J. Roddy Walston, frontman of local rock band Palm Palm, is super talented, always entertaining, and doing something a little different. How many people write original Christmas songs? Not many in Richmond have tried, but last year he wrote a few and took them on the road. This year he has a whole album worth of music and is currently on The Second Annual Christmas To the Bone Tour from Lexington to Brooklyn with his latest stop being tonight at The Broadberry.
Jay, what’s up with this Christmas music?
Been wanting to make a Christmas record for a while now and it just didn’t come together until this last year. During the whole pandemic shutdown, I filmed these couple of episodes of in studio performances, and one of them was a Christmas one. So I got some dudes together and played through some of it. It was the first time I tried to kick some Christmas songs I’ve been writing and it went really well with the band.
Once things opened back up last year, we did a version of that show live on tour and played to my Christmas music in front of people. After that I decided alright I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna nail down the studio time and we recorded the whole Christmas record in a session but vinyl takes so long to come out now. The last time I printed a record it took three months and now it’s over a year. So the record is basically done, it just needs to get mixed but I’m not gonna wait a whole year to put out at least one of the tracks. So we went ahead and put out the one track this year with the idea that the whole record will come out well before Christmas next year. So people can have it and kind of get get into it.
I love Christmas music! I don’t like bad Christmas, or all Christmas music but some of my favourite records are Christmas records. When someone actually writes a good Christmas song, it’s this thing that once a year I want to listen to that song, you know? [laughs]
Give me a couple of Christmas albums that you love.
Well, The Beach Boys Christmas Album is fantastic. There’s the Phil Spector one. I do like the Mariah Carey record, but it’s just ubiquitous to the season and I think everyone has heard it. I don’t know if they’ve heard it enough but they’ve definitely heard it a lot.
Do you like Vince Guaraldi, A Charlie Brown Christmas?
Of course, but that was different. Sounds really different in the sense that it has such a sad overtone to it but I do really like that record. Let me think of some of my other favourite ones. Oh, the Burl Ives Christmas songs. It’s just like a few singles, but the Burl Ives ‘Holly Jolly Christmas.’
There’s this crazy thing where Christmas music really made sense in the 50s and then again in the 80s. I feel, and a lot of people think this way, that they are kind of weird, like, sister decades. So like when the 80s came back around there was a lot of good Christmas music again and I’m not one of those people who are like “oh no, Christian music is starting to play again!” I’m like yeah let’s go!
You’ve taken Christmas music and added a rock element to it, right?
Yeah, a lot of people make Christmas records as some sort of throw off thing or just do either bad covers or the same 15 songs. I don’t know if its a money grab or contract fulfillment but that is not where my headspace is on this stuff. Like I wrote songs that I can play these anytime of the year. They do say Christmas in them, so people might be like what’s this about?! [laughs]
Its also has been a fun exercise because you have a few parameters, right? Like the song is gonna talk about Christmas or it’s got to be some sort of holiday type lyric and then let’s try to keep it mostly upbeat. It kind of sets you free because you can do sort of silly stuff. You don’t have to sit there thinking is this the statement I want to make about art in the world right now or something. Just get in the room and play with your buds, which is a lot closer to the original intention of being in a band. I just played the songs for the dudes then four hours later there’s the take.
Must be nice when that happens.
Yeah, just trying to really capture that live real energy, kind of letting yourself go and do things that you know if you thought about it too much, maybe you’d say like I don’t know about that. You might start to complicate and getting in your own way. That is maybe more about my whole headspace towards working on rock music right now but we did it on this Christmas record.
There’s the recording and the writing element and then there’s the whole tour, which is the Christmas To The Bone thing, which is let’s play all these originals plus rethink some classic Christmas songs. And yeah, it’s been even fun. Like the tour was a blast last year and I am super excited for the tour this year — I think people want to do something holiday-ish but not everybody is like I want to go to church or do communion. That was the crazy part about last year when we went on tour and people thought I was saying I’m going on tour and it’s the holidays. So for like maybe three or four songs in when all of a sudden they are like, ohhhh, this is gonna be a Christmas show. But loud, you know? [laughs] I saw people’s heads flip and then all of a sudden they were able to really able to get into it. What I heard from everyone was like, ‘dude, that was like, such exactly what I wanted out of a holiday thing.’ So it’s like a big celebration.
I love that. There are very few musicians in town that would even try to do a full original Christmas album. I missed the show last year, but I’m not going to miss it this year and I’m excited for it. I just love how you guys perform and your costumes. How much how much you get into it. Its almost an alter ego for you?
Once a year, I get to fully turn into this like Mad Santa Man but it’s fun even for the guys in the band last year. A tour where there’s no pressure to be anything except happy and ridiculous. Just like turn the whole being in a rock band thing on its head a little bit and just be goofballs, come out into the crowd with ridiculous banter somewhere in between David Lee Roth and fake drunk Dean Martin kind of come out at the same time.
So let’s do this! I want to have a good time. I want to play Christmas music and I think people want to be a part of that — that continues to be the motivation to do it.
Christmas To The Bone is happening tonight at The Broadberry
Find more info HERE
