As the lights dim and the house music slowly becomes awkward silence, the opening band appears from behind the curtain. As usual, you’ve never heard of them; and by the looks of things, you probably don’t want to. There are four of them; a bass player and guitarist who could be picked out a lineup of generic local band members, a drummer who has an eerie resemblance to Ryan Gosling, and a lead singer who looks like he just left the set of Sons of Anarchy, complete with unkempt hair that hasn’t seen shampoo in days and a jean jacket that perfectly walks the line between horribly cliche and incredibly badass. They take their respective positions, with the singer sitting down to a piano that has obviously been to hell and back, perhaps as recently as yesterday. You roll your eyes.
The band in question is the only thing that stands between you and the band you actually paid to see. While they may look like a bunch of mangled misfits, they prefer to be called J. Roddy Walston and the Business. And the show they’re about to put on will make you completely forget about the party you originally came for.
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Photo by Dana Yavin
While the aforementioned scenario is completely fictional, it’s one that Jonathan Walston -- the biker gang lookalike occupying the piano -- has experienced far too many times. “We’ve had to create our own audience in every city,” Walston tells me when we meet for tacos and tequila. “It’s been difficult. Town to town, we’ve had to teach each city how to be our crowd; five, ten, one hundred people at a time.”
It may sound like a sob story, but it’s accurate if nothing else; as he sips on his tequila, the crusty-yet-fashionable lead singer fondly recalls playing to a handful of fans who were way more interested in what beer was on tap than the band about to take the stage. And in an internet age that has produced hipsters known for standing at shows with their arms folded, wearing a blank stare that demands to be entertained but refuses to help their own cause, J. Roddy Walston is doing their best to turn up the volume and dust off the dancing shoes.
“I believe in the mentality that if you’re going to ask me to pay and come see your show, it needs to be because you think you’re doing something great,” he says. “For the last 6 years, we’ve just toured our hearts out teaching people how to love and experience rock and roll.”
The rock and roll of which Walston speaks is authentic -- a piano driven soul and gospel concoction that will make you dance around the living room in your underwear while taking shots of Jameson for breakfast. If Steven Tyler sang for the Ramones and Lionel Richie kept pace with infectious piano licks that made you close your eyes and grit your teeth, you’d have your average J Roddy Walston and the Business song. And in a fabricated music age dominated by bleep and bloop, they may just be some of the purest tunes modern rock and roll still has to offer.
Photo by Tim Meeks
“When we started playing festivals, I really noticed it,” Walston recalls, discussing the impressive festival circuit the band has conquered over the last year and a half--which includes everything from Austin City Limits to Lollapalooza. “With the exception of a few headliners, there isn’t really a rock and roll circuit anymore.”
As for his own band, Walston has whittled a description down to caveman terms. “There’s a primal element to our band, like monkeys beating on drums with a bunch of sticks,” he says, laughing. But while the last 18 months have been good to J Roddy Walston and his Business, the monkeys and their drum almost didn’t make it out of 2011 alive.
For years, the band sent hopeful Myspace messages to promoters in an effort to book basement shows, and begged friends of friends to let them sleep on their floor. They toured relentlessly, keeping their road crew light in order to keep costs low. “We’ve seen so many bands make a little bit of money and next thing you know, they’re touring with their rap entourage,” Roddy says. “It’s just not a good situation.”
In 2007, the band released their first full length, Hail Mega Boys, which Roddy describes as a collection of songs he worked on solo and finally decided to put a band behind. “With that record, we just wanted to make a party record,” he says. “It was fast and furious and we thought, ‘Ok, this is fun.’”
The party continued on the road until 2009, when somebody finally took notice of the catchy tunes that were backed up by a live show that took on a life of its own. After a slew of shows with Murder by Death and the Hold Steady, both of which are signed to Vagrant Records, somebody finally started to pay attention.
