Jesse Daniel

[00:00:00] All right, we're here with Jesse Daniel. We were talking about mustaches and his beautiful mustache, Jesse's got here. And then I realized Wes had Alan Jackson sitting right there, who probably the goat country mustache.

[00:00:31] I'm like, I don't want to try to think real quick now through all the artists. Is there a better mustache than Alan Jackson's? Man, there's a I know Vern Gosden, he had one trying to think of who else like some

[00:00:45] guys before him that might have but you know, as far as those 90s guys and he has the iconic the iconic stash, you know, pretty good one. Right? Oh yeah. Who's that Joe Diffie? Oh yeah. The great like dad stash. This picture of Aaron Tippett is pretty hardcore.

[00:01:08] Yeah. Aaron Tippett had a bad ass. There's a lot of maintenance involved with the mustache man for me. Not at all. If I start noticing it's kind of gross, but if I start noticing that it's going into my

[00:01:24] mouth, like if I'm eating food and it's like getting too much, that's when I trim it. Other than that, you know, I just make sure there's no crazy hair sticking up and give it a little brush every now and again.

[00:01:35] But I'm not one of those guys who's like putting waxes and oils and stuff like that. Not for me. I don't get the like middle part very thick and that just kind of ruins the aesthetic for me. Like I can't get the good Burt Reynolds going.

[00:01:51] You got like a mustache. You got like, you got like a, like I'm a waiter at an Italian restaurant, kind of mustache and like it just doesn't. Sure. Yeah. Mine separates a little bit right there, but not as bad as it used to. That thing's solid.

[00:02:07] But as far as the music, obviously we'll get to. But kind of as a newer, younger artist, we could say, and maybe we have some fans that are listening that haven't heard your music. I know a lot of them for sure have.

[00:02:22] We see it when we post about it, kind of the background, the start, I think would be kind of interesting to know like how you got started, where you're from and kind of how that led to the path you're on now with some really incredible country music.

[00:02:38] Yeah, definitely, man. So I'm from a town called Ben Lomond, California. It's a small little mountain town on the central coast of California. Grew up there. My dad was a musician. He still is, but growing up, he always was playing in bands and he played country bands,

[00:03:02] blues bands, a lot of classic rock type stuff. And so I just kind of grew up around a lot of just kind of old school roots type music, and that was my earliest influence getting into that type of music is hearing my dad play it.

[00:03:21] And I had some friends, I went to a fairly small high school and a lot of the guys that I went to school with all listen to country music. And so I was just kind of exposed to a lot of different stuff.

[00:03:33] I myself got into punk rock music. I started playing that. I got really into that stuff and I was a drummer to begin with. My dad was a guitar player. I wanted to do something different. So I learned to play drums. I started playing in bands.

[00:03:51] And that was kind of my first taste in getting in front of an audience is getting to play drums with my dad's band, getting to play some of those classic rock and country songs

[00:04:01] and then get to play punk rock shows with the bands that I was playing with. That was my first introduction to that. And fast forward a lot of years, I just kind of had always appreciated and loved country

[00:04:16] music and I kind of ended up going back to it through a lot of different turns of events. I got sober. That was a big turning point for me getting clean and sober.

[00:04:30] For years and years, I kind of struggled with being able to hold it together and that kept me from playing music. But I always tell people country music saved my life. You know that and meeting my fiance, those two things are what kind of changed my whole

[00:04:46] world and shaped it into what it is now. I think I actually read on your website that you might have been in one of your rehab stints when you saw a guy playing kind of country at the facility and I think you said to him,

[00:05:04] I want to do that. And can you kind of tell that story really quickly? Oh yeah, definitely. So I was in Oakland, California at a rehab facility and they were these guys that would

[00:05:19] come in and they'd bring guys that would volunteer their time and they would kind of bring an instrument or they'd come and give like an inspirational speech to the people who were in there.

