Spread the Social Love:
Altsounds: This Captain Clegg persona is great and you seem to have really gone all out with it. Can you explain some of the back story?
Jesse Dayton: The way that it was all introduced to me was Rob called me in LA out of nowhere and said, "Hey, you're playing with Social Distortion tonight." I said, "Yeah, I am." He said, "Well, me and Sheri are in town and we're gonna come down." We already did that Banjo and Sullivan thing for The Devil's Rejects. It was a fluke that did really well. We were all shocked. So he comes down and everyone's kind of geeked out because it's Rob Zombie and Sheri Moon! We were hanging out in the backstage area, about 30 minutes from going out to play a sold out show. Right before I go on stage, Rob says, "I want you to play a horror bandleader for Halloween 2." I went from being like my usual bad ass self to walking out like a little 8 year old with a big smile on his face.
I grew up on the Halloween franchise and Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre... all of those. This was a really big deal. He came down to watch the show and that's where he got the idea for the Phantom Jam. We're playing rockabilly, honky tonk and all this stuff. The kids are freaking out and that became the inspiration behind the Phantom Jam, which is a big scene in the movie. He started emailing me and texting me song ideas. Literally that night he started with it. We talked a bunch about what we're gonna do. He sits down and writes this whole biography for Clegg. I'm a closet film geek, but the difference between Rob and other directors is he's not really interested in making a film. He wants to create a whole world that goes along with it. He said, "You're gonna be gravediggers from Sherman, Texas and you're gonna play honky tonk." It was fucking crazy. The whole process with Rob has been insane. Not in a bad way... in a really fucking fun way. So, we get all of these song ideas together and he's like, "Just write them out and you can make the record in your own studio." He was totally hands off.
I got in my car and I drove to New Orleans. I checked into Suite #2... write this down. It's important. At the Lamothe House. I stayed there for 3 nights and wrote the whole thing. The room is haunted. I had to book it in advance. The last was like, "That's the haunted one!" I said, "Yeah, I know." She said the latest thing reported was that the ghost doesn't like the clothes being put in the armoire. You make hear some rattling coat hangers. And I sure as shit did. I heard those rattling coat hangers.
So I wrote all of the songs there and called Rob when I was done. He said let's don't wait on anybody. He would send whatever money we needed to start on the record, he just wanted us to start right away. Little did I know this whole thing would be a much bigger deal than what Rob had said. I thought it would be this little thing in a movie. Little did I know he had this whole tour planned and wanted to put out an album.
Is Captain Clegg & The Night Creatures a real band, or was it just for the movie?
The thing is, we're creating a demand right now. Let's face it, having a psychobilly band in a horror movie is waaaay overdue. Where the fuck has that been? Considering most horror movies are filmed in ome bumfuck country town, psychobilly makes sense. I started listening to all of this stuff, but the majority of bands in that genre are total shit. They have no musicality. The songs are unoriginal. So it was pretty easy for us to make the coolest fuckin' psychobilly songs ever written. Plus, the Captain sings like Elvis and Danzig on steroids. Oh, I forgot. Danzig is already on steroids. [laughs]
To answer your question though, we're doing a behind the scenes documentary film that we're hoping to have out around Christmas. It's going to be very cool.
Oh, nice. Are you generally a fan of horror films?
I love the old school shit. I'm 40 years old now and I grew up in a small town on the Texas/Louisiana border. We only got 3 channels, but on the weekends one of those channels would have a horror night. Black Sunday... old Italian horror movies with Barbara Steele. I don't know if I loved those movies because they were great, or I just had a boner for Barbara Steele. [laughs]
Would you be interested in doing another conceptual project like this someday, or is that kind of up to Rob Zombie? [laughs]
[laughs] It is, really! We're talking about doing a Clegg movie. Not with Rob, but with some filmmaker friends of mine. We're thinking of going to New Orleans and doing a movie all about Clegg. He's such a cool character. I don't take any credit for it. Rob came up with all of it. Some of Rob's younger fans were like, "waaaah you're ripping off The Ghastly Ones!" Ummmm you might want to tell them about this little band called The Damned. Lord Such... he was the big horror guy before Alice Cooper. The Ghastly Ones are like a California surf band with some instrumentals. Give me a fucking break.
Let's talk about your music AS Jesse Dayton. Your music already appeals to a wide variety of people, and the Captain Clegg project is expanding that fanbase even further. How would you classify your sound?
Kind of hard to classify. If you say country, then people stick me in with all of that total bullshit coming out of Nashville. If I say rockabilly, that kind of paints me into a corner. I was doing an interview with this guy one time and he asked me this same question. I looked out the window of the bus and we were passing by a hotel, so I just told him 'Best Western.' [laughs]
I played guitar with Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Ray Price, Johnny Bush... if your readers go to youtube and look me up, they'll see footage of me playing with them in the studio when I was really young. I got introduced to that scene like that in a really cool way. That was weird is right after that, I played on Musta Been High by The Supersuckers. In '95, way before Hank III, Jesse Dayton was out playing white trash honky tonk music opening for all of these punk rock bands.