Photo by Garth Parr
That somebody was Heather Hawkins, a member of the Vagrant community. She passed the catchy tunes onto Kevin Augunas, who at the time was wrapping up production on the latest offering from Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Augunas took an immediate liking to The Business, eventually producing their 2010 self-titled record. Building on the potential displayed on Hail Mega Boys, it was polished, complete with layered musical elements and heavier themes. It was a record that screamed, “If we’re going to party, it is going to be a really fucking intelligent party.”
But just because you throw an intelligent party doesn’t mean anybody is actually going to show up. After years of paying their dues, getting noticed by a prominent indie label, and creating the record that should have made them a household name, J Roddy Walston and the Business had nothing to show for it. And the band had finally reached the end of their rope.
“We took on 2011 with the mentality that we may never make another record, because things just aren’t working out in our favor. So let’s go out our way,” Roddy says. “So we decided to just throw a bunch of party shows.”
By “party shows,” the piano man is referring to a move that, in hindsight, may have saved the band he had worked so hard to create, establish, and keep. “Tours were crappy, people just weren’t paying attention, and we were worn out,” he recalls. “We made a great record, we put on great shows, and still nobody cared. It was frustrating.”
Photo by Lizabeth Likins
So in the spring of 2011, after a full year of grueling tour in support of their Vagrant debut, the band decided to put their best foot forward, playing weekly residency shows for a month straight in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. “The press wasn’t writing about us; so that didn’t work,” he said. “What worked was somebody seeing us and wanting to bring their friends next time we were in town. So we decided to pick a few key cities and set up camp once a week to see what happened.”
The result was a word of mouth relay race that normally begins with a rave review from Pitchfork or Brooklyn Vegan. Only this time, the word of mouth was taking place because a band was doing exactly what they get paid to do--go out and impress whatever lucky music fans decided to wander into their show. “We dedicated ourselves to those cities for a month at a time, determined to show those people how to enjoy the party we wanted to throw,” Roddy recalls. “We put our hands on the steering wheel and decided to take it to the limit. After that, the pieces started falling into place.”
The pieces came in the form of high-profile tours and opening band slots, which included the likes of Shooter Jennings, Deer Tick, and the Drive-By Truckers. The icing on top of a delicious change of pace, however, was a last minute phone call in the fall of 2011 asking if the band had plans for Halloween. “We had just finished a stint on the West Coast when we got a call asking if we wanted to open for Weezer,” Roddy, who considers Pinkerton to be one of the best party records of all time, remembers. “We drove 18 hours straight to open that show. It was awesome.”
But while the band was graduating from house shows to House of Blues, another important adjustment was brewing behind the scenes. After spending most of their professional career in Baltimore, two of the four band members made the move to Richmond in an effort to settle down and have a place to call home when they weren’t on tour. “When we moved to Baltimore, we didn’t have anything established anywhere else, so Baltimore became where we were from,” Roddy explained. “Moving to Richmond, I went out of my way to meet the people and the musicians here in an effort to understand how Richmond works.”
Photo by Dana Yavin
Walston, who is no stranger to the River City, remembers passing through in the early 2000’s, only to experience a city that had deep roots in a violent hardcore scene and wasn’t afraid to make that fact painfully obvious. “I used to pass through, and my friends would play in town and get beat up for no reason,” he said. “We passed through on tour, but if a Richmond show got canceled, it wasn’t the end of the world. It’s hard to convince your band to keep playing a city that continually gave them black eyes after the show.”
Now that he’s lived here for a few years and befriended local musicians such as The Trillions and Matthew E. White, Walston has no problem admitting that the aforementioned shiners have been exchanged for fresh scallops. “I think Richmond has the potential to be an unbelievably amazing place -- the restaurants that have popped up even since I’ve been here are just incredible. There’s no denying the fact that Richmond has heavily evolved over the last decade. That’s pretty obvious.”
But above all, Roddy seems genuinely excited to befriend the community that made Strike Anywhere and GWAR common names. “This place has that Avail mentality,” he says. “Once they love you, they will always love you. And I’m really excited to be a part of a community like that.” The community in question is one that is known for being rowdy, wild, and consuming more Jameson than any other city its size should ever try to tackle. And while I didn’t double check with him to make sure, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what The Business is looking for.