Steve On The Phone: Genus Edition [J Roddy Blog Archive]

This post was originally published on the old J Roddy Walston & The Business blog in 2008. It was written by Steve Colmus. I’m reposting it here for archival purposes.

Hey all, We’re back in the Motherland – Bodymore, Murdaland – resting, relaxing and making some headway on a new record. (Which, if all goes according to plan, we hope to have out by the end of this year.) In the meantime, we’re hitting the road again in the Spring and we’ll be bringing loads of new stuff with us – songs, t-shirts, album art, possibly LPs…its a brave new world! In honor of fresh starts, I wanted to clean out the pipes a bit with some pictures left over from our summer tours. Dig it:

This is how our days on tour usually start. Well, actually, this is more like noon-ish – after we’ve eaten, after we’ve B.S.ed about the night before, after my “Dad Rock” mix has been turned off for the second time (no love for The Coug’?) and after the thirty hours of sleep we’ve gotten over the last week has caught up to some of us. Here we see Billy in the conventional posture, lounging in his beat-off shorts, wrapped in a stranger’s bath towel, while Zach’s taste leans toward the avant-garde. Naps are awesome!

Here’s Billy eating a Louisville Hot Brown. If any one meal has the potential to bring about the end of the human race, it’s probably this. From what I can recall, this local dish is comprised of a slice of white bread, melted Cheddar cheese, sliced turkey and bacon, more cheese, another slice of white bread topped with a tomato, slathered with a final, all-encompassing layer of cheese. It should come with a complimentary set of defibrillators. Billy is just clowning in this shot, but Rod ate his entire sandwich, to everyone’s horror. But it did get us thinking: If we ever run into legal problems using “The Business,” say hello to “J Roddy Walston and Hot Brown.”

These are our friends Jeff and Tim from Chattanooga. Jeff, “Uncle Ding Dong Sauce,” had a memorable turn as Mr. T at a Halloween show we played in Chatty last year (chronicled in an earlier post). Since then, Jeff’s been hard at work with his band, Double Dick Slick, yet still found time to begin writing a solo concept album about 9/11. Some sample lyrics: Pray for our troops America Never forget 9/11 That’s when three-thousand people all went up to Heaven Or Hell if they did not live right and… It’s just a honky-tonkin’, love-makin’, boot-scootin’, rooting-tootin’, ass-kickin’, 9/11 Marvelous Heart I can’t be absolutely sure, but I’d wager Jeff is the first person to have used “9/11” as an adjective.

Here’s Zach’s Muppet ‘Stache (Also known as “The Shalit.”) He just recently trimmed it for the first time since March, and it’s gorgeous. He recieved the ultimate validation on the last tour – up there with the time a homeless dude high-fived Billy in Knoxville because he thought he was homeless too – when a dude in full hunting camos came into a gas station while we were in line, and was stopped dead in his tracks by the mere sight of Zach. All he could do was blurt out “DAMN!” and shake his head. WE’RE FOR REAL!

This is Billy with a beef blanket he bought at a truck stop in North Carolina. He said it tasted like burnt cardboard. On the way to this truck stop, we passed a smoldering three-car pile-up on the interstate and overheard two truckers discussing it in line for the bathroom. “I hear three people got killed,” the first one said. The second one thought it over for a moment. “Yup,” he finally said. “That’s a good one!” Truckers!

Here’s a portrait Billy did of himself on an Etch-a-Sketch. Well, he says it’s not supposed to be him, but I think it’s awfully coincidental that he gave him black hair. Either way, I think we can all agree, the man is a wizard with a small knob. (Ouch.)

Speaking of tasteless, here’s Rod.

This is Zach, killing himself. He’s about to dig into a triple order of Waffle House hashbrowns, “All-The-Way” (minus “Capped”) style. For the layperson, thats an entire platter of hashbrowns covered in chili, cheese, diced ham, tomatos, onions and jalapeno peppers – hold the mushrooms. The first time he ordered it, the waitress flinched. Zach can literally eat anything – I’ve seen him eat three McDonald’s quarter-pounders with cheese in less than five minutes at 10 a.m., and I’ve unfortunately been in a van with him for several hours after he’s chased two gas station kosher dogs with some leftover beef jerky and a bag of pork rinds. His stomach is a compost heap. (P.S. – In this picture, Zach is wearing his beloved “deer shirt” that we bought for him on tour last summer, and which was stolen from him after a show in Chattanooga in September. He has been virtually inconsolable since he lost it, so if the person who took it would like to cleanse their soul of its misdeeds, drop us a line.)

This is the Most Bad-Ass Game Of Jenga Ever Played, pitting Young Master Gordon against what appears to be meth personified. When the Jenga tower finally falls, it’s always pretty exciting.

This is Billy and Zach playing video poker in Shreveport, Louisiana. The people we met here were great, but everything else about the place creeped me out, from the crumbling, moss-covered shacks along the main drag (with cars out front), to the apartment complex across the street from the club that looked like a prison with bars on every window. Plus there were dudes walking down the street who I’m sure had more than one machete on them at all times. But even a town stocked with would-be cannibals can offer intrepid travelers a silver lining, and Shreveport’s is most definitely “The Inquisitor,” a weekly paper that basically compiles the mug shots of everyone who was arrested in Bossier County over the previous week. I knew it was going to be good from the cover:

That’s the kind of syntactic goodness that grammar lessons rob you of. I wish more newspapers might could write like this. Then there’s this guy:

“Edward Mouton – He’s got one up on Justice.” (I’m probably going to hell for that.)

Lastly, this is the backstage bathroom stall at the Star Bar in Atlanta. Not like I’m keeping a running tally or anything, but this is hands down my favorite bathroom in the world. (Solely in an aesthetic sense – I don’t fancy doing my business behind a Bud Light beaded curtain). The entire stall wall – well below where the picture ends – is covered in hand-written graffiti left there by bands who’ve played there over the years. Most just scribble the band name or motto if they’ve got one (i.e. – “Party On It”). But I like the ones that write about the drives (“Ten hours here and boy do we have to poop!”), the shows (“Here on the day The King died – 8/16/2002 1977″), and the towns they traveled from (“Who the f*** lives in Macon?”). I like it because it all makes me feel like I’m part of a larger fabric, made up of other people who just have to do dumb shit like drive ten hours to play to a dozen people, and then wake up on a stranger’s floor the next morning and do it all over again – not because it’s always easy and not because it’s always fun, but because its the only thing they can think to do with themselves. Keep your eyes peeled for them dates. See you soon, Steve