J Roddy Walston and the Business
| J. Roddy Walston and the Business | |
|---|---|
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| Background information | |
| Origin | Baltimore, Maryland |
| Genres | Southern rock, roots rock, hard rock, rock and roll |
| Years active | 2002–present |
| Labels |
ATO MapleMusic Recordings (Canada) |
| Website | www |
| Members | J. Roddy Walston Billy Gordon Logan Davis Steve Colmus |
J. Roddy Walston and the Business is an American rock band based in Baltimore, Maryland. The band was formed in 2002 in Cleveland, Tennessee by J. Roddy Walston (vocals/piano/guitar). The Business now consists of Billy Gordon (lead guitar/vocals), Logan Davis (bass/vocals) and Steve Colmus (drums). The band is known for their energetic live shows and Walston's pounding style of playing the piano.
The original line-up of the band was convened in Walston's hometown of Cleveland, Tennessee, after a demo tape he recorded in his basement beat out 350 contenders to win a showcase on a national festival. Shortly before the festival, the band released Here Come Trouble, a seven-song EP recorded in the living room of the house Walston and his bandmates were renting.
In the Summer of 2004, the band - Walston, Nick "Two Dollar" Kaisharis (guitar/vocals), Zach Westphal (bass/vocals) and David Morton (drums) - relocated to Baltimore. The week after the band arrived, Westphal was held up at gunpoint in the parking lot of the apartment building the band lived.
In April 2005, the five-song LMNEP was released. Shortly afterwards, Kaisharis and Morton left the band, and Gordon and Colmus were recruited from other Baltimore bands. In October 2006, the new line-up released the Fierce Tiger EP featuring several new songs, as well as re-recordings of unreleased material from the band's early days.
On April 6, 2007, the band self-released their first full-length album, Hail Mega Boys, recorded at the house where Gordon was living, dubbed "The Pirate Ship". "Rock n' Roll II" was used in an episode of season four of Beverly Hills 90210, titled "Rush Hour" while "Sally Bangs," a song Walston based on a remnant of a country song his grandmother taught him (Jumpin' Bill Carlisle's "Sally Let Your Bangs Hang Down"), was used on the MTV mixed martial arts reality show Caged. "Tell You What" saw time in an episode of the Nickelodeon animated series Glenn Martin D.D.S. The song "Nineteen-aught-Four" references the Baltimore Fire of 1904, which leveled large sections of the city.
The band spent the next two years touring throughout the South, Midwest and Northeast, traveling in a church van they had purchased from a congregation in Walston's hometown and re-christened The Diaper. Kaisharis and Walston decided on the name due to the fact that "It's white, dirty and holds all of our sh--." The band left on the van the decals of its original owners - The Hamilton Cove Christian Academy of Huntsville, Alabama - in an effort to prevent both theft and speeding tickets from police officers perhaps reluctant to pull over a church van. The van, and the band's hard use of it, was profiled in the New York Times. They became noted for their manic live shows, which the Baltimore City Paper said "make James Brown look lazy." During one show aboard a boat in New York City, Walston punctuated the end of his set by throwing his piano stool through an open window and into the East River, barely missing a patron on an outside deck.
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Wikipedia