Eight full-length albums and a thousand live shows into their storied career, Columbus, Ohio’s Watershed have done damn near everything there is to do in rock and roll. After dropping out of college, they recorded two albums for Epic Records and sipped champagne in long, white limousines. Barely old enough to drink, they stuffed themselves into a Ford Econoline, and they’ve been living off beer and beef jerky ever since. They humped their amps through the doors at CBGB ten times. They’ve played the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip. The Metro in Chicago. The Rat in Boston. They’ve shared the stage with Wilco, Ben Folds, Soul Asylum, The Damnwells, Cheap Trick, The Smithereens, Tommy Stinson, Seven Mary Three, Insane Clown Posse (no shit), and long list of has-beens and wannabes. Their catchy, three-minute rock gems have been featured on MTV’s Laguna Beach, Date My Mom, and Made, and they’ve been in rotation on radio stations from South Carolina to Seattle.
This summer Watershed will release Three Chords and a Cloud of Dust II, an unedited live album that captures the all the raw power of a sold-out show in their hometown. On tape Watershed sounds like a (gasp) rock band. That may sound trite, but these days rock bands—real rock bands, the kind that play Les Pauls and Marshalls, not Apple PowerBooks—are hard to come by. As Amplifier Magazine’s Tom Semoli writes, a Watershed show is “akin to the manner in which the Replacements and the Faces once bravely blurred the fine line between mayhem and total professionalism.†Their sets inevitably end with half the band flat on their backs and tangled in their instrument cables, the stage littered with guitars and cymbal stands and empty beer bottles.
In the Midwest, Watershed shows are legendary. But Watershed doesn’t log 100,000 hard miles and a hundred shows a year to be “legendary†any more than Cool Hand Luke cracked all those eggs because he wanted an omelet. No, Watershed takes the stages of musty clubs, belting their songs like their lives depend on it because they are one of the last rock bands standing. And that’s what rock bands do.
