Someone once said “success is preparation plus luck” or some such, and he was probably right, at least up to a point. But then there’s the other stuff. The love of your life? You just missed him last night because you stayed home to watch Dancing With The Stars. Two weeks ago you would have died in a fiery car accident, but the boss held the team late to crunch the numbers again. Things happen one way or they happen some other way. The course of human existence has an infinite course of possible outcomes. Utter chaos. A collision of genetics, socioeconomic circumstance, talent, and what my high school friend Dan called shit house luck. Organized religion, disorganized religion, psychics, and bars all flourish because the anarchy of existence is too much for us to handle. We want to know what to do, and when to do it. Market research exists as a comforting salve to jittery executives looking for ass cover disguised as a spreadsheet. Test audiences hated Seinfeld and they loved Snakes On A Plane. A few years ago developers were touting software they claimed could actually “hear” a hit single. Juries send innocent men to death, and the LA Angels gave Albert Pujols a 300 year contract because they were 100 percent convinced it was the right course of action given the available information.

Watershed co-founder Joe Oestreich’s debut book Hitless Wonder: A Life In Minor League Rock N Roll is about all that stuff. A good rock show is after all a celebration of, and control over chaos. The Replacements turned that into an art form back in the 80′s. Their shows could be transcendent, as the first song was when I saw them in 1987 (“Hold My Life”). Then Tommy Stinson signaled to the sound man that nothing was loud enough and the rest of the show sounded like the inside of a failing jet engine. The Replacements in that era had a major label deal, critical acclaim, and as Paul Westerberg put it on “Favorite Thing,” I don’t give a single shit. Would they do a great show or a terrible show? It was entirely conditional on how fucked up they were. It was up to you to be fortunate enough to catch them on the right night when a perfect backstage buzz met show time. Shit house luck. I love The Replacements, but it never struck me they ever had a lot of respect for their audience.

As for Watershed, I’ve never seen them do a bad show. Oh they had every reason to snarl. There’s was a cruel fate. Just out of the major label gate (signed to the same Epic Records as their beloved Cheap Trick, perhaps ominously after the Trick had been dropped) and beginning to enjoy some real momentum, Watershed were dropped so quickly it seemed like a practical joke.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve known the principal actors in Oestreich’s engrossing book for years. I’ve heard a lot of these stories over beers at bars, over beers at Airport Golf Course, over beers before Watershed shows…. over beers watching bootleg Kiss videos at Colin Gawel’s house. Anyone who’s been involved in the history of this band has stories, and a thirst that would fill The Great Lakes. It helps if you buy. These are funny, tragic tales of young and not-so-young men attempting to somehow marry their prodigious talents to the whims of the marketplace. Hitless Wonder is in large part of celebration of perseverance in the face of a preponderance evidence indicating the opposite course. Life would hardly be worth living if there wasn’t a middle ground between sane and insane. That’s where the magic happens.

I won’t go into detail here, as my aim is to encourage you to read the book. I ripped through it in three days, and had to put it down several times to make it last longer. I can honestly tell you that even if I knew nothing of the band I would have still been enthralled. It’s brutally honest, but never exploitative. The author is harder on himself than anyone, but for wife Kate, and members of the band past and present, this document I can imagine was sometimes a tough read. I have long marveled at how well Watershed got on with one and other. Other bands are amazed by their brotherhood. Here for the first time one gets a sense it was hardly easy. Kate Oestreich even acknowledges as much referring to band founders Oestreich and Gawel, in so many words, as an old married couple. Marriage can be difficult at times for many of the same reasons being in a band together can be.

