Q&A With J Roddy Walston & The Business; Free MP3

Steve from J Roddy Walston & The Business (read a review of their latest, Hail Mega Boys, here) was kind enough to answer some questions for me at the end of their recent tour:

1) You guys are currently out on tour. What's the best/worst thing about road-dogging as a band?

We're fairly new to extended touring, so these may just end up being first impressions. I'm not the kind that gets homesick too easily, so I ended up missing privacy more than anything. You end up trying to grab snatches of quiet when you can. I'll take a walk whenever we have the time - I really like checking out new towns like that, and it gives me time to think or make phone calls or talk to myself or whatever. You'll never miss the ability to sit on your toilet and read a book like after you've been crapping in gas station bathrooms for a month.

But from watching the guys with girlfriends, keeping everything together back home when you're gone for weeks has gotta be one of the hardest thing for a touring musician. It'll put a strain on any relationship and once you're out on the road and hours away from home, all you can do is talk about it - endlessly.

2) It's clear from the new album [Hail Mega Boys, available now] that there is a lot of roots rock and rockabilly influence in the music. How does each of your personalities/creative influence manage to come out on record?

If you'd ever heard the band before Billy and I and joined, it was much quirkier and poppier - kind of like The Band on acid, or maybe Supertramp fronted by Harry Nilsson. Zach's been with Rod longer than anyone, so by now they can practically read each other's mind about where to place harmonies and how they should be sung. Surprisingly (unsurprisingly if you look at him) he's a total metalhead, though he still keeps a soft spot for shit like Imogen Heap. Billy tends to push the songs the hardest - he's the hardest to please, but his instincts are tried and true. He's a pretty hard rocker - lots of Guns and Roses and Motley Crue, but also tons of classic rock, especially Queen. I'm a pretty meat and potatoes guy - I just try to drive the songs as hard as they need to be driven, and keep everything solid and hanging together. I'm definitely from the Grohl school of playing drums, but I'm a huge Ringo fan along with all the drummers on Dylan's mid-60s records. Rod is kind of the ring-leader - he normally has some kind of vision for the song before we all sit down and he keeps everyone on task and optimistic. He's a huge fan of quirky songwriters like Nilsson, McCartney and Newman, but he's a big Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Buddy Holly fan, too. If the end result sounds like Bonham backing The Band - or Jerry Lee Lewis fronting The Band - then we're on the right path.

3) While the music is bright and generally raucous, the lyrics are sometimes quite melancholy. Do you guys try to make happy, danceable songs, or is there less a formula than a see-if-it-works mentality?

We just like writing stuff that's fun for us to work on and fun for us to play, and usually if you get that, it lends itself to being fun for the audience. The songs are definitely written with a "let's feel this out and see where it goes" approach. As for Rod's lyrics, I'm not sure what he's aiming for; though I will say that one of the underlying themes of the record is Rod's disillusionment with Baltimore and the rude shock to the system that it hit him with.

4) Hypothetical: You're down to your last twenty bucks amongst you on the road. You've got 1/8 of a tank of gas in the road wagon and 150 miles to the next show, and you're down to your last [insert favorite vice here]. Do you go the responsible route and gas up, or ride on fumes and restock the goodies?

Neither - we're converting our van to be able to run on vegetable oil this Fall, so we'd keep the twenty and put it towards a hotel room so we can avoid sleeping at so many dude crash pads. We're an incredibly boring band when it comes to vices.

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J Roddy Walston & The Business will be playing at Ottobar here in Baltimore on August 17th.

Download "Rock and Roll The Second" from Hail Mega Boys

Concert Review: Happy Chichester, Busdriver, RJD2 - Sonar, Baltimore, MD 3/25/07; Interview With Happy Chichester

In one of the most eclectic evenings one could spend listening to live music, Happy Chichester, Busdriver, and RJD2 rocked Sonar here in Baltimore this past Saturday, the last night of the current leg of their tour.



Opening up the show was Happy Chichester, performing his early-evening solo act before a modest audience of scenesters. It would be reasonable to expect an audience to wonder just what a man with a guitar performing an alt-country song called "Silent Movie", complete with harmonica, was doing opening for RJD2. Fortunately for Chichester, his obvious glee when he performs is infectious, and rubs off on the audience. And in case just having fun playing music isn't enough, in a nod to hip-hop heads in the crowd Happy broke out the beatbox on "Me And My Machine", and emulated a didgeridoo during the course of his set. Setting down the guitar, Chichester went on to perform the single from Lovers Come Back (Read a review of Happy's new album, here), "Artificial Fanfare (Music In My Head)", as well as "A Man Needs An Airplane", (kind of) dedicated to the girl in the audience with the airplane earrings. Just as demonstrated on Lovers Come Back, Happy Chichester is a multi-talented musician, and his live set this night is telling of why his live concert bootleg, Live At The Aladdin Theatre, became its own form of underground currency, selling on eBay for as high as $50.



