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This here's the story of Dayton Waters - abridged for your protection.As many of you know, he entered this world under a different name; but we don't speak of that name on this site. Not a big hang-up thing, it's just that name belongs to another musician (who is a little more famous than our guy) and we don't want any confusion.Now that that's cleared up, we can move on. The youngest of four kids, he knew from earliest memory that he wanted to play guitar. He didn't actually start until he was seven years old. Mom bought him a small acoustic 6-string at a garage sale for two bucks and he played that thing for two years! (She still has it to this day!) Dayton took about two weeks' worth of lessons only to learn that he didn't have the patience to learn music - he wanted to make music. So mom showed him the chords she knew and he began learning the old country standards she always sang. She nagged him about patting his foot and almost had to force him to sing. She told him he'd never make it as just a guitar player - he had to sing, too! Begrudgingly, he gave in. In a voice that sounded like a little girl's, he started belting out sounds that only a mother could love. You could have never convinced him then that someday people would love to hear him sing, but it became so. His work wasn't without progress, though, for by the time he was nine he had an electric guitar and an amp. He played his first live performance in the auditorium of Tina-Avalon High School (K-12 consolidated school) in northern Missouri at age nine. He did 2 songs; John Denver's Country Roads and Willie Nelson's Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain. Even then he had a little flock of girls singing back-up and together they were called Dude and the Dudettes. This was 1977. Not only was he terrified, but he says it was a fear that he still feels today, 28 years later, before every gig. And the fear is addictive.Desire became passion when he was turned on to the acoustic rock scene just a year or so later by his would-be mentor and cousin David Woodall. David was a rockin' 12-stringer whose deep, melodic voice and effortless guitar poured out of the portable cassette recorder that Dayton used to record him in Grandma's backyard in Alexandria, Louisiana while on a visit there. The next time he would see David, two years later when he and mom moved to Louisiana, (his brother and two sisters were grown by then), he was proud to show David that he knew every word and every chord to every song on the 90-minute tape. He was playing chords that he had no idea what they were called. David commented to others that he was amazed Dayton even learned his mistakes! It would still be three more years before he got his first 12-string. At 14, he began developing the hand strength an callouses that 12-stringin brings and before he knew it, he had a gig. Playing for tips at Booger Holler Restaurant and Amusement Park in Kolin, Louisiana, Dayton sang red-faced as his pubescent voice squeaked like an old clarinet through country and classic rock tunes for crowds of as many as ten people sometimes. But he had a gig! He was in front of people he didn't know, overcoming that fear every week. Facing some medical problems related to the rough and tumble life of a 14 year-old boy, Dayton found himself under a doctor's care in New Orleans. He also found the French Quarter. There he played and sang for strangers from all over and he found that he could use their energy as his own. The trademark foot stomp began and he began not to care what his faced looked like when he sang or how bad his changing voice crackled. Music replaced blood in his veins and the transformation began in the way that only The Big Easy can bring. A performer was emerging from a player. Over the next few years, he found himself in the Quarter as a street musician as often as he could. Each time he was a little better, a little more aggressive, and a lot more addicted to the game.At 16, he auditioned for Star Search; but he will tell you that he wasn't ready. Not by far. He played on live radio shows, talent shows and anywhere and everywhere that would let him take the mic. Folks came from 2 or 3 miles away to see this kid who played both parts of Duelin Banjos on the 12-string guitar. By 18, he had won the high school talent show two years straight and his classmates at Pineville High School voted him "Most Talented."He had a second love though. He wanted to be an infantryman in the US Army. He knew down deep that at 14 or 15, he was pretty good; but there were 18 year-olds out there that he couldn't hold a candle to. It was somewhere around this time that young Zack Wylde got a gig touring with Ozzy Ozbourne. This put Dayton's talent well into perspective. He was okay, but contrary to what those who loved him thought, he wasn't great. So, a young man in search of a career, Dayton joined the National Guard a week after his 17th birthday, went to college after high school so he could become a Lieutenant in the infantry. Over the next 18 years, Dayton would become a paratrooper, a ranger, a jumpmaster and an all-around excellent soldier. He also became a husband to his college sweetheart and a father of two beautiful girls. Though he would travel the world in the Army, he always had a guitar. And he always had gigs when the mission would allow time for it.Before Dayton left the Army in January 2003, he recorded an album of all original music entitled Leather and Gasoline: Ruffcut and Unrefined. It seems our warrior poet had developed an affinity for Harley-Davidson motorcycles. In January of 2002, he went on a "mini tour" in Scotland to promote the new cd. All travel and promotional costs were out of pocket, but he made a little money and a lot of friends while in the land of William Wallace. Around 2001, he met Grant Pierson, co-conspiritor of The Pierson-Waters Project. Not since David Woodall has Dayton been so impressed with not only the quality of music the man makes, but also the quality of man that makes the music.
