Big thanks to everyone who came out to support the band in the past couple weeks.

We’ve got brand new shirts and a new edition of Hail Megaboys with awesome new cover art by Alex Fine.

Check them out in the emporium.

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

Here’s our man J Roddy on the cover of this morning’s perezhilton.com, playing the role of “lovable street urchin” with his good bud Jennifer Garner in Central Park over the weekend. One commenter questioned whether he was actually Sean Lennon, while another noted his striking resemblance to Peter Jackson (director of Lord of the Rings).

Heck, why don’t you pay a visit and leave your own comment? Check it - http://perezhilton.com/?p=7820#respond

OK, OK…it’s been a thousand, million galaxy years since I - or anyone from the band - updated you on our whereabouts. What was the hold-up? Got me - if it didn’t involve Price is Right or Chocolate Chex, I probably didn’t hear about it. Anyhow, I wanted to give you a brief recap of some things we did this summer. Smell me in my hood:

This is me and Rod on Folly Beach in Charleston, SC, living The Dream. We had just run into some drunken high school chicks swimming past who were telling us how they got a construction worker to buy them vodka at 11 in the morning so they could drink before they went swimming, and how none of them were wearing swimsuit bottoms. Then a crowd of skeevy 50-something dudes moved in and it got real weird. I guess the whole thing left us feeling really triumphant, or something. Then we had to walk back to the van like this.

This is Billy, Zach and I honky-tonkin’ with the good gentlemen of Hot Pipes. Somehow we ended up in the only New York sports bar on the block - can’t get enough of those…I guess. This is a pretty good representation of the lights on the main drag - it’s like a country music theme park, or someone throwing up a Lite Brite set. If you’re from Baltimore, you better be able to appreciate the charming side to tacky, and this had it in spades.

This is the hardest working, most beloved and probably the cleanest member of the band - our 1997 Ford Club Wagon, lovingly known as “The Diaper” (because she holds all our crap). We bought it off a church in Alabama awhile back and left the decals on as talismans against both cops and robbers. The shotgun seat doesn’t recline, the air conditioning is spotty and the speakers are blown, but she always carries us through the storm.

Wanna know how I know Billy’s gay? This is him playing “Rhinestone Cowboy” with Soul Asylum on his 28th birthday during our show with them in Raleigh. They asked for someone to come up on stage at the end of their set and Billy’s drunken sprint past security ensured this opportunity was firmly seized. They strapped an axe on him and let him loose with a basic knowledge of the chord changes, he promptly went about prancing and cock-strutting like Angus Young drunk on bleach. He was whipping things up so hard, security threw him off stage before Dave Pirner pulled him back up. The highlight was any one of Billy’s ripping solos or him blowing kisses to the crowd after Pirner got them all to sing “Happy Birthday” before the encore. It was all too much to take in. Here he is taking it for a ride:

But the real story of the Spring wasn’t the shows we played or the people we met or even the record coming out, really. Because, years from now, when I think back on March of 2007, I will only remember it as The Month Zach Westphal Became A “Man.” Zach’s hitherto barren face suddenly sprang forth in a river of molten manliness right before our very eyes, and luckily, I was able to catch our caterpillar becoming a gorgeous butterfly:

Here’s Zach near the end of March, just a scant two weeks into the voyage. As you can see, it had promise from right off the bat. His toothless sneer has now become a thing of real menace. The God-given talent was clearly there, but was he willing to work for it?

Here’s Zach a week later. He’d been subjecting it to a rigorous training, consisting solely of combing it down with his fingers 8 million times a day (henceforth known as “The Westphal Method”). The results were really starting to show. When I see this picture, I like to think of him lording over his Guitar Center with an iron fist, slowly being corrupted by the power of his upper lip. “I don’t think you understand, lady - you ARE buying this guitar!”

Barely a month in and now we’re shitting whole grain oats! You can almost sense the manliness oozing from his pores. Aging bikers and city bus riders were paying their respects, and he stopped having to look over his shoulder during every Amber Alert. But his saga wasn’t over by a longshot…

Gentlemen - we have achieved Kick-Ass! Man in bloom! With those golden ringlets and that lip warmer, all boundaries have been obliterated in a tsunami of raw puberty. Its even more glorious now…I’d take a picture but I’m afraid I’ll turn into a pillar of salt.

For the real stories, come out to the shows and say hi. The list is to the write. I mean, the right.
Buy the damn record.
Holla back,

Steve

This photo was part of a feature in Gutter Magazine. Scary?!

My cell phone camera is about the only thing more ubiquitous on our road trips than Gatorade bottles that may or may not be filled with Gatorade and Billy’s antacids. I like to think of myself as the Ansel Adams of dirty white dudes in a van. My journey to document the mundanities and tchotchkes that come with spending entire weekends in a moving box with your four best friends, has produced somewhat interesting (read: mixed) results. Witness:

This is Zach on the boardwalk in Asbury Park, NJ. It’s a great town - I just wish we could have seen it before a nuclear holocaust levelled the place. We walked along the boardwalk after getting there several hours too early and later learned from the bar staff that a band had done the same thing the week before and one of them got shot in the head. Thankfully all we got was windburned.
The manager of the club that night was a guy named Casper who had left his long-time gig at a bar in Florida to take the job. He was still tanned six months later - which provided a beautiful contrast with his blinding white set of fake choppers - and was physically aching for college girls (he didn’t elaborate). All night long he regaled us with tales that included getting high with Rick Derringer, selling crystal meth to Joey Ramone and living next door to the MILF Hunter. It was pretty awesome. At the end of the night he slipped us his phone number in case we ever needed a lawyer (he knew a good one) and the last four digits were “WILD.” SCORE!

