Joe Oestreich of Watershed

or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Welcome to the show.

Our guest today is Joe A Strike, author of the memoir Hitless Wonder a Life and Minor League rock and Roll, which documents the twenty five years he toured the country and a beat up a Cono line van as the bass player and co singer for Columbus, Ohio's Watershed. His writing has appeared in Esquire, Sports, Illustrated, and other magazines.

He's been honored by Atlantic Monthly and shortlisted in the Best American Essays of two thousand eight and two thousand nine, and as if that added on the Push Card Prize Best of the Small Presses in two thousand fourteen. His band, Watershed retains a devoted cult following, and their latest record is called Brick and Mortar And Eric, do you want to tell everybody why this interviews a little different and special than some of the others we've done. This was

actually the first interview recorded. Joe was kind enough to be our first guest. Uh. The other thing about it is that Joe is a great author. Is book Hitless Wonder is really one of the most enjoyable reads about being in the music world that I've ever read. And he's been a good friend for a long time. So we're really excited to have him on and let's check it out. Here's the interview. Hey, Joe, welcome to the show. Hey, how you guys doing. We're doing great. We're really glad

to have you. Thanks for thanks for doing this. Our podcast is called The One You Feed, and it's based on the old parable where there's an old man who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like hatred and greed and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks, and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?

And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start the podcast off by just asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in your work. Well, to my great shame, I've never heard that before, um, but I'm really glad you guys introduced it to me. And it really can apply to a lot of people in a lot of different ways

of course, to me. To me, I think it's about getting the work done, especially something that might be considered like, you know, artwork, if I might be so pretentious as to use the word art to talk about anything that I've ever done. But the reason why I think that that that's got to be the good wolf is because there are a lot of forces in life. Um, not all evil forces either, good well meaning forces like your family, your wife, your kids, your job, um, the fact that

you have to pay the rent. Things like that that kind of um nudge you away from any sort of art making process toward a money making process. And of course this is a problem because time is finite, and so with only limited time, you've got to make some pretty tough decisions about how you can get the work done and what it's going to cost you to get the work done. So for me, I think, um feeding the good wolf. And it's not like I spent a lot of time thinking about this until I agreed to

do this podcast. But I asked myself what does that mean to me? And the best thing that I can come up with is it means finding excuses and reasons to get the work done instead of the opposite, because it's always very easy to find reasons to not get the work done. If you're looking for reasons to not do it, you will never run out of them. So I think you just kind of have to take the opposite stance and say, wait a minute, how can I get this done? You know, what what can I do?

Can I wake up a little earlier. Can I be a little selfish? Um today? Can I set aside two hours to do whatever it is I need to do? Um? But yeah, for me, it's about finding excuses and reasons to get the work done. That's great. I think we talked about that. Actually, when Eric and I first started talking about this podcast, productivity came up for me as

a big part of it. I mean, people who do a lot in their lives are obviously feeding the good wolf somehow, because if you don't, you know, things just crumble, usually rather quickly. It's kind of like losing weight and gaining weight, and it's really very easy to gain it because it's fun and decadent, and we like to end it's a son of a bitch to lose it. Yeah, absolutely, so, Yeah, I think it's just I guess sometimes you have to be selfish, and it doesn't seem like the selfish part

of you would be the good wolf. It seems like that would be the bad wolf, because we've been taught that since we were little kids. Don't be so hellfish.

But I think sometimes you have to be selfish in the name of personal fulfillment, in the name of the fact that there's just simply a limited time on earth, and so in order to get something done, sometimes you have to say, I'm going to hold this art making process or whatever as precious and I'm going to set it aside, and and if I have to be selfish order to get it done, that's what I'll do. Now.