After his set, I had the chance to speak with Happy about the tour and what it's been like traveling as a solo act for the first time, as well as opening for RJD2. Happy admitted that the tour's lineup was obviously somewhat eclectic (Happy's brand being markedly different from Busdriver's maniacally uptempo hip-hop and RJD2's similarly uptempo hip-hop/techno sound), but noted that Baltimore was a city where music fans appeared to be very open to broad ranges of sound.

Discussing performing in different cities, Happy explains that cities have their own persona, and that some cities "like Austin and [based on tonight] Baltimore" are cities that love music and where artists love to come and perform for such a fun and receptive crowd. Having spent the previous night in DC at the 9:30 Club (which Chichester describes as one of the "best places play" anywhere), I explained that Baltimore often was treated as DC's ugly cousin, which he admitted he had heard but reiterated how impressed he was with this night's crowd and how well received he felt by them.

Happy went on to share a small piece of his personal history, being born in Braddock Heights, Maryland, and how special this show was to him, returning to Maryland as a solo artist for the first time. With this brief conversation, and Happy's touching remarks about Any Given Tuesday's review of Lovers Come Back, I left Happy to relax a bit before coming back to the stage with RJD2 as a member of his full band.

Next to take the stage, Busdriver immediately changed the tone of the evening with his uber-speed rapping and ultra-weird stage persona, complete with party hats. After all, it's a party, right? From the piano hook and crowd call on "Avantcore" to the delectable strangeness of "Casting Agent And Cowgirls" and reggaeton beat of "Kill Your Employer", Busdriver by design is meant to mess with your head. Personally, I'm convinced it's all that reverb in the second microphone. Though if Busdriver had delivered on the guitar solo "with my tongue around the frets" that he mentioned, that would probably do the trick, too. Hopefully he'll continue making his mark on hip-hop so it can bounce back from abysmal sales and return to a glory of producing cutting-edge sounds. Busdriver has streaming audio on his MySpace, and MP3s on his site.

By the time RJD2 took the stage, the crowd had already broken loose with the electric boogaloo during the Busdriver set (which one of my accompanying friends, Tim, described as "Lenny Kravitz with crack"), and they were hungry for RJD2 plus his full band. Switching instruments during the set like pop stars switch wardrobes, RJD2, Happy Chichester, and Derek DiCenzo moved around the keys, the strings, and the decks like dervishes, before moved behind the decks and beat machines and cut loose. Complete with makeshift video screen featuring cut scenes and a close-up on RJD2's fingerwork, the crowd got live with RJD2 following up on two very capable opening acts and the full band set.



RJD2's tour will continue with Happy Chichester and Busdriver (who will drop off to be replaced by Pigeon John in late April) next month:

Wed 04/11/07 Starlight Ballroom Philadelphia PA ***
Thu 04/12/07 The Crazy Donkey Farmingdale NY ***
Fri 04/13/07 Webster Hall New York NY w/ Happy Chichester
Sat 04/14/07 Middle East Downstairs Cambridge MA ***
Sun 04/15/07 Pearl Street Nightclub Northampton MA ***
Mon 04/16/07 La TuLipe Montreal QC ***
Tue 04/17/07 Phoenix Toronto ON ***
Wed 04/18/07 Magic Stick Detroit MI ***
Thu 04/19/07 Grog Shop Cleveland Heights OH ***
Fri 04/20/07 Metro Chicago IL w/ Happy Chichester
Sat 04/21/07 First Avenue Minneapolis MN ***
Sun 04/22/07 The Picador (formerly Gabes Oasis) Iowa City IA ***
Mon 04/23/07 Birdys Indianapolis IN ***
Wed 05/09/07 Fox Theatre Boulder CO **
Thu 05/10/07 Bluebird Theatre Denver CO **
Fri 05/11/07 Abbey Theatre Durango CO **
Sat 05/12/07 The Clubhouse Tempe AZ **
Sun 05/13/07 Belly Up Tavern Solana Beach CA **
Mon 05/14/07 Henry Fonda Theater Los Angeles CA **
Tue 05/15/07 Mezzanine San Francisco CA **
Thu 05/17/07 Wonder Ballroom Portland OR **
Fri 05/18/07 Neumos Seattle WA **
Sat 05/19/07 The Nightlight Lounge Bellingham WA **

** w/ Pigeon John & Happy Chichester
*** w/ Busdriver & Happy Chichester


Thanks to Tim and SideRhodes Photography for the awesome photographs.