J. Roddy Walston and the Business are back in the area tomorrow at Sinclair and if your looking for something to wake you up from your week long sugar crash this show will surely snap you out of it.
Not only do you get the throwback boogie rock of J. Roddy Walston and the Business, but the pysch-seventies road trip rock of Nasvhille’s Fly Golden Eagle. And since they’re both all about kickin’ it old school, we’re breaking out our classic This or That session we filmed last year with J. Roddy and drummer Steve the Sleeve Colmus last year. Hey and while where at it we also recently caught up with Ben Trimble of Fly Golden Eagle to ask him about the traveling classic retro-rock double bill and their 26 track art-rock gem Quartz.
Allston Pudding: Do you notice a difference between playing a weeknight show and a weekday show? You guys are such high energy does it bum you out if you have to play a Monday or Tuesday?
Ben Trimble: Yeah, sometimes you’ll end on a place on a Tuesday, or like we were just in Birmingham on a Sunday night and forgot what night it was then we’re like “whats going on tonight?” but you could tell people were just like getting ready to go work or something. Then there’s certain nights when people are like just wowing out and you can tell, like “oh yeah its a Friday night,” or a full moon or something.
AP: You relocated from Detroit to Nashville, was it a part of your musical awakening?
BT: I don’t know where I sort of had a musical awakening, but moving to Nashville definitely put music in a new light. Mostly everyone there in some way is connected to music. Where I was growing up there wasn’t that many musicians around, there was a lot of music up there, Gospel, rock n’ roll stuff, but I actually didn’t move here to do music, I moved here to study and go to school. I just started doing music around town and just jamming, playing around and doing house shows and stuff.
AP: How do you end up working with Benjamin Booker, and Alabama Shakes? Just from being there?
BT: Most of us helped build a studio called the Bombshelter, where there’s a guy there with all his equipment, working out of his house. The Shakes record was actually recorded there. A bunch of other pretty awesome records, and then he did a Reigning Sound record out of his house, all analog. I started working for him with the Shakes and we helped him build a studio down the road. So we all, or most of us, pretty much live in the same neighborhood so we see each other all the time. He (Booker) came up on a cold call when he had moved from New Orleans and they didn’t really have a band, so we just helped out and everyone just got a little money to play on it.
AP: Your new record Quartz is 26 tracks long?
BT: The record is 26 songs, but there is an abridged version called Quarta Bijour which is 12.
AP: Is that how you get the opportunity to lay down 26 tracks, working for the guy that runs the studio? or did you have all those songs ready to go?
BT: We were able to record that many songs because a part of the whole concept of the album was bringing in different places. Because we had experience working in studios we kind of got over the traditional no windows in the studio setting or whatever. So we would find different places traveling around that we would want to record in and record with an 8 track and take it back to the studio to work it all out.
AP: You synced the entire album to the 1973 film “Holy Mountain?” Like a whole Pink Floyd thing, how does that work out?
BT: Just in the process of writing new material I came across that movie and it inspired some different songs and while we kept working on it, it became a patch of things that kept lining up, but we weren’t trying to make it work at the expense of anything. It wasn’t until the very end that we realized it worked out and yeah it’s a pretty cool sync.
AP: Do you have to hit play on the movie and the record at a specific time?
BT: Yeah when you see the girl at the beginning you hit play on the first song.
AP: Very cool, (side note:We’re totally going to set this up for you to try for yourself, see the bottom of the page.)
AP: Your out touring with J. Roddy, those guys look light straight up classic rockers, you guys are pretty classic, is it just a rock party on the road right now?
BT: Yeah it’s pretty fun, they’re super rad dudes. It’s actually been a lot of driving in vans though, we get to kick it at night, but sometimes we gotta bust ass to get to the next place. but there’s definitely been some good times.