Of course, we all know stories about people artists, musicians, whatever, who take that to such an extreme that they lose so many things that are potentially positive in their life in the name of getting the work done, you know, whether whether it be they get divorced or they never see their kids or whatever. And I certainly don't want to be that level of still selfish. I want to find some sort of balance in my life. And I think I'm lucky enough that I found it. That was

one of the things in the book that really fascinated me. Um. You know, I kind of I read it when it came out. I loved it. Um is really interesting. A was you know, very well written and be it's interesting to read the book of someone that you've that grew up in the same place that you did and had

a lot of the early experiences. But one of the things I was struck by is that, you know, sort of the theme running through that book was sort of, uh, you know, you fighting for the band and trying to balance that with your wife's desire to do other things. And I do think that is you know, you talk about, you know, feeding the good Wolf to get your art done,

and sometimes that's selfish. And and one of the things that's interesting though, is that for those of us that that feel that need to to make something when we don't, the real asshole and and and it's not any better. And so I think I'm arguing what the people around me want, it always backfires on me. Right, in the short term, you can sometimes make the people around you very happy by ignoring the art making process through the

good Wolf and just kind of playing along with what's easy. Um. But in the long run, I think you're totally right. I think that ultimately you become so unfulfilled or frustrated because you've got this thing that you need to get out and it's kind of blocked that you become such a jerk that at some point the people around you say, Okay, I'm sorry, get out of here, go do that thing that you need to do. Absolutely always sort of amazed

me about about Watershed and and reading your book. Really sort of you know, Drives at Home Again is a sort of how hard you guys really did work and sort of how you continued to do it even you know, over some pretty dramatic ups and downs, and so it kind of be interested in what do you think made that work for you guys that you were able to a you know, work so hard and be so focused and then sustain it over a period of time. I think the work part was it was something that we

could do. You know, nobody in our band is ever gonna sing like Harold Chichester or Willie Phoenix or you know, pick your favorite singer. We're never gonna sing like that. We're never gonna be the best musicians in the world. We're never gonna be punk rock enough to be the Ramans in order to get away with being less than

perfect musicians and singers or whatever. So we sort of recognized our limitations from an early age and said, well, one of the things we can do is work really hard, like book a bunch of gigs, practice all the time, try to get better, try to write better songs, go on the road, and then that's all well and good. I think we kind of got that down at an early age. But a lot of bands get that down

and still they break up. So I think one of the real I guess lucky uh happenstances about our band was simply the way that we were formed, and that is Colin, our guitar player. You know, when we were kids, young kids like seventh and eighth grade. This kid, Colin had vision. Man. I mean he started putting this band together before any of us knew how to play instruments.

And I mean that literally in every case except for him, he knew how to play guitar kind of, but other than that, he just started recruiting people, and he recruited his friends and his whole thing. I can't believe he was like wise enough to to to think of this or stumble upon this at such a young age. But his theory was, if we're friends first, we can carve a band. We can make a band out of friends.

You know, we were gonna hang out together anyway, so it's like we might as well hang out together in a bar with our guitars, trying to play songs, write songs at center and center cent. So I think that's what kept us going, you know, to a reasonable, um, a length of time, you know, the ten or the fifteen years or whatever normal people consider to be a

long period of time. But at this point, we're at like twenty five years, We're at We're at an exceedingly long period of time now, and so I don't think I can easily write it all off on knowing our limitations, so trying to work hard and friendship. At this point, I think it's something else stubbornness, um, the fact that it's just what we do and so we don't even really think about it. It's just what we do. Maybe it's the fact that, um, we honestly believe that our

best song is still out there to be written. That's really interesting because actually today I was thinking about that as I was, you know, thinking about this interview, and I thought about, you know, when you guys got you know, when you guys got dropped back in the day, and then I thought about the songs that have been written since then, and you know, I would say, there are some of the best ones, you know, even the most

recent record. And that's exactly you know, what I was thinking was if you had if anybody gives up and then that doesn't get done. And if if the belief is that it's about the work itself and the joy that you get from the work itself, not necessarily the extrinsic reward from that, which is another topic I want to cover a little bit later. Then obviously carrying on is is important. Yeah, that was one of the real lessons that we learned um when we were pretty young

