For the first summer in 14 years, Jesse Dayton didn’t tour. But then his year has been largely spent in the company of zombies. It’s worth noting that Dayton’s descent with the undead has been enormously prosperous. What started as a one-off writing music for Rob Zombie’s film The Devil’s Rejects has become a parallel career in movies. In a subsequent Zombie film, Dayton and his band were on screen as Captain Clegg and the Night Creatures, and that band did 40 dates touring with Zombie. Dayton also has a featured role in the upcoming film The Sinner, which is being shopped around as a TV pilot. It’s about a husband and wife who die and go to heaven, but the husband is sent back to earth, Dayton says, “to take care of bad situations. ... And I’m behind all the bad situations.” And in March he’ll begin directing Zombex, a zombie/pharmaceutical industry film he wrote, in New Orleans.

Dayton at La Carafe, photo by Eric Kayne

Amid all this zombie work, Dayton returned to the dancehalls. “Rob’s a great dude, and he changed my life,” Dayton says over double Makers’ at Warren’s downtown. “But I got away from my fanbase for doing that. Some people didn’t get it, some did. But the dancehalls were where I grew up. There are still a lot of them, but they don’t all really have two-stepping anymore. It’s a bunch of fratboys with backwards hats and their lighters up in the air.

“I wanted to make a record that’d fit with the old dancehalls.”
Dayton points out that his previous records were a mix of Texana: honky-tonk, rockabilly, Tex-Mex, Cajun. “This one,” he says of the just-released One for the Dancehalls, “is straight top-to-bottom country. But I also wanted it to be something where I wasn’t straight-out aping the old guys.”

It resembles the sets that Dayton and his band play weekly at the Broken Spoke in Austin, a honky-tonk oasis during his zombie period. “I wanted this record to measure up to what those people expect,” he says. “In a way, Austin’s like New York with its theater people, the connoisseurship of the theater people; it’s a culture.”

He and the band work up new material each week. And on Dancehalls the 10 songs feature new originals along with reworked songs written by ace Texas writers including Damon Bramblett and Mike Stinson, as well as a rethought version of Nick Lowe’s Lately I’ve Let Things Slide.

Dayton’s recent windfall allowed him to buy a house in South Austin, where he’s also in the process of building a studio. There his two careers can intersect. His first recording project is recording Stinson’s next album there. And he also plans to do post-production for Zombex there. It’s just the latest addition to an independent operation Dayton began in 2000 when he left outside record labels and started his own Stag Records. Years of touring honky-tonks, as well as opening gigs for acts such as punk band Social Distortion, had given Dayton a dedicated cult audience. Film has provided a bigger platform, so it’s easy to see why he’s dedicating so much time to it. Should The Sinner be picked up, he’ll be spending more time on camera. “They had me pack on the pounds so I looked more like a crime syndicate heavy,” he says.

Dayton in The Sinner

But before any more filming, he plans to tour Dancehalls. He’ll play the Monnalisa bar on Saturday, with shows in Cypress and Galveston during the next few weeks and then the Armadillo Palace at the end of February. Once Mardi Gras passes, he’s headed to New Orleans to shoot Zombex. The film — Dayton rattles off Aldous Huxley as a point of reference — concerns the government, the FDA and pharmaceutical companies giving Hurricane Katrina victims a medication to deal with post-traumatic stress. Veteran actor Lew Temple, an old friend of Dayton’s, will play the lead. Dayton’s wife, Emily Kaye, and a cast and crew from Austin will fill out the production.

More film means less music, something Dayton’s frank about. “This could be my last record like this for a long time,” he says. There are other recording projects in the works, including one he says “is like a Tony Joe White thing with loops.”

But he’s managed to create enough demand to remain a fairly local brand. Dayton barely holds back when talking about the business side of things. Occasionally he’ll ask for something to be off the record. But he admits to turning down huge money to create music for a promotional video for a fairly notorious energy-related company, while buying a house with the earnings from a Southwest Airlines spot. He proudly shows off his JD boots, a customized line with a bootmaker, which have sold over 150 pairs already.

“The long and short of it is I fancy myself as a writer,” he says. “That’s why I like Mike Stinson, who puts all of us to shame. But I have other attributes. Even though I’m not really comfortable in front of a camera, I need to do it. Simple as it sounds, it’s something that helps my family. I’ll never quit playing, but my life’s gotten a lot more interesting since this Zombie thing happened.”

»jesse dayton

when 10 p.m. Saturday
where Monnalisa at the Hotel Sorella, CityCentre, 800 W. Sam Houston Parkway North, Building 9
tickets free
information 
713-973-1600

when 10:30 p.m. Dec. 31
where Gloworama at Discovery Green, 1500 McKinney
free
(Note: the Gloworama New Year's Eve festivities begin at 7 p.m.)

when Jan. 22
where Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe, 413 20th, Galveston; 409-762-9199 (solo show)

when Feb. 26
where The Armadillo Palace, 5015 Kirby; 713-526-9700