Speaker 1: I think maybe we got addicted to rock and roll
Speaker 1: when we were fourteen or fifteen playing together, and our
Speaker 1: brains are permanently attracted that dopamine to playing music together.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living.
Speaker 3: This podcast is about how.
Speaker 2: Other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how
Speaker 2: they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. On
Speaker 2: today's episode, Eric interviews Joe Astrike and Colin Gowel, who
Speaker 2: are best known as members of the band Watershed. They
Speaker 2: have both been guests on the podcast as individuals before,
Speaker 2: but there's a focus on friendship and relationship sustainability. In
Speaker 2: today's interview, we'll be talking about Watershed, the band, Joe
Speaker 2: and Colin as friends, Joe's well known book Hitless Wonder,
Speaker 2: and Watershed's amazing new album Blow It Up Before It Breaks.
Speaker 4: Colin, Joe, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Good to be here, Great to be here.
Speaker 6: Eric.
Speaker 4: You guys are both previous guests of the show. I
Speaker 4: was just saying, Joe, you were one of our first
Speaker 4: five guests, and collectively you guys make up the band Watershed,
Speaker 4: which is sort of a Columbus institution, and you guys
Speaker 4: have been doing it since we were all in high school,
Speaker 4: which was a long time ago now. So this conversation's
Speaker 4: really gonna orient around sustaining creativity and friendship over the
Speaker 4: long haul, which you guys have been able to do
Speaker 4: both things. Your new record, I think is one of
Speaker 4: your very best, you know, all these years later. But
Speaker 4: before we get into that, we'll start like we always
Speaker 4: do with the parable. In the Parable, there's a grandparent
Speaker 4: who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 4: there's two wolves inside of us. One's a good wolf,
Speaker 4: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 4: the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 4: and hatred and fear. The grandchild stops think about it
Speaker 4: for a second, look up at their grandparent, and they say, well,
Speaker 4: which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 4: So I'm gonna first let you respond to this, Joe,
Speaker 4: because you did it furthest a go Collins a little
Speaker 4: bit more recently, what does that parable mean to you
Speaker 4: in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 7: I'm glad that our original interview was like twelve years ago,
Speaker 7: because I don't remember what I said the first time,
Speaker 7: so I hope I say something completely different this time.
Speaker 7: And I am now a father, and I think I
Speaker 7: was probably a brand new father when we talked last time.
Speaker 7: And being a father really teaches you that you're not
Speaker 7: the center of the earth, and your desires are not
Speaker 7: always the most important thing. And the ability to care
Speaker 7: for something else, some other being, whether it's a child,
Speaker 7: a friend, the spouse, dependent, a dog with a torn
Speaker 7: acl being able to care for somebody else is such
Speaker 7: a privilege. And I think that's what feeds me. Is
Speaker 7: just sort of giving up some selfishness in favor of
Speaker 7: a little bit of self lessness has been a great
Speaker 7: maturing phase for me and so that's what feeds me
Speaker 7: right now, is kind of taking care of other people.
Speaker 7: That might sound a little corny, but that's where I
Speaker 7: am beautiful.
Speaker 4: Love it, Colin anything you want to add, Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean, for me, it's always been pretty steady where
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 1: I look at each day like as a day where
Speaker 1: you can either be productive or not productive, and every
Speaker 1: decision you have a choice. And I'm not perfect in
Speaker 1: any way at all, but every day I try to
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, work out, read a book, listen
Speaker 1: to a podcast, drink water, you know, in addition to
Speaker 1: eating pizza and having beer and.
Speaker 5: No fruit.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, But I just try to approach every day
Speaker 1: like maybe you don't have your best day, there's a
Speaker 1: new day tomorrow. So I try to every day just
Speaker 1: try to challenge myself whatever that means to myself to
Speaker 1: do better. And then obviously you try to surround yourself
Speaker 1: with people that you look up to and admire, and
Speaker 1: that puts like your family, Like my wife and son
Speaker 1: are both amazing people. So I'm always like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be absolutely the weakest link in this family,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, I just want to skate
Speaker 1: by so I you know, being around you know, good
Speaker 1: people obviously those decisions. That's another way too, I think,
Speaker 1: to kind of feed your good side people that are
Speaker 1: feeding their good wolves around you.
Speaker 4: If I was a get youa type of interviewer, I
Speaker 4: would now ask you who the weak link in the
Speaker 4: family really is. But I'm not going to do that.
Speaker 4: That's not as well, definitely not what we do here. So, yeah,
Speaker 4: you mentioned they're the importance of surrounding yourself with good people. Obviously.
Speaker 4: One of the things that strikes me about you guys,
Speaker 4: and the reason I wanted to talk to you guys,
Speaker 4: is that you have been friends and bandmates for a
Speaker 4: long long time and continue to do it. And you know,
Speaker 4: one of the things, Joe, you wrote a book it's
Speaker 4: probably a decade ago called Hitless Wonder, And in that book,
Speaker 4: you're you're sort of raising an overall question of like, well,
Speaker 4: why are we still doing this when it's not by
Speaker 4: traditional measures successful, meaning, you know, you guys aren't getting
Speaker 4: paid a ton of money, You're not getting you know,
Speaker 4: millions and millions of streams. Right, It's a project that
Speaker 4: you guys do because you love it, and I'm curious,
Speaker 4: what is it about it for you? Guys that keeps
Speaker 4: you doing it today, And do you feel differently about that,
Speaker 4: Joe than you did a decade to go?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I do feel differently because when I wrote the book,
Speaker 7: one of the questions that I was kind of struggling
Speaker 7: with is the fact that we've been together for so
Speaker 7: long and we're still doing it despite having so little
Speaker 7: of what conventionally is described as success financially or critical.
Speaker 3: Success in some cases.
Speaker 7: Is it admirable or pathetic that we're still doing it?
Speaker 7: And in the process of writing the book, I definitely
Speaker 7: have come down on the side of its admirable. I
Speaker 7: was a little bit torn at the beginning, and now
Speaker 7: I am well over Heck, yeah, it's admirable that we're
Speaker 7: still doing this. I mean, we are friends that are
Speaker 7: engaged in a lifelong project together, and that's super cool.
Speaker 7: We would be friends anyway without the project, but with
Speaker 7: the project, it's sort of like this unifying principle that
Speaker 7: kind of keeps us focused and gives us an excuse
Speaker 7: to be here right now with you. Without these gigs
Speaker 7: that we were playing this weekend, we wouldn't be sitting
Speaker 7: here today. So it's kind of like this container that
Speaker 7: is keeping us together without the band, and we would
Speaker 7: still be friends. There's no doubt about it. That's why
Speaker 7: the band is so strong. But the focus in the
Speaker 7: project that the band provides has really.
Speaker 4: Been the gift right Because you don't live in town, right,
Speaker 4: You are here in Columbus because of this show, and
Speaker 4: I love that idea of it being a container. One
Speaker 4: of the reasons that I started this podcast was because
Speaker 4: I thought I could get Chris, my best friend, who
Speaker 4: I was hoping would join us for this conversation and
Speaker 4: it just didn't work out because I thought it was
Speaker 4: be a perfect thing. But anyway was that I thought
Speaker 4: it was a thing we could do together and I
Speaker 4: wanted something like that, and a decade into this thing,
Speaker 4: the fact that we still do it together is one
Speaker 4: of the most meaningful things to me. Colin, talk a
Speaker 4: little bit about how meaningful it is for you, because
Speaker 4: you're still doing music pretty regularly here in Columbus, You've
Speaker 4: got a League Bowlers project, you do a bunch of
Speaker 4: different things. What's special about Watershed for you?
Speaker 5: I mean, having to think about this.
Speaker 1: With the new record coming out, a couple of things
Speaker 1: were struck and it's hard to explain to people when
Speaker 1: I was trying to think about myself, Like Joe and
Speaker 1: I met in fourth grade, like and we met herb
Speaker 1: in eighth grade, and we met Biggie, who's our tour manager,
Speaker 1: artwork guy who's been with us. We wanted to sing,
Speaker 1: but he didn't want to sing, so like, well you
Speaker 1: can be like our guy helps out.
