Wielding maximum-strength blues and heaping helpings of rockabilly swagger, Jesse Dayton’s latest comes with guns blazing, saturated in piss ’n vinegar. Coming hot on the heels of an album and tour with Samantha Fish, Dayton pours his post-Freddie King hollowbody licks into hard-luck stories about broken lives, bad relationships, and sleeplessness.

Produced by Shooter Jennings, The Hard Way Blues marinates in a grimy Texas hot sauce with echoes of early Tom Waits. The album’s first single, “Night Brain,” is Dayton’s alt-blues ode to insomnia. Morphing from a back-porch 1930s acoustic blues intro to intense modern psychedelic electric burn and twang, Dayton unleashes pentatonic napalm with joie de vivre. The intro to “Navasota” is Chuck Berry on crack, as Dayton settles into a hypnotic ZZ Top-style blues stomp. Gut-level slide playing abounds. More acoustic blues continues by way of Jimmy Page on “Baby’s Long Gone,” with high-protein salvos of savage rhythm playing and the kind of chicken pickin’ that would earn a salute from Steve Morse.

“Huntsville Prison Rodeo” is full-blown honky-tonk with too much earth for pop-country radio. Ditties like “God Ain’t Makin’ No More Of It” could save music, but there’s no accounting for great talent.

This article originally appeared in VG’s June 2024 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.