[00:05:30] And one of the guys who would come in and work and volunteer was a guy named Jerome Ziegler. I'm sorry, Jerome, if you're listening to this right now and I'm butchering your name. That's how I believe he says it.

[00:05:43] But he came in and he had a guitar and he would play classic country tunes. He played songs like Hank Williams songs, Emmylou Harris, Billy Joe Shaver. He was playing a lot of like kind of classic, you know, a lot of like 70s and 80s stuff like that.

[00:05:59] And I loved it. You know, I just immediately kind of wanted to hang out with this guy and wouldn't leave him alone about like, you know, how about this song? How about this song? Just hanging out.

[00:06:10] And one night I remember specifically telling him, you know, like, man, I really want to do what you do and I want to play music, you know, and do that because he was telling me he would gig around and play music for a living.

[00:06:22] And he just kind of looked at me really matter of fact and just said, why don't you? You know, what's holding you back from doing that? That was the first time I'd really thought about it in simple terms.

[00:06:31] Like there is nothing holding me back other than myself, you know, at this point. Funny part about that story is fast forward. I was sitting years and years later, I was sitting at a restaurant with my fiancee, Jodi. We were getting a bite to eat in Austin, Texas.

[00:06:49] And I see this guy walking down the street who looks just like that guy who brought the music in, you know, and I didn't know this guy's name. I didn't know where he lived. Nothing about him. I just had this kind of distant memory of him.

[00:07:03] And sure enough, it was him. So I went up to him and I was like, hey, man, did you used to come into a rehab program in Oakland maybe like six years ago? And he's like, yeah, I did.

[00:07:11] And I was like, man, you completely changed my life, you know, just by inspiring me in the way that you did. And so he's kind of become a friend of mine now. We get lunch time to time.

[00:07:23] And I just can't believe that I ran into him like that. He lives in Austin, Texas, close to where we live now. And it all kind of came full circle. Pretty incredible. That's pretty crazy. Yeah, I was gonna actually ask you just answered it where you live.

[00:07:39] How you like in Austin, Texas area? I love it, man. We're just south of Austin and we're kind of out in the country a little bit. So we're close to close to the city if we need to get there to fly or to do anything

[00:07:54] like that and close to all the great music that's there. But we're just far enough to be out of the rat race, you know, one of those California transplants. It's funny, though, man. I'm from is more country than where I moved to Texas. You know what I mean?

[00:08:11] It's like people don't they don't really realize, but we get a bad rap, but we're not all we're not all there. A lot of people don't know. But there's like parts of California that are very country. But the majority of it, man, it really is.

[00:08:29] I mean, it's such a huge state and people don't know. California is the nation's leading dairy producer, you know, one of the nation's leading cattle producers. Like we seriously have so much agriculture there and so many different national

[00:08:47] parks, tons of just public land for hunting, fishing, all kinds of stuff like that. And it bums me out. It gets a bad rap. So that's kind of my cross to bear with doing what I'm doing is trying to give my home

[00:09:01] state a good name and not be just another one of those Californians coming to Texas to everybody. Yeah, yeah, I was just teasing. Yeah, it is. Oh, no, I know you were, man. That's like my automatic response. I always am like, that's my crusade.

[00:09:17] You know, when you were pretty close, grew up pretty close to San Francisco in the Bay Area, you know, relatively like what is is that something that where you like don't ever

[00:09:29] really go there where you're from or do you kind of go there and it's like such a culture shock kind of growing up in a tiny little mountain town? Definitely it is.

[00:09:37] It was kind of like any time we go, I had an uncle and aunt that lived in San Francisco. And so we go see them every now and again. But, you know, it was like hour and a half, two hour drive to get up there.

[00:09:49] And yeah, it was definitely culture shock because it was just everything's close together and it's city traffic and tons of people. It's weird. It's the whole state, you know, it's like you could be in one area and then you go 20

[00:10:02] minutes out and it's like you're in Louisiana or something like that. You know, it's like you'll be in these different little micro climates, you know? So it was kind of it was definitely kind of like that growing up.