Speaker 5: We've all been together that whole time.
Speaker 1: Is that we were writing songs before i'd even like
Speaker 1: forget kiss the girl. I never even held a girl's hand, right,
Speaker 1: I never said we were writing.
Speaker 4: With them, And that was like ten years ago when that, Yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Don't want to get that's one of the reasons.
Speaker 1: But I'm trying to think about like when we started,
Speaker 1: like it's hard for me to wrap around you try
Speaker 1: to discover being in conventional turns like there's nothing conventional
Speaker 1: about Watershed. And we started that young, and we always
Speaker 1: practiced every night. We've always played like it's never been
Speaker 1: for a second we weren't doing this. It's like an
Speaker 1: assumed thing, like we breathe oxygen. Like I realized that,
Speaker 1: like we've never even broached the subject that we wouldn't
Speaker 1: go on under any circumstances. That's never come up, and
Speaker 1: I just it's strange and to think obviously that we
Speaker 1: carry through to this day and.
Speaker 5: We've always been doing it.
Speaker 1: We haven't like stopped, and like someone was a dentist
Speaker 1: for ten years and got divorced and we came back together.
Speaker 5: If circumstances were different, we'd be doing it a lot more.
Speaker 1: I mean, the life has forced us to slow down,
Speaker 1: but we would left to our own devices, we would
Speaker 1: be doing a lot more watershed. I was thinking about
Speaker 1: it too. I wonder we started so young in a
Speaker 1: parallel to addiction. You know, if you start partying too young,
Speaker 1: it rewires your brain the wrong way. I think maybe
Speaker 1: we got addicted to rock and roll when we were
Speaker 1: fourteen or fifteen playing together, and our brains are permanently
Speaker 1: attracted that dopamine to playing music together, you know, because
Speaker 1: we still we were rehearsing last night and today, like
Speaker 1: I still get a huge kick.
Speaker 5: Out of playing.
Speaker 1: And Biggie and I said, the camaraderie of your friends
Speaker 1: being together, that's the main thing. There's better musicians all
Speaker 1: over than all of us, but playing together and having
Speaker 1: that like you have with Chris, that effortless everyone knows
Speaker 1: on such a fundamental level. We've been through so much
Speaker 1: together that you're just really yourself around everybody while you're
Speaker 1: being creative. We take it for granted, but I've been
Speaker 1: forced to think about, you know, yeah, what do this
Speaker 1: is odd.
Speaker 3: That together is the important thing.
Speaker 7: Like certain people I know who will play poker with
Speaker 7: anybody who wants to play poker, will play cards or
Speaker 7: golf with anybody who wants to play golf. There are
Speaker 7: certain things that I only want to do with my friends.
Speaker 7: I only want to play cards with people who are
Speaker 7: my friends. I only want to play golf with my friends.
Speaker 7: I only want to play rock and roll with my friends.
Speaker 7: So I'm not just going to like play rock and
Speaker 7: roll to play rock and roll. I play rock and
Speaker 7: roll because I play with Colin. That's the thing that matters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we've always had fun, and we thought this
Speaker 1: is how all bands were, and as we realized, like
Speaker 1: a lot of bands don't like each other, whereas the
Speaker 1: gigs are fun, but being on the road and touring together,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, you gots toured so much, I can't
Speaker 1: believe it.
Speaker 5: Like it was fun, it was an adventure.
Speaker 1: You're out with your friends, and it was kind of
Speaker 1: shocking for us to learn that probably ninety percent of
Speaker 1: bands don't.
Speaker 5: See it that way.
Speaker 1: They're there to be successful, and if it's the shows
Speaker 1: aren't successful, they don't want to do it.
Speaker 5: Whereas we loved having an off day, or you know,
Speaker 5: the show wasn't.
Speaker 1: So successful, that didn't ruin our day because we were
Speaker 1: still hanging out, and it's still like that.
Speaker 5: The hanging out part is the most fun of all.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, And you know I fall where you do
Speaker 4: with it, Joe, which is the admirable side of it,
Speaker 4: because you guys are doing it for the reason of
Speaker 4: just doing it.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: If you look at psychology, you know a lot of
Speaker 4: behavioral psychologists will talk about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Right.
Speaker 4: An intrinsic motivation is something you do just to do it,
Speaker 4: and an extrinsic motivation is something that you're doing it
Speaker 4: to get something else. And you guys are at this
Speaker 4: juncture not doing it to get something else, right, Joe,
Speaker 4: Even in the book ten years ago, you were sort
Speaker 4: of saying early on, I could justify this as paying
Speaker 4: our dues, right in a way, that's an investment in
Speaker 4: some future payoff. Never say never right, But the odds
Speaker 4: are that you guys aren't going to suddenly break through
Speaker 4: to you know, you can almost never commercial success, So
Speaker 4: you're doing it just to do it. And I think
Speaker 4: that in life it's good to have things like that.
Speaker 4: It's good to have things that you do just because
Speaker 4: you want to do them.
Speaker 7: And I think extrinsic and in motivations are both valid. Sure,
Speaker 7: either one can be fine, but I think in the
Speaker 7: long run, you're going to be happier if you can
Speaker 7: do the intrinsic one, because you can't control the extrinsic, right.
Speaker 7: We cannot decide how any of our stuff is ever
Speaker 7: received by anyone. We can't make people come to the shows,
Speaker 7: we can't force people to buy our records, right, So
Speaker 7: if we're counting on that, it's just not going to
Speaker 7: be a sustainable model. Whereas the intrinsic motivation, if we
Speaker 7: can find a way to make it satisfying for ourselves,
Speaker 7: that that's what we can control and that's ultimately what matters.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree with you. I think both motivations are
Speaker 4: valid and in most cases we have a little of both.
Speaker 4: Right For me, this podcast, I talk about it a lot.
Speaker 4: Things got a little bit weirder when this became the
Speaker 4: way I made a living, right, because now there are
Speaker 4: legitimate and important extrinsic motivations baked into it, right, Like
Speaker 4: we need to get a certain number of listeners, you know,
Speaker 4: it's what pays for Chris and Nicole and I to
Speaker 4: make a living. And yet the more I can orient
Speaker 4: to the intrinsic doing it because I love it, the
Speaker 4: more I can reflect on that, the better the experience is.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, no, And I think we've been that way
Speaker 1: for a long time. And there's a lot of bands
Speaker 1: that have, you know, obviously done better than us, that
Speaker 1: are out still playing shows.
Speaker 5: And I can say, you know, we're never been envious.
Speaker 1: That's a hard way to make a living too, Like
Speaker 1: I'm happy Watershed. Okay, maybe we don't, you know, sell
Speaker 1: the records that a lot of bands did from where
Speaker 1: we came from. But the fact that we get to
Speaker 1: do things on our own terms and there's no pressure,
Speaker 1: it's a huge gift in its own right. We're not
Speaker 1: wrestling with absolutely like your album's goods, like yeah, because
Speaker 1: we don't have a deadline. No one's like Watershed's got
Speaker 1: to produce any numbers so right away, there's no other hands,
Speaker 1: like when you're at Epic Records and everyone wants to
Speaker 1: give you their input and that is a gift in
Speaker 1: its own way. And you know, I think we've always
Speaker 1: been wary of taking our music and you know, having
Speaker 1: to do it to make a living, because it's hard
Speaker 1: to do that. It's hard to mix these worlds and
Speaker 1: we've never done that. Some bands do it, and they
Speaker 1: do very well doing that, but we never. We turned
Speaker 1: down shows and things like that. They probably pay money.
Speaker 5: I don't know why.