This is the world-famous Casino in Asbury Park. The gambling here sucked…all they played was craps.

Beautiful, downtown Cincinnati.

Seriously, the Queen City is awesome (so I’m told). It was the site of The Greatest Argument I’ve Ever Heard In My Life, which took place at 4am in a suburban Cincinnati diner, and involved two drunken hillbilles. It went like this:

Woman: F*ck you
Man: No, f*ck you
Woman: F*ck you
Man: No, f*ck you
Woman: F*ck you
Man: No, f*ck you Denise

[End scene]

To Cincinnati: You must have been nice in, like, 1920:

Here’s our man, Chris “Ichiban” Zalamia in action. He travels with us and handles merch for us and is Zach’s smoking buddy. He might also be the smartest human being alive (or dead). We shared a house in college and I watched him teach himself Calculus 8 or something in one week, because he had slept through every one of his classes (and he had three alarm clocks). He got an “A.”
He’s also a shaman.

This is us applying white face paint and baby powder to ourselves in the bathroom of Parkway Billiards in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This was our big Halloween show and someone decided we were going to be some kind of Colonial America-Louis XIV hybrid. We raided a few women’s blouses and blazers from a Goodwill, picked up some tights from Wal-Mart, and lost our self-repect somewhere along the way. The end result was pretty hideous. The hightlight was watching the halo of baby powder that surrounded Rod’s head the entire evening.

Also at the show, we met a white guy who came as Mr. T. Just have a look and we’ll leave it at that:

This is Rod cleaning our friend’s floor in Lexington, Kentucky. He probably knocked over a glass and made a gigantic mess and then started crying like he always does. I mean, he cries all the time over the littlest stuff - he asks for a drink and someone hands him a “bad” Gatorade, or Zach eats raw broccoli and falls asleep next to him, or we throw away his sleeping bag because it got mixed in with the trash in the van…I swear! He’s probably crying while he’s reading this. BABY!

These are the fingers that I hurt really bad on tour. I bled all over, like, three pairs of jeans:

This is Billy wearing the new Hardees Fry Holster. (You can put Tater Tots in it too, I think.) This is from some rest stop in New Jersey…those stops are either really good or really terrible. This was one was pretty terrible (that’s why we’re eating Hardees). We had played New York City the night before and made $30, while racking up two separate $60 parking tickets at the same time. We kept them both as souvenirs.

This is Raleigh, North Carolina in a bewitching fog. I met a witch once - I dated her daughter for a week in high school. She wrote romance novels for a living and had alot of lame candles…I heard later on that her daughter convinced her to put a spell on me. I hope she instead spent the time casting an anti-gingivitis spell on her daughter because her gums were gross.
Anyway, we played King’s that night and got to see The Whistlestop for the first time, which has got to go down as the one coolest things we’ve got to do. Later, I got diarrhea.

Seriously - who’s not flushing? Seriously. Grow up.

Couple of quickies…

Rod is The Cream Machine. (In related news, I’m looking for a new inflatable mattress-mate.)

This is our friend Matt Ballard, who came on a trip with us once. We would like to thank the kind folks at Chik-fil-A in Dorch, North Carolina for allowing him to eat in their establishment.

These are some gorgeous Tennessee mountains. (And no Dolly Parton punchline.)

This is Zach’s dream vehicle - he said he would pay $500 a month to own it. It belonged to Jerry Berghoff who drove a monster truck called “The Attitude Adjuster.” It’s painted “General Lee sienna” and has a mural of “The Attitude Adjuster” on the side. It is currently parked at a Texaco station in Wheeling, West Virginia, across the street from “Hubcaps” (a hub cap emporium).

This is me drunk and loving it at The Dame in Lexington, Kentucky. The next morning, I realized our crappy performance the night before was due to this shirt being unlucky. I have since undertaken a vow to never wear it on stage ever again.

This is Zach and I kissing a pair of Blue Bulls. I don’t know why drinking them that night was so funny. You can look at Zach and tell I forced him to take this picture. I’m sorry Zach.

And finally:

This is the last thing we see everytime we head out for the road and the first thing we see when we get back - Jesus, shotgun shells and a baseball bat. That’s America in a milk crate, baby!

Steve

the new record is at sound garden in fells point.
this is great news for those of you in baltimore
and one more reason to hate this town if you are not
be excellent to one another
j roddy

Hey all,

Welcome to the new jroddy.net! We’re still working out the bugs, but before too long this place will hopefully pretty effin’ sweet. For now, check out info on the upcoming shows, sign up for mailing list, and most importantly - BUY HAIL MEGABOYS! (Just click on the “Emporium” link above.)

We’ve got some awesome shows coming up: First up, we’re playing with the Hint at Fletcher’s on March 23rd, along with Adelphi. The club is expecting a sell-out as early as next week, but we’ve got tickets for sale for $7, so drop us a line if you’d like one. On the 29th of this month, we’ll be at the Comet in Cincinnati with our good friends The Sheds (www.myspace.com/theshedsmusic) On the 30th, we’re playing an all-ages show in Cleveland, TN with Ballroom Dancing, that we hope will satisfy the folks who are put out by the Chattanooga age restrictions at shows. And on the 31st, we’re headed back to Chattanooga for a big blow-out at Rhythm and Brews. We’ll have CDs in hand for all these shows, along with t-shirts and beards (beards not for sale).

Steve

Tracklisting I’ll Tell You What Nineteen-aught-Four Rock n’ Roll II I Used to Did Times Are a’ Staying Go For It Generic In Love Picnics n’ Kisses Sally’s Bangs Mommy Bomb Stop Rip and Roll Go Malachi

Buy it

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