[00:10:12] Tending the cattle and the next thing you know, you're on the BART and some guys pooping on the train. Yeah. See, you're familiar, you know? Well, we know I was laughing because. Wes and I met in Chicago, I'm from Indiana. He's from basically of Iowa and Illinois, Dixon.

[00:10:30] So like Dixon, right? Was like two and a half hours or so. It depends. Lately it's been quicker. But it's like similar. So you go from Dixon to Chicago, it's like completely different. You come from even I was like an hour and change from Chicago and Indiana.

[00:10:48] And I mean, I went a little bit as I got closer to my like later teenage years. But you would go and you're just you're just overwhelmed that you would see whatever you see cool stuff.

[00:10:59] You see homeless people, you see bars, you see like restaurants and you're just like, whoa. And then you see people shooting up and you're just like, damn, this is this is a little different, right? Yeah, definitely. And I had friends growing up who'd never been to Chicago.

[00:11:13] I went when I was a kid, but like never wanted to go, weren't going to go. It just wasn't. I'm not going there. I have no desire to go there. I'm not like and I think it's just like an interesting perspective to come from small

[00:11:26] because I had been there. I grew up. I was born in the Chicago suburbs and then moved to the country when I was little. So I had seen the city before, but plenty of people were like, I'm never going there. I'm never going to go there.

[00:11:39] Why would I ever want to go there? What for? I don't know. I was kind of the same how I grew up. You know, a lot of people didn't really go to the city necessarily. San Francisco, Chicago, whatever, like not a lot of hunting and fishing, which you're

[00:11:54] a big fan of in those places. Right. So did you just grow up and always were doing those things? We obviously we're well aware of your love of the outdoors and all that as a kid growing up, you just or did you get into it a little later?

[00:12:11] I got into it a little later, but I mean, as a kid, I grew up not too far from a lake. It's called Loch Lomond and near Ben Lomond where I grew up and we'd go there quite a bit.

[00:12:23] And my dad, he's not a big outdoorsman or anything, but he used to take us camping quite a bit. And we go out on that lake and fished handful of times growing up. And so it was always something I was kind of interested in.

[00:12:36] And I just I grew up in the woods, so I was always outdoors. You know, like I had a neighbor that I grew up next to his old Vietnam vet and he was an archery, like a traditional archery enthusiast. You know, he was just all around badass outdoorsman.

[00:12:54] You know, he his old car, he drive it around and he'd find if he found an intact animal that somebody hit, he'd take it home and skin it. And, you know, like he was just that kind of guy.

[00:13:05] So I got to skin some some deer, raccoons, all kinds of stuff with him. And he just kind of was a big, I think, influence as a kid and getting into the outdoors. So hunting was something I got to do later in life.

[00:13:23] You know, I'd never done any of that growing up. I always wanted to. And it's become a huge passion of mine. You seem like a pretty skilled fisherman. I've seen some of those big old bass you post on Instagram. Oh, thanks, man.

[00:13:38] With the weather getting colder, what do you have tied on in December? What's like your your good big confidence lure, colder water? What should I be throwing this month? Man, I haven't been doing a whole lot of bass fishing, especially, you know, as it has got

[00:13:55] Especially, you know, as it has got colder. But I did take a friend of mine. So my pedal steel player, his name is Caleb Mello, and his little brother came out to visit not too long ago. It's pretty cold.

[00:14:09] And one of my favorite things to do because the bass will pretty much always crush these things are the is to use live bait to use shiner minnows. I'll catch those and we'll just go shiner fishing under, you know, a bobber.

[00:14:25] And you'll pretty much always catch bass and pretty good sized bass, because if you've got a good minnow on there, that's usually that's like big bass candy. You know, that's what the big the big mamas want to eat. So right on.