Speaker 4: Yeah, how did you guys make that transition? Because you
Speaker 4: guys were signed to Epic Records, right, You were on
Speaker 4: a major label, You were aiming at big success, and
Speaker 4: you were really close in a lot of ways. The
Speaker 4: way we're describing this makes it sound like you guys
Speaker 4: are like completely unsuccessful at this point, right, And it's
Speaker 4: not true. Like, I mean, you guys did well, particularly
Speaker 4: here in Columbus. You have had a rabid fan base.
Speaker 4: I mean, you guys did better than the vast majority
Speaker 4: of bands, right, But there was a point where you
Speaker 4: were close and then didn't get there, And I'm sure
Speaker 4: there must have been some degree of disappointment there how
Speaker 4: did you come back from that disappointment or how did
Speaker 4: you begin to rest the love of music away from
Speaker 4: what you were hoping it would turn into.
Speaker 3: There was definitely disappointment.
Speaker 7: I mean, my wife would tell you that for about
Speaker 7: a year, I slept on the floor of our bedroom
Speaker 7: because I was tossing and turning so much. I didn't
Speaker 7: want to keep her awake. There was definitely disappointment. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: But looking back on it, I can't believe I'm saying this,
Speaker 7: but I'm really really glad that happened, because going through
Speaker 7: that challenge of being sort of like you know, getting
Speaker 7: signed by a major label was sort of like making
Speaker 7: the NBA.
Speaker 3: Or the NFL.
Speaker 7: And after you sort of get that dream and then
Speaker 7: lose the dream, that's where a lot of bands would quit.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 7: The fact that we didn't quit and we maintained our
Speaker 7: relationship despite that challenge and then got even better.
Speaker 3: I think our best work.
Speaker 7: I think almost everybody would agree that our best work
Speaker 7: happened after all of that. Part of it was stubbornness,
Speaker 7: part of it was Okay, we'll show you and we'll
Speaker 7: show ourselves that we don't need this. There was a
Speaker 7: lot of disappointment, but I'm kind of glad it happened
Speaker 7: because we got better after that. We got better I
Speaker 7: think because of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to answer Joe's question, huge disappointment, like I couldn't
Speaker 1: even listen to the radio and my girlfriend at the
Speaker 1: time and be like, oh, you know, you're bummed out.
Speaker 5: It's like other jobs.
Speaker 1: Maybe you get like benefits when you get drop from epics, right,
Speaker 1: you see yourself as tainted goods. Yeah, you know that
Speaker 1: you've worked this hard and now nobody takes your calls.
Speaker 1: You're not part of anything. But I think the trick
Speaker 1: for us too, a we were really good friends and
Speaker 1: we went through it together and we just went out
Speaker 1: and played shows, like we're not going to sit around town.
Speaker 1: And it was kind of depressing to go out and
Speaker 1: play these shows, but it was really good for us.
Speaker 5: We're just gonna go play music together.
Speaker 1: And then you know, we did have good influences seeing
Speaker 1: a guy like Willie Phoenix or guys like Happy in
Speaker 1: the RC Mob. They were huge towns, way more talented
Speaker 1: than we ever were, and they were on labels and
Speaker 1: got dropped. So you know, you don't want to be
Speaker 1: all full yourself, and then you know I bring it up,
Speaker 1: but like Slim Dunlop, who was in the Replacements was
Speaker 1: was a good friend to us and we used to
Speaker 1: have talks and at the time I didn't understand. He
Speaker 1: would call me and ask out what we're doing, and
Speaker 1: I'd be like, oh, you know, we're getting dropped and
Speaker 1: this and that, and he would all these talks about
Speaker 1: you know, you're gonna get gifts all the time if
Speaker 1: you learn to appreciate him. It's all how you look
Speaker 1: at things. And he would always point out like the
Speaker 1: things you know you got, and like I always look
Speaker 1: at Epic records, people will be like, oh man, you
Speaker 1: guys were this close and you got dropped, or they
Speaker 1: read Hitless Wonder and that's really sad.
Speaker 5: I'm like, Okay, that's one way to look at it.
Speaker 5: The other way to look at it would.
Speaker 1: Be like three friends in Biggie who don't even read music,
Speaker 1: got to spend two years living in New York City
Speaker 1: hanging around with Rick Rubin and Jim Steinman and ACDC,
Speaker 1: touring with the Smith Eens.
Speaker 5: We're going to record albums and they're going to put
Speaker 5: him in. Every record store in the country is going to.
Speaker 1: Have your album and you're gonna do this for two
Speaker 1: years and then at the end of two years you
Speaker 1: have to just come home, like have you won that
Speaker 1: on a game show?
Speaker 3: That sounds pretty good, right, exactly.
Speaker 1: Right, right, but it's seen is failure once your brain
Speaker 1: sets around like we're so lucky to even be in
Speaker 1: that position.
Speaker 5: And I truly feel that way.
Speaker 1: And we've had so many experiences once you see them,
Speaker 1: watershed experiences, all sorts of things that bands would love
Speaker 1: and that would Slim would say, even Tom Petty's always
Speaker 1: looking up the ladder to who's in front of him,
Speaker 1: and he said, I'm telling you guys. Slim used to say,
Speaker 1: look down the ladder every once in a while and
Speaker 1: look at all the bands that would love to be
Speaker 1: in your spot. And never forget that, you know, and
Speaker 1: this is somebody you listen to, or if one person
Speaker 1: singing your song, you wrote a song in a bed.
Speaker 1: I remember being somewhere like in Milwaukee where maybe year
Speaker 1: before we played and there were three hundred people and
Speaker 1: we were up and coming. And now we're playing on
Speaker 1: a Tuesday night and there's thirty people there and we
Speaker 1: play the song sad Drive and there's some guy in
Speaker 1: the back.
Speaker 5: I've never seen here. We are our career, it's not
Speaker 5: going anywhere.
Speaker 1: There's nobody here compared to last time. There's a guy
Speaker 1: singing your song. That's a sign you better appreciate that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And I really try to see all the let alone,
Speaker 1: the gifts of friendship and health and creativity and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. There is feedback you're getting now. If you
Speaker 1: want a brand new car every year, you're probably in
Speaker 1: the wrong business. But you will get your feedback, you know,
Speaker 1: in gifts, but you have to make sure you're aware
Speaker 1: to them.
Speaker 4: That's a really great sentiment, and it is really easy
Speaker 4: to spend all our time looking up the ladder. I've
Speaker 4: told this story before, but early on in the podcast,
Speaker 4: we went to la and we interviewed a guy named
Speaker 4: Lewis Howse who's got a podcast called School of Greatness.
Speaker 4: It's a huge podcast even then. And Lewis is from
Speaker 4: Delaware here, so his studio was in his house. I
Speaker 4: walk down the balcony and I'm looking down in the
Speaker 4: Hollywood Hills and I'm like, oh my god, like this
Speaker 4: is incredible. This guy has got it all right. And
Speaker 4: then I just for some reason Turner looked over my
Speaker 4: shoulder and right kind of right up behind him in
Speaker 4: a way, we're like far more amazing houses, and I
Speaker 4: just right in that one second, I could look both
Speaker 4: directions and be like, at any point in life, that's
Speaker 4: your choice. You can choose to be like, look at
Speaker 4: what I have. I've got an apartment in the Hollywood Hills,
Speaker 4: or i can choose to be looking up the hill
Speaker 4: and I'm like, well but I don't have that, you know,
Speaker 4: And that for me has certainly been one of my
Speaker 4: lifelong challenges, is that stop always thinking there needs to
Speaker 4: be something more.
Speaker 7: Well, I don't want to get too far afield here,
Speaker 7: but the way capitalism often works is they put the
Speaker 7: more in front of you. It's like the disnification of
Speaker 7: the world. Whatever level you are when you go to Disney,
Speaker 7: Disney makes it so you get just a peak of
Speaker 7: the next less vel up, and then if you get
Speaker 7: that access fastback, you get.
Speaker 3: Just a peak of the next level. You can have
Speaker 3: the private vest tour that gets you right on the rides.
Speaker 7: And so I think having the discipline to be happy
Speaker 7: where you are and look down even though the next
Speaker 7: level up keeps getting teased is it takes a lot
Speaker 7: of determination.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it certainly. That is our economic system, right.
