It has been said, most famously by author Ella Winter (who gave Thomas Wolfe the title for his classic novel) that “You can’t go home again.” Be that as it may, the Road Kings are eschewing Winter’s advice and returning to Houston and the Continental Club for two reunion shows on Friday, December 27, and Saturday, December 28.
If you’ve been around Houston for a while, you may remember the Road Kings as a hard-rocking, hard-gigging rockabilly band that sprang up in the Bayou City during the early ‘90s and made a run at serious stardom. After a successful regrouping for a couple of shows at the end of last year, guitarist Jesse Dayton, bassist Jason Burns and drummer Eric Tucker are uncorking the magic once again during the holiday season.
These days, Dayton and Tucker are based in Austin and still active in the music business. Burns is a luthier living in London, where he runs Blast Cult, a firm that makes custom guitars and basses (Dayton plays one of the company’s instruments). But back when, the Road Kings ruled the roost in Houston.
Speaking via Zoom, Dayton recalls the band’s early days with fondness and the perspective that is acquired with age. The Road Kings performed some of their early shows at the now-defunct Fitzgerald’s, where they were initially relegated to the less prestigious downstairs space. In addition to playing the gig, the band was also responsible for selling tickets to the show, which was a common practice at the time. “So we played, and we got paid seven bucks,” Dayton remembers, “and we said, ‘Hey, we’re not going to play here anymore,’ and [Sara Fitzgerald] said, ‘I’ll put you guys upstairs,’ and then it started taking off. That was kind of the beginning.”
Things were a bit rocky at first. “Brian [Lux] was the first bass player, but he couldn’t show up for the gigs on time. We played this gig at the Mucky Duck, and me and Brian almost got in a fight in the back of the Mucky Duck because he made everyone wait, like, 45 minutes before he showed up. So then we got Jason Burns, who was in a band in Dallas called the Red Devils. Jason moved down, and his first gig with the Road Kings was opening for the Stray Cats. They were real hot back then, but we gave them a run for their money, because we had a local following, and we were good.”
“The thing about the Road Kings is that we were never one of those Richie Cunningham, bow tie, purist [rockabilly] bands. We kind of had this punk rock energy.”
The Road Kings distinguished themselves from other rockabilly revivalists by incorporating influences from other types of music, most notably punk rock. Dayton explains it this way: “The thing about the Road Kings is that we were never one of those Richie Cunningham, bow tie, purist bands. We kind of had this punk rock energy. And I think that’s what made us so different, because at that time when the Road Kings were active, we were playing, we were going to Europe, we had a record deal, and there weren’t that many rockabilly bands in America.
“All of the other bands seemed to be a bit more straightforward, more traditional, and we were listening to the stuff coming out of Texas and Louisiana when it came to old rockabilly, like Joe Clay and Johnny Carroll. If you go back and listen to that stuff, it’s pretty wild. We would go to see these other bands, and we could tell that they were leaning toward more sophisticated [genres] like Western swing, and this jive jazz thing. But we ended up touring with [California punk rockers] Social Distortion, and we got a pretty big national following out of doing that.”
The row was a difficult one to hoe back then, as the Road Kings were somewhat ahead of later trends. “It’s a very different landscape right now. When we were coming up, you didn’t see hipsters with handlebar mustaches walking around Silver Lake [Los Angeles] and Williamsburg [Brooklyn] with Townes Van Zandt shirts on. No one knew who he was.” Dayton cites Van Zandt as an inspiration for his songcraft, but says, “that would come later, when I would grow up and get into song writing. The Road Kings was my greasy kid stuff. It was my entry level into not cutting my teeth on the Eagles songbook. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, but I felt like that’s what everybody in the Texas music scene was coming out of.”
Growing up in Beaumont, Dayton heard plenty of country and rockabilly, thanks to his parents’ and grandparents’ record collections. As a teenager, he discovered punk rock. “Right before we started the Road Kings, I went and saw Joe Ely open for the Clash in Houston, and it changed my life. The Road Kings were listening to the Clash as much as we were listening to the Johnny Burnette Trio or Elvis Presley. So we always had that kind of energy, and we still do. It was amazing, last year [when] we played, with the original guys, it was our first time to play together in 21 years, and it was literally just like riding a bike.”
Prospects eventually fizzled for the Road Kings, due to the vagaries of the music business and of the musicians. “We never could keep it together,” Dayton says, “because the band was highly dysfunctional. It’s still really dysfunctional. You’d think that, at this age [it might be different], but we had a fight a few weeks ago, and we didn’t talk for, like, three weeks. It’s hard to be in a band, especially in a cool band. Because when everybody’s not so cool, then they’re like [whiny voice], ‘Let’s just make this all work so we can all….’
“And that doesn’t always produce really good art. There’s nothing dangerous about that, there’s nothing sexy about that. Our goal was never to play just little beer joint honky-tonks. We wanted to play bigger shows, like punk rock bands, shows like that. And we wanted our show to be like that. That take a certain dysfunctional set of guys in order to make it real.”
However, Dayton notes, a certain maturity gained with years does help to mitigate intra-band conflict. “You don’t learn how to circumnavigate it, you just learn how to deal with it as it comes. And I think, at a point, you just don’t take everything so personally.”
After a successful reunion last year, Dayton hints that a holiday tradition may be developing. “I like the idea of doing something annual, at the end of the year, every year, and doing it for our Houston fans,” he says. “Last year, when we played two sold-out shows at the Continental, we got offers to play all these other shows, and we turned them all down. Because I didn’t want to go on tour with the Road Kings. And it’s already happening now. They’re asking us to play more shows, and it just depends. It would have to be the right situation, because it’s an emotional undertaking, playing with these guys.”
The Road Kings will perform at the Continental Club, 3700 Main, on Friday, December 27, and Saturday, December 28, at 9 p.m. For more information, call (713) 529-9899 or visit ContinentalClub.com/Houston. $23-$38.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