[00:14:39] That's kind of my confidence thing for this time of year, I'd say. Right on. I'm gonna try it. I'll report back. Yeah. Try some live shiners, even though it's like 30 degrees here and probably still 50 or 60 in Texas.

[00:14:51] But I've been I've been duck hunting now that it's getting colder. That's kind of what I've shifted. It's a little bit of downtime that we have before we get back to work, trying to enjoy, you know, a little bit of time outside.

[00:15:04] Yeah, I was going to ask about that. Obviously, your album 2020 rolling on 2021 beyond these walls. Is there a plan for a new album to come fairly soon or in 2023? Or is it focused on touring or a little combination of writing and touring or what's the.

[00:15:22] Yeah, we've we've got some big plans for 2023. We do have some release plans. I don't want to give away too much, but we've got some stuff coming up in 2023 that we've been kind of working on this year.

[00:15:36] And and beyond that, we've also got some we've got some cool stuff. I wish I could talk about it, but it's all it's all surprise type of type of material. But we've got some really big things coming in the new year and even in the following

[00:15:52] year that we're going to be announcing. One of your more recent releases was a Waylon Jennings cover. What was the motivation and choice behind that one? Oh, yeah. So that song, Jodi, her name is Jodi Liferidge. She's my fiance and business partner, songwriting partner.

[00:16:11] We kind of do we've done everything together. We built what we do up kind of from the ground up together. And so that when we first met, that song was one of those almost kind of romantic songs that we had.

[00:16:26] It was like, you know, that was our song. You know, you asked me to. That was just one of those tunes for us. And so we were thinking about what songs we would want to cover when we were cutting beyond

[00:16:38] these walls, you know, just to have a couple extra songs in the can just for fun. And we couldn't think of any other song that was, you know, any more sentimental than that one. And so that was kind of the reason I'm a huge Waylon fan.

[00:16:50] Also, I got Waylon tattoo on my wrist right here. And yeah, just felt right, you know, and it's a good song, too, that kind of works as a duet, like a man and woman singing to each other. So we felt that that was just the natural choice.

[00:17:07] Real quick before we let you go, we did get some fan questions, but this one specifically I'll tie into you opening for American Aquarium. Recently, we had BJ on as well. Not that long ago, but you were in. It sounds like BJ is a cool dude, man.

[00:17:23] He's such a nice guy. Yeah, he was awesome. But this fan asked about, will you come back and play Michigan after your catalog converter was stolen? So what's the story behind that? What's the story behind that whole? Yeah, let's go. Oh, yeah. No, I'm just kidding.

[00:17:42] Michigan, we will definitely come back. Ohio, I don't know if we're going to come back to go see Ohio. I'm just kidding. We'll come back to Ohio. But we stopped in Toledo, Ohio to spend the night. It was actually after our show in Michigan.

[00:17:58] I think it was Detroit. And so everybody thought we got stolen in Detroit, but we actually were driving on our way to not Columbus. Beachland Beachland, Boulder Town is that Cleveland? Cleveland. Mistake by the lake. Yeah. Hey, I've never been there. I'm just I'm just that's it.

[00:18:19] I've heard mistake by the lake. I've heard that as a slogan. If I was from there, I'd say that all the time. Sorry, Cleveland fans. I just I've just heard it now. So we stopped in Toledo overnight at what we thought was a pretty good looking hotel.

[00:18:36] You know, we're like, hey, let's get usually we're on a budget, especially when you're doing support like for a band like American Aquarium and you're the opener. You're not making as much money. So you're trying to like budget things a little bit.

[00:18:49] We stay in some always decent hotels. We used to do like the worst motels ever. And we've worked our way up to like some better ones. So we get better sleep. Holiday Inn Express. This particular evening, we're like, hey, let's go. Let's get a nicer hotel.

[00:19:02] Get some good rest and get a good shower and this and that. Be on our way in the morning. Looked like a really nice area. We pull in and sure enough, we fire up the van in the morning and it sounded like a race car.

