Texas Headhunters: Johnny Moeller / Jesse Dayton / Ian Moore

Rise and Shine

Hardcharger / Blue Elan Records

Round Two, and the Texas Headhunters have delivered another ten haymakers of Lone Star-infused, bluesy rock ‘n roll and soulful bluster with wild abandon. Rise and Shine proves that the success Jesse Dayton, Ian Moore, and Johnny Moeller achieved with their self-titled Texas Headhunters debut, released just over a year ago, was by far no fluke. Each player bringing 30 years of professional experience and mutual admiration to the gig undoubtedly helped.

Moeller has been the six string stylist in The Fabulous Thunderbirds, the gold standard of Texas blues/rock bands, for two decades. Moore once played guitar in Joe Ely’s band and perhaps picked up a bit of the Texas legend’s worldliness to fuel his own cosmic blues identity. Dayton began as a guitar-slinging, Nudie-suited country music rebel, and like Ely too, began injecting punk rock energy into his gritty storytelling. Their individual pedigrees click as tightly as the locks on a prison gate on Rise and Shine. The songs, all original and recorded and self-produced in five quick days, get right to the point and are propelled with unfussy style by bassist Michael Archer and drummer Jay Moeller, Johnny’s brother.

The triple-guitar crunch and chunky rhythm in Dayton’s album-opening “Cut N’ Run” recalls the dynamic blues-rock of Freddie King musically, and ZZ Top’s Billy F. Gibbons by way of Dayton’s raspy baritone singing. Instantly, a whole tradition of Texas boogie comes alive. Then, Moeller steps up and nods to the funky blues of Johnny “Guitar” Watson in “Drive You Crazy,” dropping stiletto sharp notes all the while. “Bigshot,” with its big, swampy groove riding on a Bo Diddley beat, details a character Moore conjured up after spotting a strange sign on a highway overpass.

Each time the needle drops—and there will be plenty of spins—on this album full of seemingly simple tunes, another aspect within each of them reveals itself until a realization occurs that they’re quite complex in nature after all. For instance, Dayton manages to inject lazy, smoky blues, rockabilly, and rockabilly’s unruly son, psychobilly, into “I Did it Anyway,” a story inspired by his early years and unsavory friends. In it, Moore plays a knife-scraping solo to accentuate the setting.

Johnny Moeller comes into his own as a songwriter on Rise and Shine. His title track’s gleeful shuffle belies his message that if folks don’t wake up, this home we call America could be a goner. Moeller takes the first vocal verse, followed by Dayton, and then Moore, reflecting the unity lacking in society nowadays. But the socio-political prize goes to Dayton. In his down ‘n dangerous “Dogs of Laredo,” he points his axe directly at ICE throughout a barrage of Texas blues-rocking fire.

Rise and Shine offers continuous, unyielding action. Even Moeller’s requisite instrumental workout, “Funky So n’ So,” hits the bullseye, its relentless beats catchier than a plague. Jesse Dayton, Ian Moore, and Johnny Moeller have delivered an album that owes much to past legends but establishes the distinct sound of the Texas Headhunters rising and shining. The last album to hit with such a force at every turn by a group with similarly notorious pedigree, to these ears, was the 1991 debut by Arc Angels, the band anchored by Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Double Trouble rhythm section following Vaughan’s death. But I dare say Rise and Shine surpasses Arc Angels by a Texas Mile. Certainly, in the hair-raising grooves, and guitar departments.

Tom Clarke for MAS

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