me growing up.

I didn't know until I left Beaumont for Austin that you didn't have to learn how to play all that stuff. I got to Austin and musically it was very segregated. You had your country guys over here. You had your blues guys in this corner. Punk guys were over here.

For me, making a living, it helped that I could do a little bit of each.

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Clients:

• Huey Lewis & The News

• Cowboy Mouth

• The Fabulous Thunderbirds

• Sister Hazel

• Red Wanting Blue

• The Devlins

• John “Papa” Gros

• Daniel Glass

• Professor Louie & The Cromatix

• Blue Elan Records