Speaker 4: There's always somebody trying to sell you something, and the
Speaker 4: way they do that is by basically making you feel
Speaker 4: like what you have is not good in it exactly.
Speaker 4: It's praying on a very natural human desire. We are
Speaker 4: not creatures that are satisfied by nature, because that's not
Speaker 4: a very good survival adaptation, right. A satisfied hunter gatherer
Speaker 4: isn't going to live real long, right, So it's natural
Speaker 4: in us, and I think there are good parts of it.
Speaker 4: There is something good to me in the striving, oh yeah,
Speaker 4: and the one ing, But there's also like, outside a
Speaker 4: certain point, it becomes very mentally self destructive tendency.
Speaker 1: And I guess also I should meant to struggle back
Speaker 1: to the music's at the center of all this.
Speaker 5: We kind of take it for granted.
Speaker 1: But if we hadn't kept making albums we thought were better,
Speaker 1: I don't know what would have happened. And now I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's our hard work or we're just
Speaker 1: slow learners. But each record we made after Epic Records
Speaker 1: just got better.
Speaker 5: So we always felt excited.
Speaker 1: We got this album or this song we got this
Speaker 1: new song that's just from working hard and creating together.
Speaker 5: But the music at the center of it does propel us.
Speaker 1: Like even the new record, we weren't excited about it,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have done it, you know, or it kept going.
Speaker 1: And I think that sometimes I tend to forget about
Speaker 1: you know how much that's pushed us on to meeting
Speaker 1: guys like Tim Paddlin and different people that have helped
Speaker 1: us along the way to like believe in us when
Speaker 1: maybe other people didn't. And once again, it comes kind
Speaker 1: of back to you know, who you surround yourself with,
Speaker 1: and you know, the people fall off very fast when
Speaker 1: you get drop from every records like you. You know,
Speaker 1: your agent drops you, your manager drops you, people don't
Speaker 1: take your calls anymore.
Speaker 5: And that's a reality of that world.
Speaker 1: But I will say that like the fact that we
Speaker 1: got a glimpse and we even got to be there
Speaker 1: for a little bit, it's not even fair.
Speaker 5: But the first thing everyone always says about Watershed is
Speaker 5: they're on epic records.
Speaker 1: Now, we had I think, way bigger creative highs and
Speaker 1: commercial highs after that. But in our society, the fact
Speaker 1: that you were on Epic Records, the label with Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson or whatever.
Speaker 5: You have a stamp of approval that we probably really.
Speaker 1: Don't deserve, but people will give us the time of
Speaker 1: day just because for two years we were in the
Speaker 1: major leagues.
Speaker 5: Allegedly. Yeah, so it cuts both ways.
Speaker 1: So you're going to go up there and do that,
Speaker 1: but we reap the benefits of having that experience too.
Speaker 4: So so new record, great record. I think it's among
Speaker 4: your very best things. And you guys are extraordinarily fired
Speaker 4: up for fifty year olds. I will say that, like,
Speaker 4: I mean, you guys, you can't be that fired up
Speaker 4: all the time, I'm certain, But holy mackerel, did you
Speaker 4: bring it on the record?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 4: Joe? A song that I really love is well, I
Speaker 4: love all of them, but another night and in the Ruts,
Speaker 4: which has one of my favorite lines on the record,
Speaker 4: which is tailgating at an AA meeting.
Speaker 8: Night night in the roots not just seth out of
Speaker 8: self inflicting it up because Noah can't wait to see
Speaker 8: you want me upside church parking lots, bumped up and
Speaker 8: beat it the tail gating ball of a beat it.
Speaker 8: Noe can't wait to see you want me?
Speaker 6: Upside, I'm out of myself show you're right now? Hell,
Speaker 6: easy answer, I shut fun.
Speaker 8: Has Caniebels been vaccinated with the speed I'm it?
Speaker 5: Or needles? No, I can't wait to say.
Speaker 4: What's the scene there?
Speaker 7: Well, I've been thinking a lot about addiction issues. You know,
Speaker 7: a lot of people have friends and acquaintances and maybe
Speaker 7: family members who have struggled in that way, and I
Speaker 7: think we're all getting to the age where you see
Speaker 7: certain people who, if they haven't kind of gotten their
Speaker 7: act together by now, it's really starting to become detrimental.
Speaker 7: And I have a few people, like more than two
Speaker 7: people I know, who died recently from addiction problems. I've
Speaker 7: just been thinking about that a lot. So there's some
Speaker 7: of those themes scattered throughout some of my songs on
Speaker 7: the new album. But I just thought a cool way
Speaker 7: to sort of get at the heart of what that
Speaker 7: is all about. And the struggle is that somebody's going
Speaker 7: to the AA meeting but they're just punk rock enough
Speaker 7: to be drinking in the parking lot before that, And
Speaker 7: it's a serious issue that I'm not trying to make
Speaker 7: light of in that line. But I just thought the
Speaker 7: idea of tailgating at an AA meeting, of all the
Speaker 7: places you could be tailgating would be clever, interesting, maybe
Speaker 7: interesting as the word.
Speaker 4: It certainly caught my ear as a recovering alcoholic and
Speaker 4: addict for sure. And yeah, I talk about being grateful
Speaker 4: for having what you did with the record, and then
Speaker 4: Joe even you're talking about being grateful for what you
Speaker 4: went through afterwards, like the way you process that and
Speaker 4: what that did to you as a person. You know,
Speaker 4: one of the things I'm grateful for with my addiction
Speaker 4: is I am a burn the house to the ground
Speaker 4: pretty fast kind of person, which is really good news
Speaker 4: because I had a chance to get sober at twenty four, right,
Speaker 4: and then I drank again. But I've been sober again
Speaker 4: fifteen years. And I know a lot of people who
Speaker 4: are like two degree. You know, if you were to
Speaker 4: turn the destructive dial down like two notches for me
Speaker 4: who are still going and you're right, when you get
Speaker 4: to be this age, you know, the bills start coming
Speaker 4: do for sure all that stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no doubt, agreed.
Speaker 4: So you guys have made this sound really positive in
Speaker 4: a lot of ways, and it is. But surely there's
Speaker 4: been a lot of challenges in this area. Has your
Speaker 4: friendship ever had a challenge, like a significant one?
Speaker 3: That's a really good question.
Speaker 5: Not really.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, when you've been in a band, sitting
Speaker 1: next to a guy in a van for how many
Speaker 1: years we did all that and this and that, it
Speaker 1: sounds weird, But in my mind, no, not really. I
Speaker 1: mean there's been some disagreements, but really not many. And
Speaker 1: along with Mike Biggie, I mean pretty much in our group,
Speaker 1: if there's a consensus.
Speaker 5: You go with the consensus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like if I run into too many headwinds, I'll
Speaker 1: just assume I'm wrong, Like Joe's really smart and might
Speaker 1: really smart and herb. So I think that generally speaking,
Speaker 1: we trust the friend group around you that if you're
Speaker 1: on an island, you're probably to listen to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: The great thing about being in a band is also
Speaker 7: the frustrating thing about being a band, which is that
Speaker 7: nobody gets their way one hundred percent all the time.
Speaker 3: And so it's kind of nice.
Speaker 7: To have other people who will sort of call you
Speaker 7: on your bull and say, you know, nope, nope, nope,
Speaker 7: you think you want that, you don't want that. Here's
Speaker 7: what we're doing and then of course we provide that
Speaker 7: same service for Colin and everybody else. So if one
Speaker 7: person was to get their way all the time, I'm
Speaker 7: not sure that would make the best art. I think
Speaker 7: art thrives in resistance, you know, just like you build
Speaker 7: muscle by having resistance. If everything was easy and everything
Speaker 7: was just just Colin's baby, he always did everything he wanted,
Speaker 7: I'm not sure that would be the best for Colin.