[00:19:16] It was just we looked underneath and they saw the converter right off. You know, when you're not when you're on a budget, you're on the road and you're trying to make ends meet and everything. That's kind of like the worst case scenario.

[00:19:29] We ended up driving it down and I wish that I could remember the name of the shop that we took it to. But there's this guy that helped us out big time and ended up getting it fixed super quick and really affordably.

[00:19:43] I mean, as affordable as you can expect some big repair like that to be. And we did a live stream to recoup the cost and we got it covered. So I want to thank all the fans, anybody who's watching or who was at the event.

[00:19:58] Or who was at those American Aquarium shows who kicked in some money. Thank you so much. And that's the story of the catalytic converter. But the question definitely we're going to come back to Ohio and back to Michigan for sure. I love it up there.

[00:20:14] I mean, that's the best way to end it too with the fans kind of helping out right. And the independent artist like the like that's why we love guys like yourself. It's like the fans.

[00:20:26] It's a different type of like fandom, you know, like you see the you know, you're obviously going to continue to grow and stuff. But like fans really latch on to that stage of, you know, all right, motel now hotel, you know, or now you get the bus.

[00:20:45] And that's always really cool to see. Yeah. When you get to as a fan because I'm you know, that's what we are, you know, like you guys and myself, like we're music fans at the end of the day, I'm a huge music fan and

[00:20:58] to get to see a band, you know, grow and be a part of that, you know, like, I remember when I helped those guys get their catalytic converter. And now they're on the opera, you're now they're doing this, it's like that you feel

[00:21:11] like you're a part of something when you get to watch a band grow like that. So yeah, there's nothing like that, that relationship between the bands and the fans, the artists and the listener, you know, we can have one without the other. Yep.

[00:21:25] Well, we'll be excited and ready for the we are excited. We'll be ready to share the news when you're ready for the new music. And we'll have to send you some of the new roof outdoors. Tease I wear you guys here that you sent me all the time.

[00:21:40] Yeah, lots of I don't know if you're into Yellowstone at all the show, but we got a lot of new Yellowstone stuff now working with them. And that's awesome. You know, I love that show, man. I mean, you look like you could be on there. Yeah, right.

[00:21:53] Yeah, I'm going for my John Dutton look right now here with the with the. I love it. I love it. Yeah, I love that show, man. It's so well done. And it's really cool to what they're doing for artists. Music though.

[00:22:07] Yeah, that the music is for me the it's like, it didn't have that it would be way too soap opera E for me like shirt. You started getting that music in there and oh, that's Shane Smith up there in the Saints

[00:22:20] performing or that's Whiskey Myers back in the day. And it was all like all kinds of great up and come. I mean, come on and get you on there. Yeah, I know what it's Taylor Sheridan. I believe that's the guy Taylor. You're watching this right now, man.

[00:22:36] I'm ready. Well, I'm ready. We post a lot of content, so we'll start dropping those tweets out there. I actually might have written an article about songs or songs. Should be on the that's a good one to ask on Twitter. I'm pretty sure I had Jesse on there.

[00:22:51] I'm 99% sure that article. Yeah, I do. I remember that one, man. I think I think I was and I appreciate that. Yeah, I'm down. I would love to be on Yellowstone, you know, and I think like that's another one of those

[00:23:05] things as an artist just to have your dad to be at a show and have fans singing the words back to you or to like hear your songs in a show or movie or anything like that. That's just so incredibly gratifying.

[00:23:18] You know, it's a it's just a cool milestone, you know, so even just just the prospect of that makes me excited. Yeah, Taylor Sheridan on the horn. Well, Jesse, be safe out there on the road.

[00:23:33] And we're ready for the music when you want to send it to us. We'll share it. You got it. I'll keep you guys in the loop and I appreciate you so much for having me. All right, Jesse. Take care, buddy.