Buffalo Music: Triple guitar attack will hit Buffalo Iron Works Saturday

(Image above (L-R): Ian Moore, Jesse Dayton, Johnny Moeller – photo by Daniel Sanda)

When the Texas Headhunters hit the stage at the Buffalo Iron Works on Saturday (Sept. 6), it will be their second time in Buffalo in just a few month. They opened for Samantha Fish at Asbury Hall on June 25.

But this time the band will be coming in with a brand new, just-released album, simply called “Texas Headhunters.” The group features the triple guitar attack of Jesse Dayton (known for working with Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and Fish as well as for his own recordings), Austin/Seattle guitar ace Ian Moore and Johnny Moeller (a member of the Fabulous Thunderbirds since 2007).

Opening is Trever Stribing of PA  Line.

Here is one of the videos off the new Texas Headhunters album:

Buffalo Hive Editor Elmer Ploetz caught up with Dayton for a conversation a couple of weeks back, just before that album was released. Here it is (edited for length and clarity).

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Elmer Ploetz: We’ll talk about the band in a minute, but how do you view your musical identity? How do you think about yourself?

Jesse Dayton: I  kind of view myself as an American music guy. I don’t really put myself in any categories, which makes it really difficult for people to sell me. I know it does.  

But I grew up on the Texas-Louisiana border. Johnny Winter lived two blocks away from me. My dad went to high school with George Jones.  I played in Zydeco bands when I was a kid, all-black Zydeco bands. So I played honky tonk and blues and zydeco, and  all kinds of stuff. 

And then, when I got older, I played all kinds of different things, from X to Danzig, to whatever. It’s a little lonely, to be honest, because you’re an outsider to everything. (But) it’s really interesting. There’s never a dull moment. I would take my career over anybody’s, in terms of just all the different people I got to work with. 

EP: Waylon, Jennings and Johnny Cash, for God’s sake. 

JD: Yeah,  you know Waylon saw me on a little cheesy show in Nashville called Crook and Chase. The woman came into the Continental Club in Austin, and she was like, “I can never get you on the radio, but I’ll get you on my TV show.”  And I was like, “Are you sure you want the guy with  tattoos and grease in his hair?”  

So I showed up, and on that show that night was Kristofferson.  So I met Kris that night, me and Kris went back behind the Opry and smoked a joint, talked about Bukowski, and we hit it off like a house afire. The next morning, I was leaving my hotel, and phone rings. It’s Waylon Jennings saying, “Hey, Hoss, I tracked you down. I saw you last night on TV with Kris, because I was watching Kris. Do you want to come play on a track?”  That started the whole thing.

EP: With the Texas Headhunters,  I read the the press notes about the Antone’s connection (Antone’s is the legendary blues club founded by the late Clifford Antone). How hard was it to get everybody together in one place so you could actually do this?

JD: Clifford found me when I was 15. He found Johnny when he was like 16, and he found Ian when he was like 12, and so he found all three of us. He wanted to make me into a pure blues guitar player, but I was kind of dipping my foot in different things, right? Johnny was the only one that went straight into that hardcore Antone’s Austin sound … Even though Ian’s history is insane. I mean, Stevie Ray Vaughan gave him his first guitar. 

My manager, who also manages Samantha Fish, he said, “You should put something together, man, with some other cats to do some real Texas shit.” And I was like, “What about Johnny Moeller and Ian Moore?” And he’s like, “Yeah, if you think you can get them.” So we went and recorded that record at Willie Nelson’s studio.

EP: Do you guys each sing the songs that you wrote? How did that work?

JD: Johnny sings one song that I wrote for him called “Everybody Loves You When You’re Down.” I felt Johnny was who we wanted to really pull off that Austin shuffle thing without the obvious comparisons.

EP: As far as the Austin and Texas blues sound, what is it about? How do you know it when you hear it?

JD: You know immediately when you hear it. … A lot of people, especially in 2025, they don’t really go back before Stevie (Ray Vaughan) and Jimmy (Vaughan), but we’re all blues nerds at the highest level.  So we’re all about Lightning Hopkins, we’re all about Freddie King up in Dallas. We even like the country blues stuff, all the Blind Lemon (Jefferson) stuff. 

Texas is pretty important, if you think about it. You know, Blind Lemon was eight or nine years before Robert Johnson. And then if you listen to “I’m Going Down” by Freddie King, that’s what would become British hard rock. Once you hear “I’m Going Down” by Freddie King in Dallas, Texas, you know Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, every one of them, just lost their shit. And so Texas is its own planet, man.

EP: So you share a manager with Samantha fish, which explains how you were just here a couple months ago.

JD: Yeah, we were, and we had a great show. We played with Samantha. That was great to see Samantha. I hadn’t seen her in a while. We spent 17 months together on a tour bus and got nominated for a Grammy together (for the “Death Wish Blues” album), and we have a special bond.

EP: How do people react to hearing songs that they hadn’t heard before? Your new songs? (The album was released Aug. 27, a few days after this interview was conducted)

JD: The great news is we recouped the record before it even came out. We actually recouped the whole record deal off of presales, really.

EP: That’s amazing. 