I would like to give a personal perspective on one of the key parts of Hitless Wonder as it illustrates the cruelty of fate. Joe Oestreich is humble for a rocker and he perhaps undersells a bit how fucking great this band is. There’s no easily acceptable reason why Watershed didn’t “make it.” They have songs, chops, stage presence, an indomitable spirit, respect for their fans, intelligence, and work ethic. They have Mike “Biggie” McDermott (a true hero in the book). That’s just it, you can’t explain it logically. Watershed’s chance at arena sized fame was, at least in part, torpedoed by a common scourge: politics. They shared record company personnel and management with a band called The Spin Doctors. For a brief period in the early to mid 90′s, the goofy jam band were rather huge. Their Epic Records album Pocket Full Of Kryptonite sold millions. I remember seeing them at the old Polaris Amplitheater with 20,000 other people in the spring of 1994. (Cracker and Gin Blossoms were also on the bill, and I recall scamming drinks and jumbo prawns from the buffet table. In the salad days of rock, success could be measured by the size of the shrimp.) Around that time the Doctors faced the biggest challenge of theirs or any other band’s career; the follow up to a huge hit. Turn It Upside Down was that album, and while not a sales disaster, it sold but a fifth of it’s predecessor. In all my years in the radio business it’s hard for me to recall a high stakes follow up met with as much–not exactly derision–but apathy. A measurable apathy. From label golden boys on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine to Biblical scale lepers The Spin Doctors plummeted. Their 1996 third record for Epic sold less than 100,000 copies and the band was dumped, and Watershed too along with many of the label people who had championed them in the company corridors. Make no mistake, you need friends in the hallways. There will be some that believe in you, and others who don’t. You’re competing for attention and resources with other bands and records. It can be cutthroat as illustrated brutally in Hitless Wonder. Oestreich does a brilliant job of explaining not just the political realities of being on a major label, but the stark truth of just how hard it is to make money on your recordings, even back in those days.

I’ve grossly oversimplified the entire saga here and I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions. For Oestreich’s part he writes that the band was not good enough at the time anyway. I disagree, but there you go. I will say that Watershed have done their best work over the past decade, long after the A&R scouts stopped attending their shows. Their new album Brick & Mortar, hitting June 5th, can sit proudly along side the rest of their work. The boys ain’t done yet–not as long as there’s a place to play and a resigned spouse at home. Hitless Wonder is hilarious, poignant, wise, and will speak to anyone who’s ever had dreams, especially those who cling to them with a white knuckle grip.

Brian Phillips is the Midday DJ on CD101 @ 102.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio.

The record will be available on I-Tunes and all other music download sites starting June 5. You’ll also be able to pick up a hard copy at the June 8 CD/Book Release Show in Columbus at The Bluestone. Thanks to the great Bryan Huber (with a little help from Mike “Biggie” McDermott) for putting this together.

You should have seen the cover we wanted to do. It wasn’t an 8-track tape, believe me.

This insightful and entertaining story of a band that almost-but-didn’t-quite make it big in the 1990s is equal parts fascinating autobiography and a hilarious and savvy look at the harsh realities of the music industry. Oestreich, a professor and writer, is also a singer, songwriter, and bass player for the rock band Watershed. Formed in high school with his longtime friend guitarist Colin Gawel, Watershed grows from its home base in Columbus, Ohio, to Midwestern regional favorite, and finally gets a recording deal with Epic Records. Unfortunately it’s a brutally quick ride from almost having a hit single to being dumped by Epic—although it is the most fascinating part of the book. But this is not a story of failure, just a different kind of success. Oestreich basically agrees with his drummer that “by most quantifiable standards, playing in a rock band is stupid”—low pay, bad food, and sleeping in a van on “straight nine-hour” drives to gigs—but he just flat-out loves playing his music, and Watershed still makes the occasional and always well-regarded performances.

And here’s the review from Kirkus:

From obscurity to music’s majors and back again with the Ohio band Watershed.

Oestreich (Creative Writing/Coastal Carolina Univ.) looks back on the long, checkered career of his power-pop group, which he founded in Columbus, Ohio, in his early teens after attending a Cheap Trick concert with pal Colin Gawel. The narrative seesaws between the band’s salad days—local gigs, indie releases and, finally, a major-label contract with Epic Records—and city-by-city details of a grind-it-out 2007-08 U.S. tour. Watershed never hit it big: Despite a devoted local following and growing airplay, the band was dropped by Epic after a live EP and an expensively produced album. The book follows the band’s fortunes as they regrouped to cut independent releases on shoestring budgets and drive their van from town to far-flung town. The narrative climaxes with a kind of Pyrrhic victory: a rapturously received hometown show in a less-than-half-filled hall. Oestreich has an eye for telling nuance, and his knowing recounting of life in an ascendant band in “the Pros” is juicy stuff. He’s equally adept at depicting day-to-day humiliations in music’s minors, like a pay-to-play gig with a bunch of no-name Baltimore acts. He’s candid about the toll the rock life takes on relationships; his long-suffering mate Kate emerges as the most sympathetic figure in the book. But the author fails to supply a compelling answer to the question almost certainly on every reader’s mind: Why would a bunch of men pushing 40, with families, day jobs and mortgages, continue to haul their gear in and out of run-down rock clubs, often playing for a loss, long after success has eluded them?

