Oh, the music that comes out of…Baltimore. It’s from where J Roddy Walston and the Business hail—embracing a classic rock sound, laced with blues, connoting thoughts of the deep South.
And this band will have you dancin’ in no time.
The quartet has the youthful exuberance of adolescents who are up to no good. They’ll wrestle your attention the moment they take the stage—from the joyful bass-slappin’ and singing of Logan Davis, to sultry guitar lines delivered by Billy Gordon, to the hard-hitting drums of Steve Colmus, straight to the center of the stage where J. Roddy Walston himself beats the piano and delivers vocals doused in grit and alcohol.
We tracked them down to find out what’s good in Cleveland, TN, how they met, and why they love Instagram.
Tell me a little bit about growing up in Cleveland, TN.
Walston: It’s pretty typical small town South. Lots of churches, lots of football players. It was good, it was fun. You could kind of get away with a lot because people were okay. Like, you’d get in trouble, and someone could call someone in and be like, “You’re a decent kid, we’ll let you off this time.” It was fun.
How much of an influence would you say church music had on you?
A lot. Growing up, almost entirely. I wasn’t not allowed to listen to other music, it was just kind of a big part of the way I grew up. As I got older, 10 or 11, I branched out. I was really into Boys 2 Men early on. Steve knows that, boy bands. The hard stuff. (laughs)
And your grandmother taught you piano?
Yeah, as much as she could teach anything. She’s probably like the slowest decline into dementia that I’ve ever seen. Forty years strong, of drip by drip the brain fluid leaving. Even when I was younger, she could play really well for ten minutes and then not want to do it. She would teach me stuff, I would try to learn it, then she’d tell me it was wrong, even though I was playing it pretty accurately. Pretty similar to when I’m teaching these guys songs now.
So, you’re the grandmother of the group?
Yeah. That’s accurate.
Where are your doilies?
I leave those in the van.
How’d you meet these guys?
Steve was Match.com, Logan was Plentyoffish, Billy was Jdate…
How’d you really meet them?
Colmus: Some of all that is true, but the names have been changed.
Walston: Steve and Billy were both in bands in Baltimore when I moved there. There was a little club called Talking Head that the decently cool local bands played. When I moved up there, I moved with a bunch of guys and then they quit, so pretty quickly I was looking for other members. I just snagged these guys from other bands.
And then you kidnapped Logan?
Yeah. Never wanted a bass player, but Logan agreed to play it anyways. Logan grew up in a family that knew my wife’s family well, and when our old bass player was about to have a kid and to quit, his name came up.
Who influenced you to play the instruments you play?
Colmus: Dave Grohl. Nirvana.
Walston: Storms!
Colmus: Logan only started playing bass for this band.
Davis: Yeah, I picked it up. Before that I played guitar, violin…
Gordon: Classic rock.
Colmus: He’s a closet Van Halen fan.
You just outed him! Logan, how do you like your switch?
I like it now. I feel like for two years, I was just playing a script or something. Like, learn all these parts and get on stage. I feel like recently I’ve started to enjoy it more. Now I’m a bass player. Even in our live show it might seem like small differences from two years ago; it’s big differences to me.
What do you think makes live music important?
Walston: Money.
Davis: The concert experience, whether people want to admit it or not, is about like-minded people coming together in the same place. I don’t believe Dave Matthews Band could truly attract 20,000 people. Half of the experience is people coming together and seeing other people who are like them. I don’t think it just has to do with the music.
Walston: Instagram makes it important.
Gordon: It’s different when you see four people in a room than listening to it.
Do you get a different reaction in the South than the North?
Walston: One by one they all fall. It might take two songs longer, but in the end, Steven’s thrashing is right on. Some of the biggest rednecks are in the north. There’s the same subgroups of people in every city; it just depends on how many show up.
Davis: That’s why we have a blonde in the band. To be accepted everywhere.
How do you feel about the vinyl resurgence?
Colmus: It still sounds the best.
Gordon: I think it’s a different listening experience. You put it on from start to finish. You don’t skip around. You have this artwork you can look at. It’s not immediate. It’s not the lazy way to listen to music. You have to do a lot of work, versus now, where you hit a button.
Walston: I have nights where I call up friends and tell them to bring over a record.
What’s on heaviest rotation in your personal collection right now?
I got the first George Thorogood record recently. That’s something I’ve been listening to a lot lately. It’s really underrated. His voice sounds really cool; it’s not just the character voice. It’s a really good recording of a blues band. People don’t record the blues right at all. Ike & Tina stuff that’s pretty rad.
If I had any complaint about the vinyl resurgence, it’s that most people don’t record records or master them in a way that fully sounds awesome on vinyl. That just reinforces the fact that I like older music in general. I get excited when current bands release on vinyl, but a lot of times I’ll get it, and it doesn’t necessarily sound that awesome. Sometimes it sounds like someone played a CD in vinyl mastering setup.
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Color Roddy photo: Cary Whitt
