The Texas Headhunters are a blues-rock supergroup that released their first album in 2025. The band consists of Ian Moore, Jesse Dayton, Johnny Moeller, who are three legendary Texas guitarists who all share a deep connection to the iconic Austin club owner Clifford Antone.
This is the second part of a conversation I had with the band last year (you can find the first part here). Since the time of this interview, I had the pleasure of seeing the band play the last gig of their tour at the new Antone’s and it was honestly one of the best shows I saw in 2025. I’ve been told that they are working on a new album and will hit the road again in 2026 so be sure to keep an eye out. In this part of the interview, we talk about guitar gear, musical influences, and the joys of playing loud.
The Right Gear for the Job
Kurt Maitland – So now, since you guys are way better guitar players than me, I have some some gear questions. I’ve seen looking at the videos of you guys playing and I’ve have seen different guitar models in your hands. I’m curious, for each of you, what’s your preference? What feels most comfortable in your hands?
Johnny Moeller – It is always changing for me. I’m on a Stratocaster kick right now, but it’s been a Telecaster. I got a bunch of funky, old, cheap Harmonys and Silvertones that I like, but I got a Les Paul special with P 90s and I’ve kind of been rotating between that and a Strat lately.
Kurt Maitland – Love a P90. My favorite is an Epiphone Riviera with 3 P90s. I initially couldn’t figure out why the middle one won’t turn off then I realized that It’s basically turns the P90s into a humbucker. You always have that middle one on, so either middle and neck or middle and bridge and that keeps it a little bit quieter.
Jesse Dayton – Ian’s been playing the same guitar for how long, dude?
Ian Moore – Well, I’ve played different ones for a while and I know it’s utilitarian, but the Strat and the Esquire are what I’m usually playing.
Jesse Dayton – I just got a mint 73 Tele Deluxe that I’m fixing to start using with this band.
I was in England and my friend called me. He goes, “Hey, dude, I’m in this pawn shop in New Jersey. This guy wants to trade this dead mint 1973 Deluxe Tele for an acoustic guitar”. And I said, “Tell him I’ll give him three acoustic guitars”. So he puts the guy on FaceTime, he’s never been on FaceTime and he didn’t know what Venmo was and I’m like “I’m gonna send you money for that guitar”. Basically, this old guy inherited it from his brother who had passed away and that’s guitar I’m geeking out on right now,
Kurt Maitland – Now what are you guys playing your stuff through, amp wise? Are you guys going vintage or do you have some new stuff you like using?
Ian Moore – I’m building a new amp for this project.
Jesse Dayton – Really?
Johnny Moeller – Ian builds amps.
Kurt Maitland – Do you build amps for yourself or as a business?
Ian Moore – Mostly for myself. We went out on the road, there’s three of us and they won’t let us play loud. I play really loud. So normally folks hit the road with Blues Jrs, etc and I was like, “Fuck that, man. I’m building a Deluxe”. A Deluxe with kind of a Dumble vibe. I was actually working on it the morning before….
Jesse Dayton – That’s crazy. You crazy man.
Kurt Maitland – So what are you guys dragging around on tour?
Johnny Moeller – On that last trip we just took it was pretty generic Fender amps
Kurt Maitland – I do love a Fender. I have friends who go with Marshalls and the thing is there are certain things Marshalls would do, but a Fender will do anything. And if it won’t, I can put pedals on it and get what I want.
In fact, all I got in my house right now is Fender amps. I got a Champ II two hiding over there. There’s a Super Reverb. It’s funny. I don’t know how it is for you guys, but I find the big old vintage amps have gotten cheap. It cost me more to get the Fender Champ than the Super Reverb. It might be a New York thing, because nobody has room for a big rig and more people will buy an old Champ and put in their apartment.
Ian Moore – So you like loud too?
Kurt Maitland – I live in the Bronx. I live in loud. I got a crazy crackhead outside that every so often decides to spend ½ the day screaming. So, my neighbors let me play to drown her out. So I’m like, “Cool. I get to open it up”.
Ian Moore – Johnny, you’re playing with the T-birds and you were saying that you have to play, like, on two, right?
Johnny Moeller – Yeah, yeah.
Johnny Moeller – We played at the Blue Note Napa last weekend, and I borrowed a DR Z amp. Have you ever played one of those? I’ve seen them. It was pretty killer. It was like a deluxe with 2×10 and only a volume and a tone knob. I was like, “Wow. Need one of these.”
