Joe Oestreich - Hitless Wonder: A Life in Minor League Rock and Roll

Copyright 2012 by Joe Oestreich

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, PO Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

Lyons Press is an imprint of Globe Pequot Press.

Cover photo: Jayna Wallace

Project editor: Meredith Dias

Layout: Justin Marciano

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Oestreich, Joe.

Hitless wonder : a life in minor league rock and roll / Joe Oestreich.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-7627-7924-6

1. Watershed (Musical group) 2. Rock musiciansUnited

StatesBiography. 3. Rock groupsUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

ML421.W27O47 2012

782.42166092'2dc23

[B]

2011050510

Printed in the United States of America

E-ISBN 978-0-7627-8595-7

To Kate, for living this twice.

PROLOGUE

Columbus, Ohio

Im not happy about this, my wife Kate says. Im driving her parents old Chrysler, hustling her to Port Columbus for a 6:00 a.m. flight back to Sea-Tac. Even though its still dark, she slides on her Jackie Onassis sunglasses and turns to the passenger window. We speed past the soccer stadium, the fairgrounds, the skyline. She gathers her black hair into a ponytail. Not one bit.

Christmas and New Years are over, so now Kate is flying away from Columbusthe city that, until five months ago, wed always called hometo Tacoma, where we now live. But thats not why shes unhappy this morning. Shes unhappy because Im not going with her.

Airport traffic is heavy for pre-dawn, and I follow a long line of droppers-off to the departing curb. Wheres your boarding pass? I say as I pop the trunk.

Kate climbs out of the car, waving her pass between her fingers. Wheres yours?

Tonight my band Watershed starts a two-week tour that will take us to Detroit, Milwaukee, and Chicago, then to Cleveland, New York, Baltimore, and down the East Coast. Well finish with a big homecoming show in Columbus. Kates the one with the plane ticket, but it feels like Im the one leaving.

The airport cop blows his whistle, trying to keep traffic moving. From the trunk, I lift the backpack I once gave her as a birthday present. Weve packed it for trips to Vienna, Paris, and Caracas. She wore it on our honeymoon in Turkey. Got your I.D.? I say.

She digs through her purse and nods at her license. Youre lucky, she says, to have so much time to waste.

While I spend the next two weeks in mop-bucket bars, shell be busy writing a chapter of her PhD dissertation on fashion and sexuality. What she doesnt say, but surely means, is that my bandmates and I have grown too old to load ourselves into an Econoline and live on beer and pretzels. The band has been together for twenty-three yearsfifteen years longer than Kate and I have been married.

The cop puts more air into his whistle, and it hits me that if somebody were to bet him which of the two people clogging traffic is a rock starthe bald guy in the sweats and slippers or the long-haired beauty with the big sunglasseshed lay his money on Kate.

Why are you doing this, Joe? she says, pushing her shades to the top of her head.

We write songs and make records, I say. Then we go out and play. Thats how it works. I hold the backpack up for her. Its stuffed heavy with Christmas gifts and dirty clothes.

She puts her arms through the straps and shimmies it into place. We were supposed to spend these two weeks together. You promised.

Add this to a long list of broken promises.

Setting her jaw tight, she stares blankly into the terminal. Her breath makes smoky plumes. Nobody gives a shit about a Watershed tour, she says, except the guys in Watershed.

There was a time when all sorts of people cared, people with power and money. There was a time when even the airport cop might have recognized me.

Kate shakes her head, almost laughs. Maybe everyone looks their best the minute before you put them on a plane, but standing here in the idling exhaust, my wife is more beautiful than shes ever been.

Ill miss you, I say.

She turns to me with dead eyes, a half smile. I know you will.

I stretch one arm out to her, and the cop yells, Come on, guy. Move it.

Kate starts toward the sliding doors, steadying herself under the backpack. This better be worth it, she says. Just before she disappears into the concourse, she hitches the pack higher on her shoulders, jerking the straps as if cursing the weight of everything shes carrying.

THE FIRST LEG

The Headliners

Detroit, Michigan

First thing you learn is that you always gotta wait.

Wait to get noticed. Wait to get signed. Wait to get famous.

Im standing backstage, behind black velour curtains, waiting to go on. Pre-show jitters have me shifting from my right sneaker to my left and back like a kindergartener ten kids deep in the restroom line. A Pabst longneck sweats in my hand. I take a pull, and I dry my palm down the thigh of my girl-cut jeans. Then I lean against a cinder block wall heavily Sharpied with graffiti ( Call for a discreet blow job ) and clever rebuttals from the graffiti annotators ( Whats a discreet blow job? Will I notice it? ). And I wait.

Biggie pokes his head between the curtains, a Maglite stretching from his mouth like a metal cigar. Were set to pop, he says. He aims the beam at my bass. Lets do this.

Wheres everybody else? I say.

He takes the light from his mouth and draws figure eights across the backstage area. They arent back here?

Before I can shake my head no, Biggie has pulled the curtains shut and disappeared.

I take a drink and imagine what waits on the other side: a sports arena, the floor sold out from row A to ZZ. And girls smelling like fruit-flavored perfume and bummed cigarettes, wrapped tight in low-slung jeans, their belly buttons pierced, their breasts defying gravity thanks to the tautness of youth and the bra engineers at Victorias Secret. The girls put one hand on each others shoulders and boost themselves onto the folding chairs to see over the heads of the boys standing in front of them. The dough-faced boysin their new concert T-shirts, half-drunk on parking lot beersthwack each other and point out which steroided-up security guards to avoid when, the second the lights go down, theyll ass and elbow up to the front row.

Until then everybody keeps an eye on the stage, studying a roadie as he puts the gear through the final tweaks the testing, testing, one-two-threes and waaaank-waaaank power chordsto make doubly and triply sure the guitars and amps are wired for sound. The digitally reproduced voice of AC/DCs Brian Johnson blasts through the PA at 102dB FIRE! saluting those about to rock. Marijuana smoke wafts to the ceiling trusses. And every few minutes the crowd noise swells when a whole section thinks theyve seen a band member mingling with the stagehands, VIPs, and contest-winners who huddle in the wings.