Regional Culture, Amplified: The Rock and Roll of Lee Bains III & the Glory Fires and J. Roddy Walston & the Business

CONCISE DESCIPTION: My presentation explores how two very different rock and roll bands from Southern Appalachia—Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires, hailing from Birmingham, Alabama, and J. Roddy Walston and the Business, originating from Cleveland, Tennessee—project a passionate understanding of the literary, religious, social, and musical roots of their region. ABSTRACT: My presentation explores how two very different rock and roll bands from Southern Appalachia—Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires, hailing from Birmingham, Alabama, and J. Roddy Walston and the Business, originating from Cleveland, Tennessee—recast regional myths and realities in forms for a new age. Bains’ and Walston’s bands play music worlds away from today’s popular Appalachian-string-flavored “Americana” indie-folk-rock. Rather, these two outfits wield the traditional instruments of rock and roll (electric guitars, drums, primal vocals, sometimes keyboard) and execute their mission with a shrewd reverence for the genre’s social and aesthetic power. A fresh hybrid of punk and Southern rock powers Lee Bains’ concern with the difficult legacies of his beloved home city and the surrounding South. By contrast, J. Roddy Walston and the Business’ music, which runs the rock and roll gamut from music hall to honky-tonk blues to heavy metal, backs up Walston’s epic laments of love, sex, death, and life lived close to the bone. In my talk I’ll discuss how these two bands, despite their differences, project a similarly passionate understanding of the literary, religious, social, and musical roots of their region