and we started going out on the road. At age twenty, we dropped out of school and body use van and started playing shows all over the country for you know, very few people and very little money. What we learned was that the show has to be its own reward, the act of playing the fun you have and and getting there and hanging out with your buddies and having a drink at the bar or whatever, because if you play for those extrinsic things like money, fame or whatever,

you'll always be disappointed. It will never be enough. Even if you get a little bit of you know what normal people call success, financial success or whatever, critical success, it's never enough. So we learned the hard way because we didn't have any choice. We're you know, we're playing for you know, decent crowds in Columbus. But you know that ten percent of our shows are less The huge vast majority of our shows were played in front of people who didn't care, wanted to hate us um and

very few of even those people. So we learned pretty quickly that we needed to find something within ourselves that would make it worth it and make it worth it to drive five miles to Milwaukee on a Tuesday night to play for fifteen bucks. That don't get me wrong, we did want to sign a big record deal at that time. I guess it's just because we saw our heroes and they all had big deals and they were all playing arenas and stuff like that, so we wanted

to be like Springsteen or whatever we just did. And it's not all that cool to admit, but that's just kind of the way UM we saw musical success. Then, you know, we don't see that anymore. You're talking about that the reward is in the creation, you know, learning the lesson that the reward is the reward. And yet I think the challenge for a lot of people is that even though we know that, maybe deep down in our better moments, it's really easy to get lost in

the lure of external success again. Whether that be money, whether that be critical acclaim, whether that be And and the thing I liked about you know in the book as you sort of are, you're you're describing that battle, you're sort of describing that you know that you are,

you are torn in that way. And and I think, you know, back to the theme of sort of feeding the good wolf is you know, how do you how do you sort of keep pulling yourself back to that when everything in our culture and a lot of default things sort of pull you away from Hey, it's the

work that's important into Hey, it's the success that's important. Well, luckily for us, I guess luckily, um, life kicks you in the ass enough that even though it's a lesson that you need to to relearn over and over again, you get plenty of opportunities to relearn it because at least in our career, we we didn't rocket to instant success, you know what I mean, it's been it's always been a struggle. So we've learned that lesson over and over

and over again. But I will confess that there were times when I was, you know, early thirties perhaps where I started to see our friends who played the straight route you know that went straight from college into a cubicle or whatever. I started to see them have think all of these kind of material things, and you know,

the big mcmanchon, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And I knew I didn't want to be them exactly, and I didn't necessarily covet the material things that they had, But the crisis was coming from the fact that I wasn't that happy where I was. You know, it's one of those things where, Okay, if I don't have the mcmanchon and can't afford the vacation,

don't have a nice car or whatever, that's fine. But shouldn't I at least be really really happy while I don't have the mcmanchion and all of that sort of thing. And for a long time I wasn't. And I think it's just because man frustration. You've got You've got this material, whatever it is, and you just want to get it into the world, you know, so badly, and and somehow the world didn't seem to want it. And then I eventually got to a place where I was like, Uh,

it doesn't matter what the world wants. It's just gonna happen. Do you feel like you've had more success in your writing career than you have in your music career or is it too early to know. It's probably too early to know, But I guess the one thing I've learned about myself is that, um, I'm never gonna be like in baseball they used to call it the bonus baby, like the hot commodity, the buzzworthy thing. Like I'm always

gonna be a grinder, it seems to me. And whatever I decided to do, it's always the kind of like people stumble into whatever I do and then like that's pretty good. But watershed or my writing career, it's never like I'm the coolest hippist, must read thing on the cover of Entertainment Weekly or whatever, you know. So luckily I'm not burdened with that actually. See, it also seems in the writing world there's less all or nothing the

music business. For I think it's changed a little bit as the internet's going on, but certainly in the days where you guys are coming up, it really was all or nothing. You either you either got in a major label and you made it big or you floundered. And I think, you know, looking at at at a at a writing career, there's there's a lot of different avenues to sort of be in between. You know, you don't have to hit the home run to be successful. Yeah.