Speaker 7: If I always got everything I wanted, that wouldn't be
Speaker 7: the best for me. So there's a little bit of
Speaker 7: tensions baked into the cake, and I think that's the way.
Speaker 3: It should be.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, sure, Because funny was I'll do.
Speaker 1: When Joe moved and started doing books, I had to
Speaker 1: start playing solo. So I put a solo band together,
Speaker 1: and you're like, it's kind of fun. It's me I
Speaker 1: can kind of do what I want. And then you know,
Speaker 1: but then you missed the band and then you get
Speaker 1: back with a It's like, ah, these guys are driving
Speaker 1: me crazy, Like I want that my own way, you know.
Speaker 1: The band is always the strongest thing. And we at
Speaker 1: a young age, were taken under the wing of Willy Phoenix,
Speaker 1: who's a local guy who's been around, who's.
Speaker 5: A legend, and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: But one of the things I think we did well
Speaker 1: is we're, like they say, like coachable.
Speaker 5: We're open to ideas.
Speaker 1: We know we're not the best musicians, and somehow we
Speaker 1: were bright enough to realize that Willie Phoenix would produce us.
Speaker 1: We know we have to work together as a team,
Speaker 1: we have to take to some of our parts and
Speaker 1: get better. We wanted to be like cheap trick, right,
Speaker 1: We're never going to be anywhere close to Robin Zanner
Speaker 1: Rick Nielsen. So what we've got to do is work together,
Speaker 1: so we don't take it personally. We are trying to
Speaker 1: make the best record together. And once again, that's another
Speaker 1: thing that comes naturally to Watershed, which I think for
Speaker 1: a lot of creative people they never learned that. And
Speaker 1: I think we learned that at a pretty young age
Speaker 1: that we're going to work together on this and if
Speaker 1: we have a producer, we're going to listen to ideas
Speaker 1: and the best idea is going to win. And it's
Speaker 1: not personal, what I mean. So we've all taken our
Speaker 1: share of disappointments on songs or I like solo or
Speaker 1: this or that, but somewhere along the way, we learned
Speaker 1: how to be a team. But we're also open to ideas,
Speaker 1: but we don't sell out. It's a hard thing to explain.
Speaker 1: I can listen to our records. It sounds like us,
Speaker 1: even our first records sound like us. Like I was
Speaker 1: listening to the song Youth is Confusion, Right. We wrote
Speaker 1: this song when we were like twenty two, and I'm
Speaker 1: seeing about how youth is Confusion and it still kind
Speaker 1: of holds up, you know.
Speaker 5: What I mean. It's like, it's interesting to go back.
Speaker 1: But having said that, when we're in a band situation,
Speaker 1: with all of us together, it's truly a band, and
Speaker 1: nobody gets to call the shots and we trust that process.
Speaker 1: And I think it's just like working creatively as you
Speaker 1: go through life, and I hopefully that fills.
Speaker 5: Over to your friendships and your family members. Same thing.
Speaker 5: If Aaron and looking at me like what are you thinking,
Speaker 5: I'll probably be like, you know what, I'm probably wrong here.
Speaker 1: I think I need to back up and reevaluate my
Speaker 1: position because I trust these guys' opinions and they're probably right.
Speaker 1: And that's I think that's an important skill to have
Speaker 1: in life. Overall, is knowing, especially nowadays, knowing when you're wrong.
Speaker 5: We're all wrong on a lot. Just admit it the
Speaker 5: next thing.
Speaker 7: And it's not like this is some you know, friendship
Speaker 7: fantasy land. We definitely have disagreements and things like that,
Speaker 7: but usually Herb or Mike, Biggie McDermott or somebody will
Speaker 7: come in and say, you know what, I've heard both
Speaker 7: of you, and Colin's right or Joe's right, and then
Speaker 7: the good thing is we have short memories.
Speaker 3: So okay, cool, Colin won this battle. I'll get you
Speaker 3: next time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, You've got a line from Hitless Wonder that I
Speaker 4: loved then as I was going back through it, I
Speaker 4: loved it. You said, arguing with Colin is like playing
Speaker 4: tennis with a goat. He doesn't volley, he eats the
Speaker 4: fucking ball for you. You maybe overestimate your ability to
Speaker 4: know that you're wrong.
Speaker 5: I don't know. I'll push pretty hard with random ideas.
Speaker 1: I'll push right up to the point and then as
Speaker 1: soon as I'm like, nah.
Speaker 3: You're right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can't just nah you're right, you won me over.
Speaker 5: I'd be a horrible jury per I would just you
Speaker 5: just went. I'm like, you know you just said, you
Speaker 5: know what, Now, I thought about it totally.
Speaker 4: I was a switch ping pong back and forth based
Speaker 4: prosecutor argues. I'm like, they're right, defense argues, Well, I
Speaker 4: see that point. You know, I would probably be bad
Speaker 4: Jerry probably decent judge though. I think that's a good
Speaker 4: quality in a judge, right, I mean, yeah.
Speaker 1: You would think I'm just arguing to the end of
Speaker 1: the earth. And maybe I'm like, and I'll go right there,
Speaker 1: and you guys blah blah.
Speaker 5: Blah Blah'm like, okay.
Speaker 1: Fine, Yeah, bridge is gone and that's it. Like I
Speaker 1: made my case and I lost.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a really useful life skill. And I do
Speaker 4: think watershed, like what you do together is better. Like
Speaker 4: you've done great solo work. I love some of your
Speaker 4: solo works. Some of your songs that you've written in
Speaker 4: your solo work are some of my favorite songs you've
Speaker 4: ever written. And you guys together, there's something different, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're band guys. Yeah, we like being in our band.
Speaker 1: We like playing together, and we like the ruckus. We
Speaker 1: like to sound. Yeah, like yesterday plugging in my Marshall,
Speaker 1: I just turned to do like done that sound great?
Speaker 5: Yeah, And Joe's like you did, and it is the same.
Speaker 1: I use one pedal, It's the same setup I've had
Speaker 1: since I was twenty and I still love it.
Speaker 5: I'm like, this sounds great. That's that intrinsic musical thing
Speaker 5: of humans.
Speaker 1: Getting together and you know, make a noise together that
Speaker 1: you can't you can't simulate that on your own.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I was never musically successful like you guys, even even
Speaker 4: probably close, but yet I nurtured this idea that I
Speaker 4: would be at some point. And there was a point
Speaker 4: where I sort of gave that up, right, I just like,
Speaker 4: come on, let's be realistic, Like, you know, if you
Speaker 4: guys aren't as good as cheap trick, like, I'm not
Speaker 4: even you know, I'm not even like as good as
Speaker 4: you guys. And so the reason I'm saying that is
Speaker 4: because what you just said was my way back, because
Speaker 4: I had turned to be extrinsically motivated, and the way
Speaker 4: I found my way back was just remembering how good
Speaker 4: an e chord through an amp sounded, and then when
Speaker 4: a drummer or bass player would drop in on it,
Speaker 4: like just that moment was like my way back of life. Yes,
Speaker 4: that is what I loved. You know that was the
Speaker 4: thing that brought this all to life to me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and we get to do it and play songs
Speaker 5: and it's fun. Yeah.
Speaker 7: And I still love that sound of a just big,
Speaker 7: loud guitar chord coming through a Marshall half stack and
Speaker 7: I think you can hear that in the production on
Speaker 7: our new record. Going into the recording of this album,
Speaker 7: we said we want to make an unapologetically guitar heavy record,
Speaker 7: and partially because if you listen to the radio right now,
Speaker 7: guitar as sort of the predominant instrument of pop music
Speaker 7: is over Right's the MacBook is now the predominant is
Speaker 7: I guess?
Speaker 4: And even if a stringed instrument is involved, it's like
Speaker 4: a ukulele, right neutered guitar. Yeah.
Speaker 7: One of the album titles we considered for this record
Speaker 7: was too late to be Cool. We wanted to make
Speaker 7: an consciously uncool album, which is just an album that sounded.
