Joe Oestreich

Let’s eat a fistful of mushrooms, dance like zombified squirrels, and pass out in the mud, with nothing to keep us warm but our collective inner-sunshine and the heat of a million one-hitters.

As appealing as that sounds, I expect an entirely different festival experience on Saturday, May 11, when I’ll be at the Ohioana Book Festival in Columbus. At 10:15 am, I’ll be speaking as part of a panel called “Jazz, Rock, and Hard Rock,” and although the conversation might not approach the gravitas of scholarship like  Understanding ‘It’: Affective Authenticity, Space, and the Phish Scene,* we’ll try to slog along as best we can. Hope to see you there.

*This is the title of an actual Ph.D. dissertation by Elizabeth Anne Yeager (Kansas University, 2011) which “explores how the production of space at Phish shows works to form a Phish scene identity.**”

**I originally Googled “Phish Dissertations” looking for a title that would be easy to make fun of, but now that I’ve read the abstract of this work, I sincerely want to read it. I’m sold, Dr. Yeager. Sold!

Two new essays of mine have just come strutting onto the sand.

BLOOM, a website that features writers over 40, recently published my essay, “The Upside Addiction,” in which I discuss how Watershed’s career was railroaded by three Australian 16-year-olds.

For GrandStrand Magazine, I’ve written “A Salute to the Tourist,” in which I toast mini-golfers, taffy-buyers, and vacationeers of all stripes.

The Hitless Wonder book tour is now literally coast to coast. Next week I’m going out west where I belong. Where the days are short and the nights are long. I’ll be out there having fun, in the warm*  Seattle sun**.

What brings me to the Puget Sound? On Tuesday, March 12, I’ll be giving a reading and a talk at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma. The talk starts at 3:30, and the reading starts at 5:30. For more info, click HERE. I love Tacoma, by the way. For two of the many reasons why, click HERE and HERE. And PLU is a really great school, in the shadow of Mt. Rainier. I was lucky to spend a year teaching there back in ’07-’08.

The next day, Wednesday, March 13, I head up to King County for a reading at a bar in Seattle*** called Kangaroo and Kiwi. On this night I’ll play some acoustic tunes in addition to the reading. My friend, the writer and musician Dave O’Leary, will also be reading and playing that night. If you’ve read Hitless Wonder, it might interest you to know that Dave was in The Generals, the Detroit band that Watershed befriended in the early ’90s.

If you live in the PNW, hope to see you out there.

West of the Rockies, man. That’s a whole new bird book.

Back in July, the music and literature blog Largehearted Boy asked me to come up with a playlist for Hitless Wonder. Rather than include a selection of Watershed songs, I decided to list songs by other bands, songs that should have hit big enough to put those bands’ grandkids through college. You can read about those songs and bands HERE.

But now, to do you one better, on February 18 a DJ at WRIR 97.3 FM in Richmond, dedicated his whole show to the Hitless Wonder playlist. Yep. He played them all. Here’s what this means: Slim Dunlap got played on the radio. Two Cow Garage got played on the radio. So did Adam Schmitt and Uptown Sinclair and Jonny Polonsky. You can listen to/download the show HERE. Click the orange arrow at the bottom of the screen and enjoy.

Driving north out of Columbus, toward Toledo and Detroit, U.S. 23 takes you past Mom Wilson’s Country Sausage store. You’ll know you’re getting close when you start seeing the old fashioned, Burma Shave-style signs posted on the side of the road. Buzzing by these signs at 65 mph, you learn a lot about the place, one or two words at a time.

Sure, you get the practical stuff, like the store hours: OPEN. EVERY. DAY. OCT. TO MAY. But whenever the Watershed van would roll past, there was one string of signs we always commented on: NO. FATTY. IN THE. PATTY. At first we just though the saying was funny, but then we recognized the wisdom in it, and how that wisdom could be applied to so many things other than sausage, like, say, songwriting. After that, we tried to make “No fatty in the patty” the guiding principal in our songwriting. A self-indulgent instrumental prelude? Fatty. An extra long guitar solo? Fatty. More than three verses? Unless you’re Bob Dylan, fatty, fatty, fatty*.

Our songs became shorter, obviously, most of them clocking in 3:00 or less (two of our singles,  “Obvious” and “Fifth of July,” run exactly 2:50. Coincidence? Methinks not). But the songs got better, too. More urgent. Instead of a roundhouse haymaker, we now try to make them pop like a jab to the nose. Do we always succeed? Probably not. On the one hand, once you go looking for fat, there’s always more to be cut. On the other, cut too much, and there’s nothing left but scraps. Still, though, ol’ Mom Wilson gives us a goal to shoot for. And aiming at a thing is the first step toward hitting it.

In the new issue of Creative Nonfiction magazine, I’ve contributed to a feature called, “The Tao of Find-Replace,” which essentially discusses how and why keeping the fatty out of the prose writing patty is also a good idea. I’d say a lot more about this, but, you know.

Many thanks to everyone who has written to say they enjoyed HITLESS WONDER, and thanks, too, for sharing your stories with me. I’ve heard from lots and lots of musicians and bands who have been there/done that in the dive bar trenches. Turns out there are a whole bunch of grinders like us out there. We’re not the grand champeens. We’re the also-rans, the tomato cans. We’re the honorable mentions, the others-receiving-votes. But as my friend Scott Pleasant likes to say, “Rock and roll ain’t about the Generals. It’s about the foot soldiers.” Amen, brother. Now, in 2013, let’s take that motherf-ing hill. 

UPDATE: For the month of December, Amazon is selling the Kindle edition of Hitless Wonder for the low, low price of $3.99. To get in on the hot-savings-action, click HERE.

Remember Hitless Wonder, that kick-ass book you read last summer? The one starring those scrappy underdogs, Watershed? Featuring everybody’s favorite tour manager, the gruff-but-lovable Biggie? Remember how charmed you were by Colin? How you sympathized with Kate? How you tried to imagine how you would manage the logistics of getting laid in a van booby-trapped with Gatorade bottles filled with piss and spit?

Why not share the magic of Hitless Wonder with your loved ones this Holiday Season? It makes a swell gift–and an affordable one, too. Why not order five or six? Buy one for your drunk uncle. One for your drummer nephew. One for your co-worker who keeps jamming the Xerox machine making flyers for his band’s next gig. Take ‘em to White Elephant exchanges. Leave one for your mailman. One for the gal making your Peppermint Mocha Frappuccino at Starbucks. One for Santa, next to the milk and cookies.

Better yet, show your friends and family how much you really love them by pairing Hitless Wonder with the new Watershed album, Brick & Mortar. Look at you, Kris Kringle, now you got a whole theme going. Go forth and spread that Watershed Hitless Wonder cheer.

Feliz Navidad!

PS. Seriously. You’re going to be shopping at Amazon anyway. Just throw an extra copy in your cart.