Making His Own Way

He's a country singer, though he doesn't sound much like a country singer is supposed to these days.

He's the inverse of the Nashville archetype: a slick-haired Texas anachronism fond of sharkskin suits and old hot rods who's about as corporate as an Amish Billy Bragg.

He's got one of those voices that sounds a couple decades older than it is, wizened and whiskey-scorched, he could recite the ingredients of a tube of toothpaste and still possess the gravity of a preacher reading from the Old Testament.

And yet for a man who's never fit in with Music City all that much, Jesse Dayton had a classic introduction to the town.

"The first time I ever went to Nashville, I was doing a TV interview, and Waylon (Jennings) called the next morning and asked me to play guitar for him," Dayton recalls during a long drive from Texas to San Francisco on a recent Wednesday afternoon. "I went to the studio, and Johnny Cash opened the door. I spent the whole day recording with Johnny and Waylon, just on acoustic guitars, in this studio on Music Row.

"Before that, I was just out touring, sleeping on couches while my friends were in Nashville, trying to get record deals and sell their songs," he continues. "For me, I think it's worked out better, because I've developed a cult following that has nothing to do with corporate radio or anything like that. Going and doing a hit song in Nashville never even crossed my mind."

And so Dayton is a welcome bit of counterprogramming this week, when the National Finals Rodeo brings in its attendant slew of country music acts, most of whom are the kind of slick, radio-friendly populists who've come to define the modern incarnation of the genre.

Contemporary country is largely composed of uber-produced, highly stylized acts who are essentially pop artists with a fiddle.

Dayton, on the other hand, trades in earthy, self-produced albums that favor grit over glamour, cheap beer over expensive Stetsons.

It's the difference between a dirt road and Rodeo Drive.

"We're the checks and balances, you know?" Dayton says of his commercial country counterparts. "It's really high culture compared to that stuff, even though it seems like low culture. We actually have done pretty well with that audience. It's amazing what people dig if they just get turned on to it. We're not bashing Nashville or anything. There's millions and millions of people who would rather listen to Johnny Cash than Rascal Flatts."

Those folks are likely to thrill at Dayton's latest disc, "Holdin' Our Own," a duets album with no-nonsense songbird Brennan Leigh.

Inspired by classic, lovelorn duets by George Jones and Tammy Wynette, it's an album posited on heartache and resolve, on world-weary lovers clinging to one another when nothing else seems to be worth holding onto.

Dayton and Leigh are well-suited for one another: He's the vagabond with dust in his throat, she's the tough and unyielding working woman whose voice is by turns sweet and stern, a mix of honeysuckle and gunpowder.

Together, the two have made just about the most winsome, downhome country album of the year. It's also Dayton's most traditional-sounding effort yet.

"I think this one has more of a classic approach, because there's millions of kids out there who haven't heard a duets record before," Dayton says. "And there's also a lot of guys who are now old punk rockers who have mortgages and stuff, and they don't want to sweat it out in the mosh pit, they want to go see some old honky-tonk or rockabilly. That audience has really grown with what I've done."

Dayton's always had a diverse following. He cut his teeth in the fertile, diffuse club scene of Austin, Texas, where punks and honky-tonk die-hards are often one in the same.

And from the onset, Dayton toured more with hard-charging underground rock bands than with any aspiring country artists.

"Those tours helped me immensely," Dayton says. "My first record came out in the first quarter of '95. This was before Hank III, before Mike Ness put out his solo record of all those country songs and turned a lot of those kids on. This was early on, and we were out touring with the Supersuckers, Social D and X. I still have those fans."

Dayton will be looking for new recruits in Vegas, trying to lure some of the commercial country masses his way. He'll be an acquired taste for some -- like a snort of moonshine -- and he packs the same kind of punch.

"I'm a huge Vegas fan, I can't wait to get there," Dayton says. "I'm gonna be at the blackjack table in a sharkskin suit, baby. Gonna find me an 85-year-old career waitress who knows how to pour bourbon. I'll be the lone wolf the rest of the time."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0476.