Speaker 1: Like this wow, you know, yeah, just the stuff you'd
Speaker 1: want to play for your friends.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I like that, and that's always the goal.
Speaker 1: Really, you're just trying to make records you can put
Speaker 1: on for your buddies. Like you know, Eric, we share
Speaker 1: big love of san band's replacements. I want to put
Speaker 1: salmon and feel like good about it, not like I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, well no, this one, this one delivers for sure,
Speaker 4: you know, Colin. The song on the record that I
Speaker 4: thought of for this conversation was sensational Things, and it's
Speaker 4: a song about getting back kind of what we're talking
Speaker 4: about here, right, it's getting back to what you love.
Speaker 4: But I'm curious about that idea of like still aiming
Speaker 4: for sensational things.
Speaker 9: I went on when the way he dress the way
Speaker 9: that I always do, and I was getting too old
Speaker 9: to keep panning for gold.
Speaker 5: Was time to start stopping soon, So I said my
Speaker 5: good pies and drove home through the night to bring
Speaker 5: your coffees.
Speaker 8: You have the work we didn't, not you surprise you aboard.
Speaker 6: Is my eyes.
Speaker 5: You couldn't escape of my words.
Speaker 6: Everybody. We're going out on the town, I'll said the
Speaker 6: spine riding next to me. He used to stay out.
Speaker 9: Thinking I'm making eyes a day.
Speaker 6: You're staying out late because I'm back back. Were riding long.
Speaker 6: It's been a long time coming, buttom back now back
Speaker 6: in your loss. There was Jasen sasion, old things, feeling
Speaker 6: what did we know.
Speaker 5: We're just kids with your heads on one.
Speaker 9: Piful It was so.
Speaker 6: Every do like everything good.
Speaker 4: What does that phrase sensational things that you're sort of
Speaker 4: shooting for me to you?
Speaker 5: I mean, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: That's a song that I would have guessed wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been on a Watershed album because we have a lot
Speaker 1: of extra songs and some of them my solo stuff
Speaker 1: and whatever.
Speaker 5: But once we had the rest of the album kind
Speaker 5: of together, we.
Speaker 1: Kind of went back and revisited that song because it
Speaker 1: strikes a little too close to home, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. It's about guys in a band, and for Watershed,
Speaker 1: we're like, you know, but I mean, at this point,
Speaker 1: the whole sensational things is just playing together. I mean
Speaker 1: that song is just being on a stage and still playing,
Speaker 1: still being able to do that, and that's something when
Speaker 1: you talk about people falling apart. We're playing this weekend
Speaker 1: and we're gonna play two separate sets, and maybe a
Speaker 1: year ago this hit me that I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't know, and I'm trying to be more but
Speaker 1: but you really don't know at this point when your.
Speaker 4: Last gig's going to be Yeah, totally, I got.
Speaker 1: Like a spot on my fls that Melanie they're gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, is my fuk gonna get amputated. You never
Speaker 1: know what could happen in your life. So I think
Speaker 1: just being up there and playing you kind of push through.
Speaker 1: We all hit that kind of middle aged thing where
Speaker 1: you're doing it and you're doing it and you're trying,
Speaker 1: but are you really And I think somewhere in the
Speaker 1: last year I hit that realization, like you need to
Speaker 1: up your game. Let's really get out there and play more,
Speaker 1: and when we do it, let's really commit to in
Speaker 1: the best we can be, you know, within reasons, not
Speaker 1: going to be Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 5: And that's the other thing.
Speaker 1: I think you have to give yourself grace as you
Speaker 1: get older, because a lot of people don't want to
Speaker 1: do it or they compare themselves to when they were
Speaker 1: doing it. Every Yeah, of course, when you're playing all
Speaker 1: the time, maybe you're going to be a little better
Speaker 1: this or that. But if you can still get up
Speaker 1: there and play and feel good about it, that's a pretty.
Speaker 5: Sensational feeling at this point.
Speaker 1: And once again, feeling good about how you're singing, about
Speaker 1: how you're performing, it's definitely less about the external at
Speaker 1: this point for obvious reasons.
Speaker 5: So I think just being on that stage, Joe would
Speaker 5: agree with this.
Speaker 1: Just getting this album in our hands, that's an unbelievable accomplishment.
Speaker 5: Just to have a vinyl hold that that's all we did.
Speaker 5: That'd be great. Just to play it in the back room.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm like, you sit there and look at it, like,
Speaker 1: it was so much work to get this album done.
Speaker 5: It took so many twists turns. So I guess that's
Speaker 5: what sensational things is about.
Speaker 1: And of course, you know, you always want to chick
Speaker 1: to like you, right, it's rock and roll.
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, she's pretty right. There's no one there.
Speaker 5: She's digging you and that's all you need, right I
Speaker 5: think so.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that recognition that there is going to be
Speaker 4: a last time for things and you may not know
Speaker 4: it is a really you know, it's not morbid. It's
Speaker 4: a deep philosophical reckoning that many great thinkers have spent
Speaker 4: time doing, you know, the stoics thinking about is could
Speaker 4: be the last time. I mean, you just don't know.
Speaker 4: You know, it may not be your last time, but
Speaker 4: it may be your last time with Joe, you know,
Speaker 4: or it may. I mean, like again, I hope you
Speaker 4: guys are doing this twenty years from now, but we
Speaker 4: just don't know.
Speaker 1: There's so many moving parts, yeah, and a band and
Speaker 1: all the things that make it great.
Speaker 5: But if one wheel comes off, we would suffer.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have a team and it's always together,
Speaker 1: so we feel very anytime we can get through, we
Speaker 1: feel very fortunate.
Speaker 7: Not only is it not morbid, I think it's the
Speaker 7: key to happiness. I mean, to me, knowing that you're
Speaker 7: gonna die one day and then everybody that you love
Speaker 7: is gonna die means that you're screwed coming.
Speaker 3: Out of the gate.
Speaker 7: Because you're screwed coming out of the gate, the only
Speaker 7: rational response, I think, or at least the only cool
Speaker 7: punk rock response, is joy and happiness, because it's boring
Speaker 7: to be like, I'm screwed coming out of the gate,
Speaker 7: so I'm gonna be miserable about it right in.
Speaker 3: The face of certain death.
Speaker 7: All right, let's get everything we can out of this life,
Speaker 7: and let's be as happy and as joyful as we can.
Speaker 3: I mean, to me, that's the key, or one of them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it's one of the things that you
Speaker 4: know drew me to Buddhism so early on was just
Speaker 4: this idea of right up front, like there's a lot
Speaker 4: of difficulty and pain in life, right that just felt
Speaker 4: so good to hear, like somebody saying, like, front and center,
Speaker 4: what's really obvious to me? And you're gonna get sick,
Speaker 4: you're gonna get old, you're gonna die. You don't know
Speaker 4: when that is? So what do you do in response
Speaker 4: to that? Like hooked me right away because I was like, well,
Speaker 4: this feels like somebody's talking for real here about like
Speaker 4: what seems to me to be real and true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think doing the best as you get older, too,
Speaker 1: is it's so important to give yourself some great say
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do the best I can do and that's
Speaker 1: still pretty good because perfection can stop you total thinking
Speaker 1: you're not as good as you know or this that,
Speaker 1: And I think that you have to give yourself a
Speaker 1: little wiggle room to be creative and maybe it's not
Speaker 1: always going to work out and still see the upside
Speaker 1: of that. That the upside and even trying that's the upside.
Speaker 1: The upside that we're even attempting to play two completely
Speaker 1: sets this weekend, which is ridiculous. Right, Even if we
Speaker 1: don't nail every song, there's there's value and putting the
Speaker 1: effort for it and not taking yourself super serious that
Speaker 1: everything's gonna because things aren't going to be perfect, right,
Speaker 1: And if you start getting that mindset, it can.
Speaker 5: Cripple you down the home stretch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you know, we're not as fast, we're not
Speaker 1: as good looking, we're not all these things are not there, but.
Speaker 3: You for yourself path.
