Jesse Dayton – Banjo & Sullivan: The Ultimate Collection, 1972-1978
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Posted On September 1, 2005
The project: a greatest-hits package for a band that never existed except in the script of a Rob Zombie horror movie. The parameters: Make it funny, make it sound like ’70s country, make it commercial.
After a Jim Beam-inspired songwriting session with actor/compadre Lew Temple, who plays Adam Banjo in Zombie’s pyschobilly gore-fest The Devil’s Rejects, Jesse Dayton took Zombie’s homework assignment and some Universal Records cash to Austin to manufacture Banjo & Sullivan: The Ultimate Collection, 1972-1978. A string of politically incorrect, occasionally off-color “hits” that span the country-cliche gamut with titles such as “I’m Home Getting Hammered While She’s Out Getting Nailed”, “I Don’t Give A Truck”, and “Lord Don’t Let Me Die In A Cheap Motel”, it even ends with a honky-tonk remake of “Free Bird” (the original Skynyrd version is included on the Rejects soundtrack).
Dayton has always had a generous cornpone ham streak, and with his razor-sharp road band and studio ringers including Riley Osborne and Erik Hokkanen, he’s infused this disc with all the intensity of a “real” record and packed it with twisted one-liners, outlaw sensibility, and Blue Collar Comedy Hour situations. We may not have seen the last of Banjo & Sullivan, even if we never saw them at all.
