Grammy-Nominated Blues-Rocker Jesse Dayton
Gets Nocturnal With “Night Brain”
From Shooter Jennings Produced Album
New Single and Music Video Arrive January 23
2024 is already shaping up to be a banner year for Jesse Dayton, who will release “Night Brain” — his blues-rock follow-up to last month’s “Baby’s Long Gone” — on Tuesday, January 23.
Released as both a single and cinematic music video, “Night Brain” arrives two weeks before the 66th Grammy Awards, where Death Wish Blues — Dayton’s chart-topping collaboration with fellow songwriter and modern-day guitar hero Samantha Fish — has been nominated for Best Contemporary Blues Album. The momentum will continue this spring with the release of Dayton’s upcoming solo record, as well as the final leg of the Death Wish Blues world tour.
“Night Brain” shines new light on an artist who earned his first Number 1 album three decades ago. Produced by Shooter Jennings, it’s Dayton at his very best, kicking off with an acoustic intro that gives way to the stomping sounds of a plugged-in power trio. Dayton has always blurred the boundaries between rock & roll, Texas blues, and old-school country, and “Night Brain” bottles that diversity into a three-and-a-half minutes of sharp songwriting and bombastic performances. It’s a song about the long hours after midnight, and it’s guaranteed to keep you awake.
“I first heard the term ‘night brain’ from music executive Chuck Kaye, who used it to refer to his brain bombarding him with every question and scenario imaginable in the middle of the night,” Dayton explains. “Code for insomnia, I realized that I, too, had suffered from this nocturnal ailment and thought, ‘Well, this is probably something everyone goes through, right?’ So whenever anyone else around my house didn’t get much sleep, I’d ask, ‘Got them night brain blues?’ Then eventually I wrote the lyrics in one 30-minute sitting around a blues riff that I simultaneously connected the melody to.”