Speaker 4: Joe's looking great, Joe, you're agent well, thanks man. Colin
Speaker 4: and I are have it's in trouble, but yeah, there.
Speaker 1: You know, and I think that's you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of musicians like just put their guitars weagh in
Speaker 1: the closet, don't ever want to do it again.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because in their mind they're competing with what they
Speaker 5: used to be. Yeah, and that's not really the purpose.
Speaker 1: The purpose is to do the best you can in
Speaker 1: the moment, and that's gonna move once you're comfortable. That's
Speaker 1: not a bad thing, you know. Any I think we're
Speaker 1: better now, we're more efficient. There's a lot of things
Speaker 1: we do better now than we ever did younger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're forced to be smarter about how you use
Speaker 1: your time. You don't have all that energy to waste.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, yeah, you know. Reason I wanted to
Speaker 4: have this conversation is I just I love talking to
Speaker 4: you guys. I mean, Joe, you were one of our
Speaker 4: very first guests. And I was reflecting also Colin that
Speaker 4: I think you were my oldest friend. Like you and
Speaker 4: I played little league baseball together, and like I think
Speaker 4: I've been friends with you longer than anybody else.
Speaker 5: It's pretty long time. We didn't win one game, remember.
Speaker 4: That that set you up for watershed perfectly on a
Speaker 4: baseball little league baseball team that didn't win a single game,
Speaker 4: not once all year. I probably wasn't even close. Now,
Speaker 4: I don't even think there were any like you squeakers.
Speaker 5: I see Randy Klinger on that mount. Bring that.
Speaker 7: Rocket at this guy left left?
Speaker 4: Yeah, terrible.
Speaker 10: Hi everyone. One of the things that I know many
Speaker 10: of you struggle with is anxiety, and very recently I
Speaker 10: shared some tips on managing anxiety in our newsletter. Specifically,
Speaker 10: I shared a practice on clarifying your values. In the practice,
Speaker 10: you write down one or two of your core values
Speaker 10: and then identify one action step that aligns with them.
Speaker 10: I find that taking one positive action towards things that
Speaker 10: matter to me really helps reduce anxiety. Also, I have
Speaker 10: a reflection question, what positive experiences have you had today
Speaker 10: that you could focus on instead of your anxiety. Every
Speaker 10: Wednesday I send out a newsletter called a Weekly Bye
Speaker 10: to Wisdom for a wiser, happier you, And in it
Speaker 10: I give tips and reflections like you just got and
Speaker 10: it's an opportunity for you to pause, reflect, and practice.
Speaker 10: It's a way to stay focused on what's important and
Speaker 10: meaningful to you. Each month we focus on a theme.
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Speaker 1: Once again, with Watershed, I try to talk about the
Speaker 1: bandic conventional terms. I mean, it's hard to quantify when
Speaker 1: you know someone that young and we've known you a
Speaker 1: long time, you can't go back and replace that. And
Speaker 1: as we know, as you get older too, they'll be
Speaker 1: friends from high school but that maybe you weren't as
Speaker 1: close with. But there's always that bond because you came
Speaker 1: up through the ranks together. You know, you and I
Speaker 1: sat on a bench all summer on a baseball team
Speaker 1: that didn't win one game. I don't know what that means,
Speaker 1: but it meant something. We spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: losing together.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of time, you know, and so and so.
Speaker 1: That's in our collectiveness and obviously with Watershed, you know,
Speaker 1: we have so many, so many memories. And I know
Speaker 1: when Dave Maska joined the band, when Herb left, because
Speaker 1: after you know, we did the Star Vehicle, things weren't
Speaker 1: going well. We toured with the Insane clown Posse that
Speaker 1: went horribly.
Speaker 5: It was not good. Herb de thought that he want
Speaker 5: to be in the band.
Speaker 3: It was kind of great though it was great, but.
Speaker 5: I would quit too. I can see why smart people
Speaker 5: should quit.
Speaker 1: So Herb, an original member, left, he wanted he was
Speaker 1: tired of being in a band.
Speaker 5: It was devastating, but it was right.
Speaker 1: We we didn't have a fight, and we ended up
Speaker 1: joining with Dave Maska, who was once again.
Speaker 5: Another door opens right, It's right, the door opens up.
Speaker 1: We find this other guy who comes in who was
Speaker 1: took over for this next chapter of the band.
Speaker 5: But I remember he would be like, well, what do
Speaker 5: we practice?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Oh, like every night like for like a gig, Like, no,
Speaker 1: what do you mean, Like you guys just practice every year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just work on songs every night. Like we didn't
Speaker 1: just sort of play in a band together. It was
Speaker 1: like our whole Like when Joe left, I've never really
Speaker 1: recovered from how much time I would spend. It was
Speaker 1: like we would rehearse all the time, and it was
Speaker 1: always working on songs and then so I don't even
Speaker 1: appreciate how much time we'd spend together. And even now
Speaker 1: when my wife will be like she's a counselor, and
Speaker 1: you know I can be my communication style is not
Speaker 1: always great, not a great listener, and I'm like, I'll.
Speaker 5: Be like, this isn't fair. You understanding.
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of my life in a van,
Speaker 1: Like the only way you could be heard was like
Speaker 1: to just speak over somebody. So I kind of learned that.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like if you're in a family where
Speaker 1: everyone's fighting for leftovers. My communication style is like challenging
Speaker 1: everybody or coming back And I'm like I can't be
Speaker 1: blamed for this. This this is the environment I grew
Speaker 1: up in because I remember Dave's like, this is what
Speaker 1: you guys do, Like, yeah, we just get together and
Speaker 1: work on songs. You know, most bands just rehearse for
Speaker 1: the gig and then they don't hurse and we're like,
Speaker 1: oh they do.
Speaker 3: We didn't know.
Speaker 5: We never we've never been another band. Yeah, we literally
Speaker 5: have never played in another band outside of this, so
Speaker 5: we just we only know this one way. Then I've
Speaker 5: come to realize it's not normal.
Speaker 4: How long ago did you leave Columbus.
Speaker 3: Joe, Let's see, I think it was seventeen years ago.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I graduated with my master's degree in creative writing, and
Speaker 7: I took a job teaching college.
Speaker 3: And I'm the jerk who left. The rest of the guys,
Speaker 3: we're going to be so.
Speaker 4: Big too, man, Yeah, that what did it?
Speaker 5: We have a mansion out in Hollywood? Is that what
Speaker 5: did it?
Speaker 4: But it must have been really hard though for you.
Speaker 1: It was hard for everybody, but you know it was
Speaker 1: time time to try something else. Joe covers it in
Speaker 1: the book very well. But it's a fine line. You
Speaker 1: don't want to be the guy who's hanging on to
Speaker 1: pass dreams, rummaging through the dumpster looking for your old trophies.
Speaker 5: And we've never been that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you have to grow up and say, hey,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna have to try a different path, and
Speaker 1: it made us all the better for it. And I've
Speaker 1: often wondered, like, what if we had had just like
Speaker 1: one kind of marginal hit. Right now we're doing like
Speaker 1: summer festivals where maybe.
Speaker 5: Make some money.
Speaker 1: Like that doesn't appeal to them. It sounds like we
Speaker 1: sound illusional and crazy. But Joe's right, like we've probably
Speaker 1: got the exact amount of success we deserved at that
Speaker 1: young age. So later when success came on different levels,
Speaker 1: we were way more mature and handle it. But it
Speaker 1: got us out of that cycle because just a little
Speaker 1: bit of success and it could be you're out there
Speaker 1: throwing the bill with Semi Sonic and Tonic and you
Speaker 1: know nothing against those bands, but like that can become
Speaker 1: your life.
Speaker 5: And I love the life that I've created, and I
Speaker 5: think Joe likes his and that you know, Joe had
Speaker 5: to go do his own.
Speaker 1: Thing, and we all had to, you know, move on
Speaker 1: in our own way. So it's been a huge gift
Speaker 1: that Joe could break the cycle and get out of here.
