J. Roddy Walston and The Business – Trees, Dallas, TX 10/29/14 (SHOW REVIEW)

Oftentimes, and especially in the fall months, sports and music will overlap. For fans of both, this means having to sacrifice the viewing of a baseball playoff or a Monday Night Football game when a good band is in town. Or perhaps it’s the opposite: eating purchased tickets to watch your team play. Fortunately, last night at Trees in Dallas, J. Roddy Walston and The Business allowed for both as they waited until Madison Bumgarner had closed out the World Series for San Francisco by putting the finishing touches on a loopy Kansas City comeback, before taking the stage to packed and enthusiastic house. Honestly, it would have been a bold (though entirely within their means) move to start the show, with their fans so boisterously assembled around the bar TVs. But, alas, it appears they are invested baseball fans too, as a few songs into the set, J Roddy urged us to think about the just-eliminated Royals as he introduced the appropriately titled song, “Hard Times”.

If you’re interested in seeing a frenetically paced, all-out rock and roll show J. Roddy Walston and The Business are your band. They’re four shaggy dudes from Baltimore by way of Tennessee who traffic in rock music filtered through all the best influences: rockabilly, Stax/Volt soul, countrified ditties, and classic rock bombast. Of course, this may sound a bit derivative, and to a point the formula is a bit tried and true. However, in a live setting, the band takes these confluences of genre and brings them together in ways that are a bit different and unique from the countless others trafficking in similar vibes.

For starters, there’s J. Roddy himself, who spent the night alternating between a seat at his vaunted upright piano or standing front and center at the mic stand. All beard and wild rollicking hair, J. Roddy doesn’t so much get into a song as he completely embodies it, yelping out notes, pummeling the area around him and heartily testifying to his adoring legion of fans: throughout the show he led numerous calls for sing-alongs and also asked those in attendance to “put away the Internet or their bad day” and instead lose themselves in the music the way he so expertly does. In lesser hands, this consistent call to action could wear a bit thin, but Walston’s sincerity and resulting demonstration proves a hard act to resist. Flanked to his sides and behind are his bedrocks. Guitarist Billy C. Gordon pulled out some nifty leads from his arsenal, and brought the house down with some blazing slide riffs on “Use Your Language”. Bassist Zach Westphal eagerly churned out the rhythm while also hitting the requisite high harmony notes that so frequently accompany Walston’s lead. And while Steve Colmus is less recognizable from the venue floor, as he’s hunkered down low in the back, his backbeat drumming is heard loud and clear, serving as a sturdy foundation for the glorious noise emanating forth.

It’s all a short and sweet affair, as the band plowed through a good chunk of their most recent albums, last year’sEssential Tremors and 2010’s self-titled release in a little over an hour. The shorter set seems about right though, as so the energy disseminated has little time to die down and settle. For a band indebted to so many varied influences, a well-selected cover or two would’ve fit nicely into the set, and there could perhaps be fewer pleas for the audience to join in, as it tends to happen pretty naturally. However, these are all minor quibbles. Their live show pretty much rocks.

And, so as the night began with the crowd gathered and united in baseball revelry, the night ended with them exiting to the final searing chords of “Heavy Bells” and filtering back out into the Deep Ellum air, heavy with sweat and united in pure rock and roll revelry. J. Roddy and The Business put on a rousing exhibition and left people abuzz with excitement. As the general public is starting to hear more of their music pop up on rock radio, television shows, and commercials, it seems the infectious nature of their music in taking a stronghold. Expect their star to keep rising.

Setlist:

  1. Sweat Shock
  2. Full Growing Man
  3. Marigold
  4. Take It As It Comes
  5. Hard Times
  6. Caroline
  7. Don’t Break The Needle
  8. Brave Man’s Death
  9. Used To Did
  10. Same Days
  11. Unknown Country Jam (“Old song our Grandma used to sing”)
  12. Use Your Language
  13. Midnight Cry

ENCORE:

  1. Boys Can Never Tell
  2. I Don’t Wanna Hear It
  3. Heavy Bells

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