JD: It’s shocking! We’re shocked. But  yeah, they  (the Buffalo audience)  freaked, man. It’s three guitar players. We’re all assassins, and it’s healthy competition. Any one of us can  can take the gold ring at any moment. So I think they just dug it, because it was like, “Wow, this is the real deal.”  … Not too many blues guitar players you’re gonna see were actually influenced by people who live down the road from them.  It just doesn’t happen anymore. It’s because of our age. You know, we’re all in our 50s, and we all got to see most of the greats.

EP: I’ve got probably five or 10 years on you, and I didn’t get to see everybody I wanted but some of the people I’ve seen were pretty amazing, and they’re just not around anymore.

One of the things that always gets mentioned for you, and I see press stuff about you, is the fact that you played in the rockabilly band and loved the Clash. … one of the things that it takes me to is a bunch of the old people who were into the punk stuff have made some transitions into country or more roots-oriented stuff. I mean, obviously people like John Doe and people like that, but there seems to be a connection.

JD: Yeah, I mean, for all intents and purposes, country has become a retirement plan for old punk rockers. And you know, John Doe didn’t grow up on it like I did. His dad didn’t go to high school with George Jones.  But to be fair, Social D was doing “Ring of Fire” in 1978  And X was doing Johnny and June in ‘77. So there’s always been this connection. 

I remember I got crucified one time, in Nashville in the Tennessean newspaper. I said that Kurt Cobain had more in common with Hank Williams Sr. than anybody else in Nashville and and they lost their mind, but it’s true, you know?

For me, it’s all about roots music, you know? My grandparents and my parents were way into country. My grandparents were into old school country. My mom and dad were into Willie and Waylon, so I saw Willie and Waylon a dozen times by the time I was 15, and Merle Haggard, and every other great artist. 

But then my brother would come home with these blues records, because we knew the Antone’s family. And  Clifford gave me those records when I was 15. So I don’t feel like I’m all over the map. I just feel like I was a guitar player who  could go out and work and play with a bunch of different acts and be legitimate. But the punk and country thing is fascinating. 

Now what’s happening is I get these videos sent to me by people, and they’re like, “You got to listen to this guy. He sounds just like Johnny Cash.” Or “Listen to this 12-year-old. He’s playing ‘Eruption’ by Van Halen.” Man, if you want to impress me, fucking write a Johnny Cash song. Write “Eruption.”’ So the bar has been really lowered, but it’s because we’re drowning in a sea of mediocrity, competing with just everybody and their grandmother.

EP: There’s always been the Nashville assembly line kind of thing, which the greats sort of rise above. But now you’ve got the whole social media thing. Tthe place that you’re playing in Buffalo is Buffalo Iron Works, cool place. They had a pretty decent crowd (earlier this year) for this guy, who’s now 17 or 19 years old, who is famous because he was yodeling in a Walmart on a TikTok video five years ago, and now he’s out touring on the strength of his TikTok yodeling. 

JD: I’ll tell you something else. I just licensed script to Lewis Black and Ethan Hawke’s film production company. … So I’m diversifying. Because competing with hacks on TikTok is not my idea of  honoring the 100,000 hours I put in. (The common aphorism says it takes 10,000 to reach some kind of master at a skill) 

EP: One of the things I’m a fan of is the Outlaw Country Sirius/XM channel, because that’s the only country music I can listen to anymore. 

JD: Yeah, me too.

EP: Does that have much of an effect on you, as far as being one of the few places( on the radio) where you can actually get played?

JD: It does. The Headhunters are getting played. (Little Steven’s Underground Garage), we’re getting played on that. We’re getting played on Bluesville. You know, sometimes these punk stations will play me, but mostly Outlaw Country. I mean, I’ve done all nine of the Outlaw Country cruises. We went from being this little band they put on there the first year to one of the headliners in the theaters now every year. So it’s kind of beautiful, because it has its own ecosystem. We’re not competing with a bunch of poseurs from Nashville  with rip-off Gram Nudie suits on. I like Outlaw Country. I mean, my friend Jeremy Tepper  started that station. 

EP: I didn’t realize he started that! (Tepper also ran Diesel Only Records, sang with the World Famous Blue Jays and at one point was editor of The Journal of Country Music) 

JD:  Yeah, he just passed away. It’s been a year now, I think. But I met Jeremy Tepper the coolest way you could meet the guy. I was playing with Waylon and we were opening for the (Allman) Brothers in Atlanta, and I was the young guitar player. So when you meet the program director of Outlaw Country and you’re the lead guitar player for Waylon, it’s pretty good job security.

EP: Getting back to the band, you’ve been through Buffalo a few times. You played the Mohawk, I believe, which is shut down at the moment. They’re reopening it as a nonprofit? 

JD: It’s tough out there, man. People don’t have money. It’s a real weird time with the economy and music right now. 

EP: It’s crazy for the bars, and  people aren’t drinking the way they used to.

JD: People are starting to realize that it’s just terrible for you, and  this is even for a world class whiskey drinker like me. Let me tell you, man, eventually your organs just say, “I can’t do this.” I think a lot of those people are getting older too.I get it, man. You get to a certain age, you’re like, “”OK, I just don’t know how many more poisoned nights I got in me.” 

EP: It’s gotta be hard being out on the road. If you’ve got a bus, at least you can sleep in the same bed every night.

JD: It’s actually easier to drink when you got a bus, because you have a full bar on the bus. You got 22 hours to drink, and you only got two hours to play. …  You put the money in the bank, then you cash a check. A lot of people get that shit backwards.