Speaker 7: That's awfully generous of you to say for me leaving Columbus,
Speaker 7: leaving my friends and trying to go, you know, be
Speaker 7: a college teacher and be a writer. It was a
Speaker 7: real challenge, particularly because you move in a new town
Speaker 7: where like nobody's ever heard of me or Watershed, and
Speaker 7: I'm hanging out with all these people and they would
Speaker 7: start talking about music and I kind of I'm in
Speaker 7: a band. Oh you used to be in a band.
Speaker 7: Oh no, I'm actually still in a band, and I
Speaker 7: kind of have to explain everything from square one. That
Speaker 7: was a challenge because at least, you know, in Columbus,
Speaker 7: it's kind of cushy because some people of a certain
Speaker 7: age at least have heard of Watershed and they'd be like, oh, cool,
Speaker 7: you're in that band. And so I kind of get
Speaker 7: to start at five. These other towns, I'm starting at
Speaker 7: zero all the time. But that was actually good for me.
Speaker 7: It was good for me to be able to sort
Speaker 7: of build an identity that wasn't completely based upon you know,
Speaker 7: my identity is based upon music, but to kind of
Speaker 7: redefine myself in new locations with new people, I think
Speaker 7: was a good challenge for me.
Speaker 4: Right and your guys identity, there's clearly an identity of music,
Speaker 4: because you continue to make music and you love music.
Speaker 4: And all of that, and there are other aspects of
Speaker 4: your identity, right, Joe. I mean, you're a writer, as
Speaker 4: I understand it, you have a novel that's completed that
Speaker 4: you're shopping around at this point.
Speaker 7: Or after Hitler's Wonder, which was my first book, I
Speaker 7: wrote and published three other nonfiction books. So I've got
Speaker 7: four nonfiction books and I just finished a novel right
Speaker 7: now that my agent is kind of shopping around, so.
Speaker 3: Hopefully that will bode well.
Speaker 7: And you know, when I was younger, I used to
Speaker 7: think that hyper focus on one goal. Of course, music
Speaker 7: in this case was the way not to be a
Speaker 7: sellout was the key to happiness. Hyper focus. But then
Speaker 7: as I got a little bit older and I you know,
Speaker 7: went to school for creative writing, I was like, wait
Speaker 7: a minute. Just like in finance, the way they talk
Speaker 7: about diversifying your portfolio, I think need to diversify your
Speaker 7: portfolio of happiness, because if you only find happiness in
Speaker 7: one thing and then that thing isn't going so well,
Speaker 7: then you're by definition miserable. So I was like, you know,
Speaker 7: what if I can sort of get happiness from music
Speaker 7: and from teaching and from writing and from being in
Speaker 7: a marriage and then later from having kids. I have
Speaker 7: so many different ways to find happiness and that's not
Speaker 7: selling out, that's just finding a way to live.
Speaker 3: So that's been a good lesson for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, Yeah, absolutely, And it's I mean, we're
Speaker 1: all parents, and you learn a lot through your kids too.
Speaker 1: Like I remember watching my son playing sports and play
Speaker 1: that like the fact that when basketball season ended he
Speaker 1: would start baseball, and I think, like it's always good,
Speaker 1: you know, you learn watching your kids write how you
Speaker 1: want them to do it.
Speaker 5: Have multiple interests because.
Speaker 1: You know, it's scary to have everything tied up in
Speaker 1: one spot, like Joe said, and there's so many things
Speaker 1: you can be interested in, and it just gives you
Speaker 1: more like a relationship. Right, The more you build on
Speaker 1: your own, the more you can bring back. You know,
Speaker 1: you're getting stuck in a cycle like we were. I
Speaker 1: mean not that we couldn't always do it, but it's
Speaker 1: good to go find things on your own and bring that.
Speaker 5: Back to the partnership.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't want to have all your eggs in
Speaker 1: one basket, as someone smart.
Speaker 4: Said someone I wonder who originally did say that, right,
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 3: That's you know, nition farmer.
Speaker 4: We can assume he was in the agriculture industry. Yes,
Speaker 4: speaking of your kids. Forbes sent me last night a
Speaker 4: Spotify ship. That's where we listen to music. I know
Speaker 4: as musicians we're harm in the world.
Speaker 5: You know where people can get music where they want
Speaker 5: to get it.
Speaker 4: Anyway, Yeah, he sent me your song. Dad can't help
Speaker 4: you now.
Speaker 5: It's the last game of the season.
Speaker 1: You're standing out on the mound, pieces loaded discoryside.
Speaker 5: And the batter has a full.
Speaker 1: Count, and you're staring in at you, Catcher, And I've
Speaker 1: never been more proud.
Speaker 3: My heart shakes, buddy, because.
Speaker 5: Dad can't help you now.
Speaker 1: Oh, trade every guest I ever got to get you
Speaker 1: one more strike.
Speaker 3: I'd volunteer to be.
Speaker 5: The Eiffel Tower for Busy Fibe all the ride. Now,
Speaker 5: remember that it's just a game. But don't forget to
Speaker 5: cover home. You're not alone out there. Dad can help you, now.
Speaker 4: God, that's a good songary Man. Every time it gets
Speaker 4: me listeners. You should in addition to the watershed stuff,
Speaker 4: you should check out that song in particular. We'll put
Speaker 4: a link in the show notes to it, like we
Speaker 4: do everything else you mentioned. It's a guitar heavy record,
Speaker 4: and it made me think of another part of Hitless
Speaker 4: Wonder that I want, which is how Colin got you
Speaker 4: to be the bass player share that.
Speaker 7: I mean, basically, this whole scheme has been Colin's idea
Speaker 7: from the very beginning. You know, we were in middle
Speaker 7: school and Colin was like, yeah, I've already got this
Speaker 7: Gibson Melody Maker guitar, my mom already took me up
Speaker 7: to Cleveland to see Kiss.
Speaker 3: And we're going to form a band. And I was
Speaker 3: like all right, cool.
Speaker 7: And that really really came to a front after we
Speaker 7: went and saw a Cheap Trick at the Ohio Center.
Speaker 3: Playing with Crocus and Saxon.
Speaker 7: I remember we took the Code of Bus number two
Speaker 7: Code Bus from Worthington down to the Ohio Center to
Speaker 7: watch that Cheap Trick gig and.
Speaker 3: Came back great.
Speaker 7: On the bus ride home from that gig, Colin said
Speaker 7: all right, you know, seriously, we're going to form a
Speaker 7: band now. And I was like, sweet, this will be awesome.
Speaker 7: Like my dad has an acoustic Martin guitar. I'll be
Speaker 7: one guitar and you'd be the other guitar. And Colin's like, wait, no, no, no,
Speaker 7: I'm the guitar. We need a bass player. And I'm like,
Speaker 7: what I I'm not even sure I knew what bass was.
Speaker 7: Really He's like, You're going to be the bass player,
Speaker 7: and that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 5: That was right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the line I'm going to read this from Hitless
Speaker 4: Wonder because it's great. Any schmuck can play the guitar,
Speaker 4: Colin said. Then he flashed the same smile as Dad
Speaker 4: surely used when selling his line of cedar hangars and
Speaker 4: shoe trees to department stores. You get to play the bass.
Speaker 7: Salesmanship runs into GwL family. Yeah, and Colin sold me
Speaker 7: on the idea, and yeah.
Speaker 5: He was right, Yeah, gotta get that bass player lockdown early.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I tried with my son to see if I
Speaker 4: could turn them into a drummer. I was like, drummers
Speaker 4: are so hard to find. Maybe I'll just grow one.
Speaker 3: But it didn't work.
Speaker 4: It didn't work.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 4: I think that is a great place to wrap up.
Speaker 4: I'm really excited to see you guys play this weekend.
Speaker 4: We'll have links in the show notes to where people
Speaker 4: can find your music. And thanks for being here. It's
Speaker 4: been a real fun one for me.
Speaker 5: Oh, thank you very much. We appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much. Eric.
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