J. Roddy Walston & the Business/Taddy Porter

In the tradition of guys like Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino, J. Roddy Walston doesn’t just play the piano. He bangs away on the keys like a man possessed. Essential Tremors, the new studio album he recorded with his backing band, the Business, is a collection of raw garage rock tunes that have the same kind of swagger you hear in tunes by Kings of Leon and the Black Keys. So how the hell did Walston learn to play the piano? "Some of it was just being around it," he says. "My grandmother was a gospel/honky tonk country piano player. She would play us songs and tell us to come over and learn something. It wasn’t lessons. It was more picking up a percussive style rather than learning much about the piano itself. That was a lot of it. I don’t exactly know what I’m doing. When people ask me what key something is in, I don’t always know." Walston, who insists he'll never play keyboards, tours with a piano and puts on a helluva show. The last time he played Cleveland, he said a rather "rowdy" crowd showed up for the gig. Expect the same this time around. (Niesel)