J. Roddy Walston

rock · americana · alternative rock

J. Roddy Walston is an American rock singer, pianist and guitarist who grew up in Cleveland, Tennessee and is now based in Richmond, Virginia. His grandmother, who favoured honky-tonk and gospel, gave him his first guitar, which he still owns, and that grounding sits under music otherwise shaped by pop radio and indie rock. He founded J. Roddy Walston and the Business in 2002 in Cleveland, moved the band to Baltimore in 2004 and later to Richmond, with Billy Gordon on lead guitar, Logan Davis on bass and Steve Colmus on drums. The band self-released Hail Mega Boys in 2007, then issued a self-titled album on Vagrant Records in 2010 and Essential Tremors (2013) and Destroyers of the Soft Life (2017) on ATO Records. Songs from those records turned up in the film Contraband, on HBO's Eastbound & Down and MTV's Caged, and in commercial licensing. The group announced its end in late 2019, after fourteen years, four albums and 889 shows. Since 2025 Walston has toured under his own name with the Automatic Band, which he describes as a loose collection of players drawn from Automatic Dice, his Richmond recording studio, and he has been previewing new material alongside songs from the Business catalogue such as "Heavy Bells" and "Boys Can Never Tell". His live show centres on hard-pounding, piano-driven rock and roll — a garage and punk attack with honky-tonk underpinnings — and he has said he wants it loud and rocking rather than considered. Venues on the 2026 run include the Blue Room at Third Man Records in Nashville and the Southern Café & Music Hall in Charlottesville.

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