People are often confused about what the Texas music scene is all about. In your opinion, what's the difference between the Nashville sound and what Texas is putting out there?
The difference is that Rascall Flatts makes The Monkees sound like the fucking Rolling Stones and Jesse Dayton is a goddamn certified Texas outlaw musician.
[laughs] What was the first band or artist you discovered completely on your own, without suggestion from family or friends?
The Clash. I was force fed large helpings of George Jones and Buck Owens by my country ass parents. When I was about 15 or 16, I saw an interview with Joe Strummer on MTV. I went and got my hair cut like his. In a duck tail. I didn't know that was a rockabilly thing, not punk rock. I was the only kid from my little redneck shit town that would go over to Houston and see punk bands. Punk kind of led me into other things like reggae and rockabilly and roots and all that. But, I grew up with country, so of course that was in my blood. Joe Strummer saved me from going to Foghat concerts.
[laughs] You have a strong cult following all around the world... do you want to be a household name, or do you enjoy being a 'secret genius'?
My deal is, I come from a super blue collar, oil field worker type people. My idea of success as opposed to a record executives idea of success are totally different things. If I can do my art exactly like I want to without having to change and still pay for everything I need, then I feel like I'm successful. It would be great if I could do something honestly with my music that would open me up to the whole world, but if that doesn't happen, it's gonna be ok.
I'll tell ya one thing, I sure do like this acting shit. I had a fake fire place in my trailer and a bottle of Jim Beam that Bob Weinstein bought me. I heard that Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson both wrote great songs in the trailers of movie sets, and I wrote a bunch of songs on the set of Halloween 2. I'm gonna do more acting. I am gonna start working on a film at the start of the year that is gonna be cool.
What's the film?
I can't talk about it yet. Ask me again in a few months.
I will. So, who is your favorite 'secret genius' artist?
There is this really great songwriter named Jim Lauderdale that is like this crazy songwriter. He's a cross between George Jones and Gram Parsons. He's a great writer but the mainstream public doesn't know who he is. He's always been a secret inspiration to me.
Do you believe in destiny?
Yeah, I do, because I'm a hopeless romantic. It's hard for me to be an atheist because I'm a romantic at heart. I like to believe in things bigger than myself, even though I don't know if they exist. The night that I played with Social Distortion and Rob came out... I think that was supposed to happen.
http://www.jessedayton.com/
Captain Clegg
Jesse Dayton: The way that it was all introduced to me was Rob called me in LA out of nowhere and said, "Hey, you're playing with Social Distortion tonight." I said, "Yeah, I am." He said, "Well, me and Sheri are in town and we're gonna come down." We already did that Banjo and Sullivan thing for The Devil's Rejects. It was a fluke that did really well. We were all shocked. So he comes down and everyone's kind of geeked out because it's Rob Zombie and Sheri Moon! We were hanging out in the backstage area, about 30 minutes from going out to play a sold out show. Right before I go on stage, Rob says, "I want you to play a horror bandleader for Halloween 2." I went from being like my usual bad ass self to walking out like a little 8 year old with a big smile on his face.
I grew up on the Halloween franchise and Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre... all of those. This was a really big deal. He came down to watch the show and that's where he got the idea for the Phantom Jam. We're playing rockabilly, honky tonk and all this stuff. The kids are freaking out and that became the inspiration behind the Phantom Jam, which is a big scene in the movie. He started emailing me and texting me song ideas. Literally that night he started with it. We talked a bunch about what we're gonna do. He sits down and writes this whole biography for Clegg. I'm a closet film geek, but the difference between Rob and other directors is he's not really interested in making a film. He wants to create a whole world that goes along with it. He said, "You're gonna be gravediggers from Sherman, Texas and you're gonna play honky tonk." It was fucking crazy. The whole process with Rob has been insane. Not in a bad way... in a really fucking fun way. So, we get all of these song ideas together and he's like, "Just write them out and you can make the record in your own studio." He was totally hands off.
I got in my car and I drove to New Orleans. I checked into Suite #2... write this down. It's important. At the Lamothe House. I stayed there for 3 nights and wrote the whole thing. The room is haunted. I had to book it in advance. The last was like, "That's the haunted one!" I said, "Yeah, I know." She said the latest thing reported was that the ghost doesn't like the clothes being put in the armoire. You make hear some rattling coat hangers. And I sure as shit did. I heard those rattling coat hangers.
So I wrote all of the songs there and called Rob when I was done. He said let's don't wait on anybody. He would send whatever money we needed to start on the record, he just wanted us to start right away. Little did I know this whole thing would be a much bigger deal than what Rob had said. I thought it would be this little thing in a movie. Little did I know he had this whole tour planned and wanted to put out an album.
Is Captain Clegg & The Night Creatures a real band, or was it just for the movie?