I think a lot of the same advances in technology that ate it so that you could kind of have a middle class in the music industry, uh, the leveling of the distribution channels and so forth, so that there are a lot of bands that have niche crowds. So they might only have fifteen thousand fans, and I say only, but they might have fifteen thousand fans, but they can find those fifteen thousand fans because of the Internet and

social media Center Center Center. A lot of those same advances have made it so that the publishing industry can have something like a middle class too. You can find your audience if you need to, you can publish the book yourself. Everybody's pretty much got to promote their books themselves. Even the people on big giant publishing houses have to

do that these days. So yeah, I think I think in terms of um, the ability to get your art in whatever medium you're working in, in front of people, I think this is like a golden age, you know what I mean, maybe not financially. But again, as we've said, that can't be the goal anyway. If if the goal is to get your work out to people, there's never

been a better time on earth than right now. One of the other things in reading the book that hit me and sort of gets to I think the support that we need in order to sort of continue on was some of the stories about your father. You know.

One of the lines was all the other parents and all the expectations they seem to have for their kids, and and you said that, you know, knowing your own happiness is the only expectation your father's ever had, and you've just got other stories about his sort of really, you know, seems legendary support. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about him and the role he's played. Yeah, I mean he was a huge supporter right from the beginning. When we were fourth my

I guess eighth grade or whatever. He uh bought my first base and there's a hundred fifty dollar court base from Williams Music in Worthington, Ohio. And from that moment forward he really just fostered my interest in it. And I guess I didn't really need fostering, but during the low times, I needed somebody to say no, keep going, keep going, it's okay. His only fear was that I wouldn't take it seriously enough, and I always wondered maybe there were times thirty twenty five years into our career

he's like, Okay, I didn't mean to take it that seriously. Um, But I have two kids now, and so I try to think about, like, what did I learn from my dad as a parent that I can maybe translate to my kids, And um, you know, there are a couple of things that don't necessarily apply to music, like giving a ship that helps. I think when your father giving a ship, showing up being there. But I think what my dad gave to me was, um, unconditional support, just

really support. It's gonna be okay, it's gonna be okay every now and then. That support was a little bit financial, never huge amounts, but uh, Like I remember my dad cut watersheded check for like a thousand bucks one time, which seemed like a huge amount to us, don't get me wrong, and we paid him back. It took us a year, but we paid him back, and I just remember thinking, this is so generous, This is so great, and he's just like a money problem is not a problem.

And we we didn't come from rich families, but we were lucky that we had that kind of support, emotional support, financial support from the very beginning, and then the support of people like Biggie who you know, he's the road manager, been with us from the very beginning. And think about it, he doesn't even play on stage or write any of the songs. What the heck is he's still dealing with the band. I think I didn't know this before I wrote the book, but I think now he sees and

it's undeniably true. He sees what he does as an art, and it is undeniably an art. The support, the flyer making, the getting us there in the van, the heroic driving. I mean, there is an artistic nous to what he does, and so that fulfills something that he needs. Back to your dad for a second, because there were several things that there. There was one line you said that really was you were describing being in a bar, and uh, you know, it sounds like there were some watershed people.

They were not talking about a sold out stadium. And your dad sort of looks over it, and you know, smiling and says, you know, look at this thing you've built, and he clearly has that sense that it's not about the external success. And I just I found that really a touching line that you know, to see your father sort of seeing it in the beauty for what it really is. Yeah, he is an amazing guy. And I don't know where that that comes from. Um, I know

where his amazingness comes from. But that sort of optimistic look at this thing you built, when other people would look at the very same scene and see fifteen people nursing beers and a bar and think this is a dismal show, My dad sees look at that thing you built, And in a lot of ways, I think Colin sees the world through that same filter. Um. It seems awfully simple to just say that it's optimism or seeing the silver lining or something like that. It goes deeper than that.