Kurt Maitland Yeah, I’ve been hearing about them. I’ve definitely seen guys playing them, but I’ve never touched one.
Johnny Moeller – So yeah, but I had it on like three, and it was aimed straight up at the ceiling. And even then, the sound guy’s going, “Man, it’s really pretty hot.”
Kurt Maitland – It is funny, because I’m imagine we’re close to the same ages. We were dragging amps into our basement or our parents’ garage. As long as it wasn’t the middle of the night, if you were in there and you were done making noise by like 11, you were probably okay. Or you did it in the afternoon when people were at work.
Jesse Dayton – I have this theory that when people talk about volume. I say, “Man, ask yourself when you were a little kid, did you want to (1) play to a restricted, snobby audience of older people or (2) did you want to play to girls that were sitting on their boyfriend’s shoulders flashing folks as you assaulted the crowd with your sound?
Ian Moore – Number two.
Johnny Moeller – Number two.
Jesse Dayton – All three of us grew up playing in small clubs. So we do know how to adapt and play to the room.
Kurt Maitland – I mean, at two and three, It seems like the amp ain’t even warm yet.
Jesse Dayton – I agree. You give me a Fender tube amp that’s got reverb, and I will always sound like myself no matter what. But…this volume war conversation, I think somebody – Kurt, if you want to – you should write a whole soliloquy, a fucking diatribe on that. Because, you know, when I go see players play, they have to have some volume in order to get their tone.
Kurt Maitland – Yeah. I agree with that. I remember playing in DC, and the place we were playing, it was like a combo restaurant/bar and people were eating, and it was driving me nuts. I could hear forks on teeth. I started turning up. I don’t wanna hear that shit. There was a great quote from Pete Townsend, and they asked him, years ago, why they played so loud. He’s like, “Because there’s no chatting up your mates. There’s no talking to girls, there’s just us.” So I get it. It’s weird to think that I’m playing in my apartment, and I can probably play louder than some guys playing clubs.
Whiskey and the Blues
Kurt Maitland – So a question for each of you – I was going to ask if you drink and if so, what is your drink of preference? And if you were to pair a song to a drink, and it could be off of your album or just a song you love, what would that be?
Johnny Moeller – Oh, we’ll let Jesse have that one.
Jesse Dayton – I mean, you know, I was a bourbon guy forever, and then we did the whole background thing, and we found out we were Irish, and then me and my brother started drinking Irish whiskey.
But you know, for me, you know, Maggie Went Back to Mineola and stuff like that, that’s all whiskey. I don’t put as much effort into that as I used to, even though I I love it when I wake up in the morning and the world’s just completely fucked up, there’s nothing better than going to a cold, dark pub with a friend. But you know, a lot of the stuff that we do in this band was born out of those juke joints, and there was always booze around. Yeah, and now that we’re older, we all know that we’ve all tried to live like our heroes and it never works out,
Kurt Maitland – I love whiskey, I write about whiskey along with writing about music. I get sent booze and folks think I must drink all the time. I’m like, “No, actually, I don’t.”
I come home from work, I’m writing, so I may have a drink if I have people over. That’s different. I don’t drink much by myself. You got friends around, you’re going to a bar, you’re hanging with people. That’s different. You have a drink and hang out.
Jesse Dayton – Well, I mean, all of my friends in the music business, I mean, I would say 70% of them are sober. Definitely, more than half of them. And, you know, the thing about booze is if you get in the music business and you stay in this business and you drink every show, you will eventually become an alcoholic. I’ve seen it happen over and over and over. I’ve gone to the edge of that before. So I know, you’ve got to be careful.
Kurt Maitland – Did you guys ever read Keith Richards’ autobiography?
Jesse Dayton – Oh yeah’
Kurt Maitland – So you listen to him, and it’s weird, because, he said “I knew when to stop.” And I’m like, you had a heroin problem for 10 years so what do you mean? He didn’t mean in general. He just meant on any given night. He knew that, you know what? I got to put it down. One more will hurt me or end me.
Jesse Dayton – That’s a hell of a run, man.
Kurt Maitland – Yeah, Keith has calmed down. He’s switched to wine in his 80s. Like, yeah, I have a little red wine once in a while. I’m like, “Well, you did enough for everybody else.” I told somebody that there are literally cemeteries of guys who tried to be Keith and couldn’t pull it off while Keith is still walking around.
