Videos by American Songwriter
Jesse Dayton
The Revealer
(Blue Elan)
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Texas native Jesse Dayton has a long list of career accomplishments, but the two that best describe his musical personality are playing lead guitar for both Waylon Jennings and X.
Add his stint with country-punkers the Supersuckers, expand that to this new solo album (his sixth since 1995, most for his Stag label) and you’ve got a sense of the sound for The Revealer. Dayton’s booming, baritone is reminiscent at times of Jennings with a side order of George Jones (who he pays tribute to on “Possum Ran Over My Grave”) on the pure country “Match Made in Heaven,” and a touch of Springsteen blue collar growl, especially when he digs into a Chuck Berry/Stones inspired rocker such as “Take Out the Trash.”
Dayton shifts his approach from rollicking wimmin, whisky and carousing in pick-up trucks material such as “3 Pecker Goat,” the Sun-era Johnny Cash inflected “I’m at Home Gettin’ Hammered (While She’s Out Getting’ Nailed” and the Little Richard unhinged rocking of “Holy Ghost Rock n Roller,” to more thought provoking, even tender fare. He describes in detail a nurturing relationship with his family’s black housekeeper in “Mrs. Victoria (Beautiful Thing),” a sweet, touching folk ballad sung with the emotional sensitivity of what seems to be a story plucked from his past.
On “The Way We Are,” a treatise on touring where one day you’re up and the next you’re down, he reflects on his life saying “We’d do it for nothing or drinks from the bar.” The closing acoustic “Big State Motel,” another tale of road existence that, despite its clichéd concept, rings true with the intensity and self-realization this is the path he has chosen as he reveals “… our lost souls go on and on/Lord, we’re too damn far to turn back now.”
The album’s title expresses the intent of Dayton’s pure country leanings, told in songs that reveal the innermost thoughts and outermost activities of a musician who, as Muddy Waters so pointedly sang, lives the life he loves and loves the life he lives … at least most of the time.
