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Aquarious Records
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Of course, the Jon Wayne we're talking about is not THE John Wayne, archetype of the bad-ass cop / cowboy / sheriff / general. This Jon Wayne appears as a scrawy, incompetent drunk who got it in his head that he needed to move to Fresno, California because that's where Merle Haggard lives.

There is no doubt that Jon Wayne loves Texas, for Texas is huge. Texas is oil. Texas is J.R. Ewing. Texas is The Alamo. Texas is country AND western. Texas is a pick-up truck with tobacco stains puddled on the running board. Texas is a Longhorn (both the cow and the football player). Texas is a fucked-up place where the good ole boys control the state with backroom politics, blaming problems on immigration, but won't dare have their sons working in the field instead of some Mexicans. While it may not be true for all, it's true for Jon Wayne: Texas is God. It's a mythology that holds similarities to the "South will rise again" belief of Tennessee rednecks, but the two should never be confused. It may not make much sense, but asking why will just get your ass kicked. So don't.

In fact, it's hard to tell if Jon Wayne and his band are the genuine bastard sons of Texas or if they are a part of the great Southern lineage of telling tall tales of hard drinkin' and hard livin' or if they are just a bunch of indie-rock dorks method acting. I don't much care what Jon Wayne's intention is, just as long as it isn't irony.

"Texas Funeral" was Jon Wayne's first album, mostly recounting how screwed up it was for this drunk Texan to be in the California Central Valley. His half mumbled / barely sung tales ambled alongside a raucous musical affair of sloppy cow-punk tunes and spouted the infamous epithets "I had to jerk off the dog just to feed the goddamned cat" and "Mr. Egyptian you're a goddamned liar." Even after all the time since its release in 1992, "Texas Funeral" remains an incredibly hilarious record.

Nearly nine years later, Jon Wayne makes his musical return with his sophomore album, "Two Graduated Jiggers." Upon first listen, Jon Wayne has become just slightly more competent as a song writer, without so many of the miscues and false starts which ran through "Texas Funeral." Of particular note is the opener "Generator," which is exactly what a drunk Calexico would sound like, yet is much more musical than anything else Jon Wayne has ever recorded. The rest of the album stays truer to "Texas Funeral" with Jon Wayne's country/western two-step crashing out of rhythm and tune during almost every song. Lyrically, he's even less decipherable, with his drawl overtaking the delivery and reducing what little song their might have been to a rambling mumble of obscenities. To many, that may be a living hell. But to those of us who find the current output from Nashville reprehensible, Jon Wayne's drunk antics are a blessing.

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No Depression
Nov Dec 2000

It's been fifteen years since Jon Wayne released the infamous cult album Texas Funeral. Drunken, comic, brilliant and thoroughly dedicated to the Lone Star State in songs such as "Texas Wine", "Texas Cyclone" and "Texas Jailcell", the album was country of the most bizarre fashion. Its absurdly politically incorrect lyrics, nonsense words, and out-of-tune instruments begged many questions: How much was calculated and how much was accidental? Were they geniuses? Were they collectively insane?

Now, finally, comes Two Graduated Jigges. Eight years in the making, it answers at least one question: Texas Funeral was no accident. Although Two Graduated Jiggers eschews the spare guitar / piano sounds of its predecessor for cacophonous, Tom Waits-like percussion, in all other respects it is a darkly foul and funny masterwork as its predecessor.

Only "Time To Drink Whiskey" sounds like it could have come from the Texas Funeral sessions; the rest of the album leaps forward in arrangements and originality. The closing track is a fourteen-minute ramble titled "Texas Assonance" in which the singer and group namesake Jon Wayne read from his book Southwestern Cowboy Poetry, Volume 2 at his ranch while band members clang percussive instruments and whoever's in the kitchen is continually admonished to "shut up them dishes... we're trying to make a record in here."

In addition to Wayne, who grunts, warbles, and slurs lyrics like a low-voiced bourboned-up Walter Brennan with Tourette's, the group also includes Jimbo (drums), Earnest Beauvine (guitars), and Timmy Turlock (bass). Though John Wayne has been referred to as punk country, that doesn't really fit; these guys have much broader sensibility. In any case, they're not country, and you've never heard country more alternative then this. - Mark Perron

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No Depression
Sept Oct 1996

Jon Wayne at Spaceland (Los Angeles, CA) July 26, 1996
Some mysteries are best unsolved. So let's say you're working at a kinda hip ad agency with one of the supporting cast from Animal House and ten years after he says let's go see Otis Day & the Knights, and half the office gets likkered up only to find it's just Otis with a bank of synthesizers and a cordless mike, but they all still get drunk and pour beer on each other and you stood at the edge wondering why...

Jon Wayne, down from the hills like some paunchy band of Vietnam veterans (only too young by a few years for that), reappeared in Silverlake for reasons which remain as obscure as their original disappearance. But there they were, headlining on a Friday night. Now, you gotta understand, Silverlake is the hip underground boho in L.A. these days, so when this guy in a tight, salmon-colored western shirt and a bent white cowboy hat ambled away from the bar with a fresh Coke in hand...the whole effect was a bit much even for the new white trash chic.

So they climb on stage about midnight, and the lead singer tosses down a shot, standing in front of a microphone attached to its stand with athletic tape (probably so as to produce the properly muffled vocal sound). Somebody from the crowd hands up another shot which he looks at lovingly, fondly, then sets carefully on the drum riser behind him.

This is a bad sign. The lead guitarist is drinking Coke, and the lead singer is mature enough not to slam a second shot. See, from the first note on, no, from the first sight of the atrocious early '70s round jungle-painted guitars two of 'em were playing, not to mention accumulated reputation and general demeanor, this is a drunk band. A band of drunks, by drunks, for drunks.

Except LA really isn't a drinking town, not these days. Home is a good half-hour away from anywhere, and the cops are more frightening than sobriety. And much as Jon Wayne may have been a hard drinking band, much as they might even like to recapture that remorseless fun, if only for an evening, there's no way they can step over that precipice tonight, for they know how hard the landing is. So other than a merry band of sloshed, stumbling acolytes right up front, this was a crowd (and band) bent more on reliving a half-remembered past than going full force with the spirit of those days.

None of which would matter if Jon Wayne were even slightly about music. The vocalist kept asking "Do you like country music?" and the crowd kept raising glasses and affirming their love of country music, but it was more in the spirit of making fun of Hee-Haw than it was recreating the spirit of Merle Haggard's "Working Man Blues."

Original songs are more spoken than sung, short one-joke pieces that were probably a lot funnier if you'd spent hours listening to the record, which probably (no matter how badly recorded) sounded better and more musical than this show. See, if your entire shtick is being wildly, unpredictably, falling-down drunk, then maturity and sobriety are not your allies. Hell, then you've gotta write songs or something. Or find a new joke. It all made me miss Country Dick Montana. So I went home early. - Grant Alden

CMJ
Feb 1999

one of those rare, instantly memorable albums--either because you find it repulsive or because you think it's brilliant...a stupid, hilarious and twisted classic...