I think it's more like a a faith that things are good and things will work out. I think the people and this has been me sometimes who see the scene and see the fifteen people and say this is

dismal that I think comes from fear. Fear that like things are going bad and this is evidence that things are going bad, whereas my dad and I think Colin to a large degree see that same scene and see it's confirmation that things are fundamentally good in the world and in what you're doing, where that sort of inner strength comes from to see the world is fundamentally good

and what you're doing is fundamentally right. I don't know your disappointments killing mad, but it's a possible ball to liver pert no matter what I do, he ain't enough of my little mistakes. Don't add them up. Don't add them up, no matter what I don't stakes not. Just One of the themes that we've talked about and really comes up again and again in your book is the idea of really sticking with it and grinding things out.

One of the most poignant examples of that in the book, and one that the first time I heard it, I laughed and refused to believe it was true, which is I'm sure a reaction you get often is about your

day's opening for the insane clown posse. And and there's a line in there where you know the the guys sitting there and his killer clown makeup saying, you know our fans hate you, and Colin laughs and and uh and Colin says, you know, hate hate never stopped us, But I just find the whole thing, uh A a funny story if you could talk about And but at the same time, this is right around the time that your first drummer, Herb, leaves the band, and you're you're

sort of chronicling how he's reacting to the very same things that you and Colin are and and his reaction is not not the same. So this was about two years after we got dropped from Epic, and so we were scraping really hard, not only to keep the band together, but hopefully to get another record deal. And we this guy Frank Aversa, who was really was a great guy

who came along at the right time. Uh. He produced the spin Doctor's song to Princes, so he had some money, he had a really nice studio, he liked the band, and just when needed him, when Epic said no, you guys are washed up at age or whatever, this guy Franka Versus said, come up and make a record in my barn. So we made this record Star Vehicle and we're like, wow, you know that the stars are aligned for us. You know, we're writing better songs than we

ever have made our best record. We got to do it for free with this really good producer Waterships Back Baby, And then about six months after that album came out, a guy who would run sound for us when we were on Epic was running front of house for Insane Clown Posse, and a couple of their opening bands dropped off the bill because it's a thankless gig playing in front of five thousand juggalos who just you know, throw fago at you, give you the finger and you know,

I don't know, then crawl into their mom's minivan. But he's like, dude, Insane Clown Posse needs an opener, and we jumped at the opportunity. Now, part of it is because we're like, this is gonna be hilarious us, right, Insane Clown Posse. We sound like cheap trick and they're white, serial killing clowns from Detroit. This is just gonna be hilarious. But the other part of it, and it seems so ridiculous now looking back on it, but at the time

this was legit. We actually thought this was a break, Like we thought this was gonna lead to a record deal. We even kind of hoped that the Insane Clown Posse would sign us to their record company, Psychopathic Records. And so this is the downside of Colins optimism. I mean, he we're sitting in the van on the way to one of these gigs, and he's like, he's like, oh man, this is gonna be big. This is gonna be big. We're gonna be on Psychopathic Records. Violent j loves us,

These juggalos are gonna love us. What a fantastic break this is. And we found out that show one, but it was not a fantastic break. And I talked about this in the book, but the very first show was in Scranton. We're in the dressing room getting ready to go out there and we're putting on like our little power pop skinny tie eyes in our suits and we hear the crowd and it's a big crowd, probably three

or four thousand people. We hear the crowd like water ship, water Ship, water Ship, and we look at each other. We're like, dudes, this is awesome. They know us, right, Like I think they know I think we might have gotten some airplane Scranton right, like their actual Watership fans in the audience and then we opened the door and we can hear that they're really saying water ship sucks. Water ship sucked. We hadn't even played a note yet and these juggalos are booing us off the stage already.