Good question, Kirkus. I’ve been trying to answer that one for twenty-five years.

Like always, this tour is going to run on a bare bones budget: six guys in one room, most meals stolen from the hotel’s free continental breakfast spread. But still, with rent, electric bills, and diaper and day care expenses (we Watersheds are a fertile bunch, seven kids between the four of us), there’s no way we can afford gas, hotels, and the occasional splurge for 5 pc. spicy chicken nuggets off the Wendy’s Supervalue Menu without your help.

So in order to pull this off, we’ve started a Kickstarter campaign to try to raise the cash it’s going to take to get the CDs pressed and the van gassed. For more information, click HERE.

More shows and readings will be announced soon, but here are the confirmed dates so far:

Rock Shows

• Friday, 6/8/12. Columbus, OH. The Bluestone.
• Sunday, 6/10/12. Cleveland, OH. The Beachland Ballroom (in the Tavern).
• Monday, 6/25/12. New York, NY. The Mercury Lounge.
• Tuesday, 6/26/12. Washington, DC. DC9.
• Wednesday, 6/27/12. Pittsburgh, PA. Club Cafe.
• Thursday, 6/28/12. Detroit, MI. Small’s Bar.

Readings

• Wednesday, 6/6/12. Columbus, OH. The Wexner Center for the Arts.
• Monday, 6/25/12. New York, NY. The Half King.

Again: Watch this space for more dates and cities. Hope to see you out there.

As much as we want to believe that pop music influences political discourse, the sad fact is that it just plain doesn’t. At least not anymore. Shoot, maybe it never did.

Enough of my yakking. Check out the full essay HERE.

Directed by Tim Hodge, this mini-masterpiece features a cavalcade of stars, including Ryan Gosling as “Chief Economist,” Elizabeth Banks as “Girl Reading on Couch,” Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as “Bungling Cops,” and Steven Spielberg’s War Horse as “Cows in Pasture.” Also note the breathtaking cameo by Alec Baldwin, playing the Minuteman III warhead. Enjoy!

• storySouth recently nominated my story, “Towing and Recovery,” for a Pushcart Prize. Thanks, gents!
• Shortly after the new year, the super cool (and cool-looking) literary journal, White Space, will publish my essay, “This Machine No Longer Kills Fascists (Did it Ever?),” in which I lament the fact that pop music doesn’t even try to bring about social change. It does, however, insist that we 1.) Party! and 2.) Buy Shit!
• Also in early 2012, I’ll be getting all Dickensian on your asses when the Victorians Institute Journal publishes my academic paper, “Knights of the Napkin: Waiters as Class-Enforcers in David Copperfield.” Seriously.
• Later in 2012, the hepcats at The Normal School will publish my essay, “The Mercy Kill,” which is about murder in the suburbs. Plus, it’s got dogs! (Friendly Warning: If you liked MARLEY AND ME, you’ll hate this piece.)
• 2012 will see a new, full-length Watershed album.
• And in June, of course, my memoir, HITLESS WONDER, will arrive on bookstore shelves, but remember it’s available for pre-order now at Amazon and other sites. Look: You’re going to Amazon anyway. Why not click that sucker into your cart? It makes a swell gift.

Here’s hoping 2012 treats you well.

Be a good citizen. Click the links below.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Without Springsteen, there’d be no book about Watershed. There’s be no Watershed period. Without Springsteen, I’d probably be twenty pounds heavier. I’d certainly be a whole lot dumber. I’d know much less about life and love and how hard and beautiful both can be. But most of all I want to thank Springsteen for teaching me the difference between the guys that die little by little, piece by piece–and the guys that come home from work and wash up. And go racing in the street.