I like the songs on your album and I think Texas, and I think blues joints, and I think, small clubs. I’m not thinking stadiums. I’m not thinking auditoriums. I’m really thinking, you’re in a place where, like, I could see what you’re playing. And, you know, I might be sitting at the bar or standing in, like, in front of the stage and slowly going deaf as you blow out my ears. Well, if they let you, because that’s part of the fun.
Like you said, you know, you almost want to feel it. J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr, said he moved from the drums to playing guitar, and he played guitar loud because he wanted to feel it. He wanted to feel the amps pushing air when he was playing.
The Road Ahead
Kurt Maitland – So are you guys hitting the East Coast?
Jesse Dayton – I think we’re doing the Midwest mostly. I mean, we jump over to Pennsylvania for one gig, but it’s mostly Midwest. We’re just excited to go out and play some of this music live. There’s a couple of songs that are on the record that we did, a couple of instrumentals that have this real kind of 70s Jeff Beck vibe, you know, Wired or Blow by Blow, kind of funky, funky stuff like that. And this is going to be cool to play, because we’re going to get a little bit more time than we did last time. So I’m hoping we can work in those instrumentals too, because it’s just something I don’t hear very much. I don’t hear people playing a lot of these records that I like to do and it’s stuff that I love. And I’m not hearing very much of the stuff that I loved when I was a kid.
I got to see Jeff Beck open for ZZ Top about six months before he passed away, and was the first time I ever saw him. I was so blown away. I couldn’t believe it. I left thinking about it. I’m still thinking about it. I couldn’t believe his control over the instrument and what he did. So, you know, it’s going to be exciting to do this tour, because we’re going to get to pull out some stuff that we don’t get to normally, do you know?
Kurt Maitland – I would love to see you in NYC. I don’t get enough good shows to see here. Strangely enough, because they’re either huge or intimate and you can’t get tickets. I saw the Brothers Landreth and I saw Guthrie Trapp when he was playing in the West Village. It’s cool to actually go and see music. You have all these big arenas, but I don’t always want to go see an arena show. It’s not quite the same.
Jesse Dayton – Well, that’s, you know, the corporations and technology are taking over America right now, and I got this theory that people are going to want something more authentic. And it is a scary time, because Live Nation has gone in and they bought up the majority of the theaters, and they’re looking at clubs now. Which is crazy, because I couldn’t imagine, like the Continental in Austin, or Antone’s being owned by like a corporation. But the thing is, is that we grew up in Austin and like, I would drop my son off at school, and his principal would come out to me and go, “Hey man, are you playing Thursday night? We’re going to come out and see you”. Austin has that. New Orleans has that, I guess, Seattle, to a certain degree, even though I don’t think it’s quite as diverse in terms of the roots music and stuff, but it’s still very much like that. So there, that’s my only fear right now with live music, is that, the dives and stuff like that. We gotta support those. I don’t go out much anymore. I used to go out all the time, but I still like to go out and see “Hey, Nick Lowe’s playing Antone’s. I gotta go see it, or Johnny’s Thunderbirds, or whatever.”
Kurt Maitland -It makes sense. It’s like what you said – here there are a couple small clubs, and some the mid-size ones. The weird thing is, you compete with people from Europe, if a band’s big enough, people will fly from London to Germany to come see a show here.
When I lived in DC, I remember seeing that some band was playing, buying tickets the day of the show. I buy a pair, roll up in there, grab a beer, sit down or stand up and watch them play. Now, it’s like, I have to plan this shit out like the invasion of Normandy. When are they playing? Where are they playing? I gotta go hit Stubhub because it’s sold out already, you know, whatever.
Jesse Dayton – Well, in New York, I played the Iridium, I played the Beacon, and I played the Fillmore and back in the old punk rock days, I played Coney Island High and some cool places like that. So they’re still out there. But it is pretty unbelievable, man, because when me and Samantha did that tour, almost every show we played was a theater that was that been taken over by Live Nation.
Kurt Maitland – That’s definitely a thing. There’s some old movie theaters, I think, like, what the Paramount in Brooklyn? A lot of shows are going there, and I want to see it. From a historical point of view, I’d love to see the old venue. But the problem is, how does that affect the smaller clubs and smaller places around, if that’s there and everybody’s getting pushed to do shows there?
Thanks for talking to me and I’d love to see you guys play some gigs in the East.
Johnny Moeller – Take care, bro.