The thing is, we're creating a demand right now. Let's face it, having a psychobilly band in a horror movie is waaaay overdue. Where the fuck has that been? Considering most horror movies are filmed in ome bumfuck country town, psychobilly makes sense. I started listening to all of this stuff, but the majority of bands in that genre are total shit. They have no musicality. The songs are unoriginal. So it was pretty easy for us to make the coolest fuckin' psychobilly songs ever written. Plus, the Captain sings like Elvis and Danzig on steroids. Oh, I forgot. Danzig is already on steroids. [laughs]
To answer your question though, we're doing a behind the scenes documentary film that we're hoping to have out around Christmas. It's going to be very cool.
Oh, nice. Are you generally a fan of horror films?
I love the old school shit. I'm 40 years old now and I grew up in a small town on the Texas/Louisiana border. We only got 3 channels, but on the weekends one of those channels would have a horror night. Black Sunday... old Italian horror movies with Barbara Steele. I don't know if I loved those movies because they were great, or I just had a boner for Barbara Steele. [laughs]
Would you be interested in doing another conceptual project like this someday, or is that kind of up to Rob Zombie? [laughs]
[laughs] It is, really! We're talking about doing a Clegg movie. Not with Rob, but with some filmmaker friends of mine. We're thinking of going to New Orleans and doing a movie all about Clegg. He's such a cool character. I don't take any credit for it. Rob came up with all of it. Some of Rob's younger fans were like, "waaaah you're ripping off The Ghastly Ones!" Ummmm you might want to tell them about this little band called The Damned. Lord Such... he was the big horror guy before Alice Cooper. The Ghastly Ones are like a California surf band with some instrumentals. Give me a fucking break.
Let's talk about your music AS Jesse Dayton. Your music already appeals to a wide variety of people, and the Captain Clegg project is expanding that fanbase even further. How would you classify your sound?
Kind of hard to classify. If you say country, then people stick me in with all of that total bullshit coming out of Nashville. If I say rockabilly, that kind of paints me into a corner. I was doing an interview with this guy one time and he asked me this same question. I looked out the window of the bus and we were passing by a hotel, so I just told him 'Best Western.' [laughs]
I played guitar with Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Ray Price, Johnny Bush... if your readers go to youtube and look me up, they'll see footage of me playing with them in the studio when I was really young. I got introduced to that scene like that in a really cool way. That was weird is right after that, I played on Musta Been High by The Supersuckers. In '95, way before Hank III, Jesse Dayton was out playing white trash honky tonk music opening for all of these punk rock bands.
People are often confused about what the Texas music scene is all about. In your opinion, what's the difference between the Nashville sound and what Texas is putting out there?
The difference is that Rascall Flatts makes The Monkees sound like the fucking Rolling Stones and Jesse Dayton is a goddamn certified Texas outlaw musician.
[laughs] What was the first band or artist you discovered completely on your own, without suggestion from family or friends?
The Clash. I was force fed large helpings of George Jones and Buck Owens by my country ass parents. When I was about 15 or 16, I saw an interview with Joe Strummer on MTV. I went and got my hair cut like his. In a duck tail. I didn't know that was a rockabilly thing, not punk rock. I was the only kid from my little redneck shit town that would go over to Houston and see punk bands. Punk kind of led me into other things like reggae and rockabilly and roots and all that. But, I grew up with country, so of course that was in my blood. Joe Strummer saved me from going to Foghat concerts.
[laughs] You have a strong cult following all around the world... do you want to be a household name, or do you enjoy being a 'secret genius'?
My deal is, I come from a super blue collar, oil field worker type people. My idea of success as opposed to a record executives idea of success are totally different things. If I can do my art exactly like I want to without having to change and still pay for everything I need, then I feel like I'm successful. It would be great if I could do something honestly with my music that would open me up to the whole world, but if that doesn't happen, it's gonna be ok.
I'll tell ya one thing, I sure do like this acting shit. I had a fake fire place in my trailer and a bottle of Jim Beam that Bob Weinstein bought me. I heard that Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson both wrote great songs in the trailers of movie sets, and I wrote a bunch of songs on the set of Halloween 2. I'm gonna do more acting. I am gonna start working on a film at the start of the year that is gonna be cool.
What's the film?
I can't talk about it yet. Ask me again in a few months.
I will. So, who is your favorite 'secret genius' artist?
There is this really great songwriter named Jim Lauderdale that is like this crazy songwriter. He's a cross between George Jones and Gram Parsons. He's a great writer but the mainstream public doesn't know who he is. He's always been a secret inspiration to me.
Do you believe in destiny?
Yeah, I do, because I'm a hopeless romantic. It's hard for me to be an atheist because I'm a romantic at heart. I like to believe in things bigger than myself, even though I don't know if they exist. The night that I played with Social Distortion and Rob came out... I think that was supposed to happen.
http://www.jessedayton.com/
Captain Clegg
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