J Roddy Walston and The Business

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The debut, eponymous full length album from J Roddy Walston and The Business! '"I think maybe it was true for the whole country, but especially down South, everyone wanted to be Radiohead for the longest time," says J Roddy Walston, the garrulous frontman of recent Tennessee transplants J Roddy Walston and the Business. "I just got tired of hearing that, and didn't want to play it. We play the music we want to hear, and I think that makes a big difference." The music Walston (vocals, keys, guitar), Nick "Two Dollar" Kaisharis (lead guitar), Zack Westphal (bass, backing vocals, tambourine), and David Morton (drums) want to hear sounds like what would happen if Queen, Harry Nilsson, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Paul McCartney, Phil Spector, Scott Joplin, Supertramp, and the Blues Explosion decided to get bourbon sloppy and write gospel/ragtime/swamp boogies about baby Jesus and "losing bros to hos" . . . Walston started the Business five years ago in Cleveland, TN, after his homemade demo tapes beat out 350 contenders to win a new band showcase - sans band. Already used to collaborating, thanks to a stint writing "horrible never-ending prog music" with a friend, Walston recruited Westphal and a few other local musicians to form his first real group, and recorded his first EP, Here Come Trouble. The Business quickly became a vehicle for Walston to embrace his uniquely Southern musical background - live music as a communal, reciprocal experience, where passionate devotion to the band playing onstage outweighs the see-and-be-seen vibe of most indie-rock clubs. "I grew up pretty much only hearing church music," Walston says. "On my mom's side, the whole family, they're just huge musicians. Like, country hoedown out on the porch kind of people - which I resented for a long time but recently got back into. Really, I just enjoy creating situations where people can have fun and be accepted, and I think that our music has that common thread in it. People hear the first chorus and, by the second chorus, they're singing along."' - J. Bowers / CityPaper.com