ANOTHER PLEASANT VALLEY SOME DAY FOR JESSE DANIEL

Bernard Zuel
Aug 5
5 min read

Updated: Aug 5

Mo country for old men? Jesse Daniel in the San Lorenzo Valley. Photo by Jodi Lyford,

WHEN RESPECT IS DUE, respect should be paid. Damn fine moustache you rock there Mr Jesse Daniel.

“Oh, thanks man, appreciate it,” says the very polite Californian, sitting on his lounge on a warm afternoon, a truckers cap perched above that fine moustache. “I’ve tried the beard before but I think the moustache kinda works. It works for certain people.”

It works for Jesse Daniel, but how much of who he is and who he sees himself as being – a country rock musician who leans both ways in that country/rock equation, for a start – is reflected or affected by things like the moustache, the cap, the boots, the paraphernalia of a rootsy artist?

“You know, I’d say, as far as the moustache and the hat I am wearing, that’s how I dress, and how I’ve always dressed. That’s who I am,” he says. “It’s not like something I put on. But definitely when I play a show I put on show clothes, like a cowboy hat. I don’t usually wear a cowboy hat daily because I don’t work as a rancher, cowboying, but when performing I go with something stage-worthy.”

In one of his new songs he sings “Everyone’s got their own story to sell/Well there’s truth and there’s lies but it gets hard to tell/Which one is which in the big magazine and the stories they feed us”, so Daniel knows the territory of one of those all hat, no cattle performers. None of which is to suggest artifice from him; in fact it’s the opposite.

As the title of his new album, Son Of The San Lorenzo, suggests, his music, his references and his attitude are deeply rooted in exactly where we find him and exactly where he has long been – the mid-coast California communities around the San Lorenzo Valley, between Los Angeles and San Francisco, that exist between city and country, between hippie and cowboy, between under the influence and holding back the tide, between the mid-60s and the mid-70s.

The respect paid to the valley that spawned him is about more than it being the country he grew up on, more than nostalgia.

“There is an emotional connection,” he explains. “Some great times in my life happened here but also some extremely traumatic times in my life, but geographically it’s pretty incredible. The landscape of the place is crazy: it’s in a redwood forest, in densely packed mountains, the people are pretty unique – there are a lot of characters.

“And lastly, a lot of great music came out of that area, bands like the Doobie Bros spent a lot of time right up the hill from where I grew up, and there is this whole culture from country and western music to jam rock and psychedelic rock, folk music and rock music, blues. It’s a rich tapestry and I am proud to represent it.”

Then within that is his own story of (very) young drinking and drug taking, rootlessness and pointlessness - take for example the song One’s To Many (And A Thousand Ain’t Enough), which neatly describes those years of excess. That was a spiral he freed himself from in part – and yes this cliché is very true – because of the love of a good woman, in this case in his fiancée, longtime co-writer, photographer, and until recently manager, Jodi Lyford.

“With this record I really wanted to go back and dig through some of those more uncomfortable things and in a way unturn the stone, look under it, clean it out, and then seal the chapter on it,” says Daniel, who still sees writing as a cathartic experience. “I was taking a look at myself and at my story, my past, while also paying tribute to where I grew up and to that time.”

Does this mean this album and the man we’ll see in Australia later this year, is at the end of one part of his life and looking at where to go next?

“Yeah, definitely this is the end of a stage, end of an era. But I’m not sure what will come next, this dawning of a new era.”

But before we leave this era one thing needs to be asked. Why is it hard, as he sings here, to write a love song to Jodi?

“I wrote that line because for some reason that’s been one of the most vulnerable and hard to tackle subjects. Because of how much I love her and how deeply I feel for her, it was almost like I didn’t want to write a song that didn’t tap into that fully,” he says. “I didn’t want to sell myself short or write her something that was not everything it should be.”

He can write about the depth of his addictions, the listing of mistakes he’s made, and feeling that the world has abandoned him, but explain to the most important person in his life why she matters? Well that’s hard.

“With the writing about myself, I don’t have any reservation because that’s what happened, and it’s easy because it’s within me. But to write that for somebody else, to write it for her and have it be meaningful …

"Just like the song says we’ve come so far and done so much together it’s like we’ve been through so many life-and-death situations – sickness, health, poverty, all the things they can really test a relationship – it was difficult to summarise all of that life that we have lived into one song. I could fill a book, I could fill 10 books, with that. But I did my best in the song.”

What did Jodi say when she first heard it?

“She listened to it and I think she shed a tear. She really got touched by and I remember her saying, ‘I love it’, and that meant a lot.”

Given her regular job as his co-writer, did she offer any writing tips on this solo enterprise?

“Not on that one,” Daniel laughs. “She let me have that one.”

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Jesse Daniel plays:

Great Western Hotel, Rockhampton, October 10

Mareeba Rodeo, October 11-12

Lefty’s Old Time Music Hall, Petrie Terrace, October 15