Jesse Daniel, “Champion,“// GemsOnVHS™

Jesse Daniel is a hard working, hustling honky-tonk troubadour from the land of the tall redwoods, way out West. When I first met him, he’d invited me to his hometown out in the forested backwoods hills of Ben Lomond (not the Scottish one, where I went with Josh Okeefe), in Santa Cruz county, where he grew up. There, with his partner Jodi and his two pups, he adopted me into his home and treated me like family. That’s just the kind of man he is. () Since then, he has toured coast to coast on shows he booked himself, put together ace bands, started a record label to release his own music when he realized no one was going to do it better, put out an album and moved to another big ass state, Texas. That’s what I respect about Jesse; nothing is holding him back. No excuses, no barriers. He hit rock bottom, in a series of down and out moments in his life on drugs, which he doesn’t bring up or use as ammo. Then he pulled himself together, with a lot of help from his better half (and n