That was pretty much the high point of the tour. From there, it just got worse. I mean, we played okay, I guess, but it didn't matter, of course. I mean we were the one thing standing in between these kids and the insane clown Posse, and these kids weren't having it. They were just bad spot to be. They want to be between anybody and they're insane clown posse. They really should just have a detail before that playing insane clown posse,

of course. And I remember when I was a kid and I saw whatever King Cobra opened up for Kiss, and it was the same thing, like you just you can't really open up for a band like that, a band that's going to commit to being kabuky monsters or serial killing clowns. You just yeah, they're very tender people. Video from from these days at all does any exist? I haven't seen it. I hope it does. That would

be great. I hope it does. But the best show on that tour was it was in Louisville, and the day before the Louisville show, we were in Milwaukee and I broke one of colins guitars. I just knocked it off the guitar stand and the next snapped in half, so he was down to one guitar. And he's like, if I break a string tonight in Louisville, the concert is over. I'm not gonna sit there and change strings in front of five thousand juggles like ding ding ding dinging.

And so we get out there and we play our song and it's really fast, this fast version of this song called Wallflower Child. And we play our second song called Star Vehicle, and these kids are just about to like start the middle fingers flying. I mean, the first song was confusion, the second song was more confusion, but now they're just turning into rage. And right then Colin breaks a string and says thank you good night, and the middle fingers were coming up, and all of a sudden,

they just to crowd those like they loved it. It was two songs, maybe two and a half songs, and we got a great response from the crowd that night. Huge. I probably thought that was pretty cool. They did. They did because these kids don't really understand live rock and roll. I think I wrote about this in the book, but there's a moment where some juggalo comes up to Colin. It was actually in Milwaukee, I remember, and he's like,

I know you guys were lip syncing. I know you were, And Colins like, dude, if we were lip syncing, do you think it would sound that shitty? You know, kids just don't understand how the rock and rule works. I guess it's hysterical now that lip syncing is the norm.

They probably wouldn't be saying that right. There was a moment in every show where you could tell, and in the moment is the first thirty seconds of the first song where you could tell that the kids were pretty impressed by Herb actually playing drums, like big muscular Herb beating the crap out of these drums. But that only lasted about thirty seconds and then they turned on us. So there any plans for Watershed currently? Yeah, we're talking

about making another record in the spring. I know I've got a bunch of songs right now, and I think Colin those two and uh so, yeah, the plan I think is to get together, probably may too premature. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the book you're working on now? Yeah, and and that was

actually a good time. Yeah. I'm writing a book about this incident that happened in the town where I live now, Conway, South Carolina, nine, where the high school football coach at Conway High School benched a senior returning starter, a quarterback who happened to be black, in favor of a junior who was the son of an assistant coach who was

a white kid completely untested. The black kid the year before had led the team to an eight and four record, and talk around town was that Conway High School was finally going to win their first state championship in football, big football town, but finally the big championship was going

to happen. But then when the coach bench the black guy in favor of the white guy, thirty one of the thirty seven black kids on the team walked away from the team in protest, and that started this big racial incident that divided the town along racial lines, and uh in a lot of ways, that hasn't really healed. Almost twenty five years later, people still talk about the boycott and everybody has still got a story. The team

that year only one one game. It was the last game of the season, and they carried the coach off on their shoulders and chanted Chuck Jordan's coach of the year. That coach. That coach is still the coach of Conway High School right now, and the white quarterback that he elevated is now the coach of Myrtle Beach High School, and that's Conway's biggest rival anyway. In addition to being I think a really fantastic story, it's been really refreshing

to write about something other than myself. Well, Joe, I think that's all I've got. Thanks so much for coming on the show. We appreciate it. I look forward to reading the new book and hearing the new watershed, and maybe we'll see you in the spring up here. Thanks guys, a lot of fun, See you guys. Bye. You can find out more about Joey Strike, including how to spell his last name properly, at one you feed dot net slash joe o