J. Roddy Walston and the Business Defy 'Southern Rock' Label

Most people who know Jonathan Roddy Walston refer to him as Rod. More and more people are getting to know the gravelly voiced singer as the frontman for spitfire rockers J. Roddy Walston and the Business, a rootsy quartet that just released its self-titled debut album through Vagrant Records.

"When I first stopped being in a regular band and did what I'm doing now, I just thought up something that I could play under," he tells Spinner of his funky new handle. By "regular band," he means the more democratic kind. "One of those bands where everybody writes and somebody's always quitting," he deadpans.

Walston, who also plays guitar and a mean piano, hails from southeastern Tennessee, an hour west of Knoxville, but the band formed after the 29-year-old moved to Baltimore several years ago. Joined by bandmates, Billy Gordon (guitar), Logan Davis (bass) and Steve Colmus (drums), Walston and his crew's boogie-inflected rock recalls the raw guilelessness of early Kings of Leon and the rich rootsy sounds of the Zac Brown Band. Like those groups, Walston's southern roots run deep.

"There's a strange way people speak the English language in the South. If there's anything that's really influential on the record, it is that," he says. "The way I write, it's the South's weird sort of dark, mysterious language."

Walston does not think of his band's sound as Southern Rock, however. "For a long time, people haven't really known what to totally call us. We go in different directions to create our music. Rather than try and come up with a subgenre, I call it rock 'n' roll. I remember reading one time that that's what the Allman Brothers said when someone called them Southern Rock. They were like, 'Rock 'n' roll came from the South, calling it Southern Rock is like calling it rock 'n' roll rock 'n' roll'. I kinda relate to that."