Checking out bands playing Bonnaroo 2014, I found J Roddy Walston & The Business are coming back again! Oh cool, they’re from Cleveland, we’re practically neighbors by country standards! Grabbing the cans, and cranking them way up, I had one thought, “So this is how all my pro headphones get blown the f**k up!” and I turned it up a little more.
Over thirteen years of attending Bonnaroo in Middle Tennessee heartland, I have walked up on some bands that really blew me away. They catch your ear as your cruisin’ and you stop for a few minutes. The next thing you know, you’ve been standing there stunned, or dancing like you just don’t care (sorry), or that you’ve been stretched out staring at the clouds and riding the musical waves for an hour and a half. J Roddy and the boys drop that kind of Heavy Business on you! I’m Stoked!
Most band bios blow things out of proportion and make everything all glossy, but as I read about The Business and listened to the tunes, I decided that it was one of the best bio pages I’ve ever read…
For J. Roddy Walston & The Business―who formed in 2002 in Walston’s hometown of Cleveland, Tennessee―embracing weirdness means a mumble-out-loud celebration of that great and terrible burden of being human.
…a mix of heavy hooks and elegant melodies revealing their affinity for artists as disparate as Led Zeppelin, pre-disco-era Bee Gees, The Replacements, Randy Newman, and the Southern soul outfits that once populated the Stax Records label.
…We’ve got songs that feel like party songs but if you look at it closer, it’s something more cerebral. So for the people who want to dig in and connect all the weird crosswires, the song can turn into something else.
…It seems like most bands write for either the animal side of people or for the side that’s more in tune with the spirit or even just the psyche, but we tend to just smash all those things together,” says Walston. “It’s like we’re writing religious songs for the animal side. We’ve got songs that feel like party songs but if you look at it closer, it’s something more cerebral. So for the people who want to dig in and connect all the weird crosswires, the song can turn into something else.” And because J. Roddy Walston & The Business is practiced in the art of subversion, he adds, “these are songs you can get away with listening to around ‘the straights.’ The danger is in what lies behind the codes and the prose, and how gently they unravel once you’ve digested them. -band website
They’ll be in Savannah, Jacksonville, Little Rock, Austin, and all over the South in the next couple months, catch ’em if you can and don’t miss ’em if you’re at the ‘Roo!
