Kenny Feinstein (Water Tower)
SPB: You’ve been through a lot and your songs reflect that. Can you tell us the symbolism or how you landed on the Water Tower name?
Feinstein: Thank you for asking. Thank you for taking the time to listen to and understand my songs. I think it takes someone who has been through a lot to discern that I have been through a lot, upon inspection of my songs.
Water Tower symbolizes clean water. It means that there are no additives in the water. It means that we can all drink from the clean water in order to heal and rejuvenate ourselves. Body and mind. Water is the source of life, it is the thing that we are made of. Music has always been the driving force behind my actions, and Water has always been the driving force behind my life. Combining the two made sense.
We named the band Water Tower Bucket Boys in 2005. The reason behind this is that our first bass player (we are on the 28th bass player now) played a gut-bucket bass AKA a wash-tub bass. The Water Tower was in my parents' backyard, deep in the woods of a small Oregon town outside of Portland. There also was a rad water tower in John's Landing which many people associate with the iconic image of an old-timey water tower.
The one we started playing music at was in the woods though, and it was grey and plopped right on a little grassy hill, surrounded by barbed wire and a little set of wooden steps. All I had to do was walk out of the house, and up the driveway through some woods to get to the tower, and many other kids from around the area had discovered the gravel road as well. One of the punk bands (Black Cohosh) I was in just before WTBB wrote a song about the time we spent at the tower. The spot became a place to meet up and do anything that wasn't accepted or legal in society. The spot became a hotbed of activity. Many times, the cops would show up and break up the party. Sometimes when we would see headlights on the wall in my high school bedroom, we knew it was time for a show: meaning someone had shown up to do something at the tower. That meant it was time to walk up and share with the people at the tower what exactly we were up to, which was generally playing old-timey psychedelic punk rock fiddle music. Some people were not as lucky, depending on what we had been consuming that night. We would get freaky ideas about wearing masks and would even tear through the woods with bags over our heads and fake shotguns that made loud and strange sounds. Sounds that are not the usual human sounds. We weren't normal redneck types either, we were tripped out freaky skateboarding woods creatures with fiddles and banjos. We were nice though, we just liked to get our kicks through music however we could. One time we showed up with the gut bucket bass and a guitar and just played on innocent porches down the street from the tower at 11 on a school night, just to do it. The rush was unparalleled. I remember the patriarch of one family yelling from his bedroom window with all his might "SHUT THE F##@ UP".... if any of our victims of late night old-timey tripper music are reading this, I am sorry. We were addicted to playing our music, whether you wanted to hear it or not.
I utilized the spot to walk my dog, contemplate life, smoke, drink, live, laugh, and love. Many others used it for the same thing. On our senior graduation in 2005, a group of students all agreed to meet at the tower after school to celebrate. That was the biggest circle I remember at the tower. Maybe 20 kids, maybe more. But soon after, there were security cameras added, and the stairs were ripped out. Someone found out what was going on. But I still visited the tower, because it was always there.
The tower was the place where the power seemed to come from.
It was domineering over my house for the 12 years that it was in our family.
It reminded me daily of my connection to water.
The water tasted cold and pure. Drinking from the faucet in the bathroom I always felt so connected to the tower. It reminded me of that scene in Sesame Street where it shows the kid using the water, and the water draining out of the fish reservoir.
For whatever reason, we always met back up at the tower.
But then later, I used that very same water for nefarious purposes.
I used that water to help numb my pain.
I combined the water with chemicals that I put into my body.
I adulterated the water as it came straight from the source.
Searching for more experience, yearning for less pain I hurled myself and anyone who showed any interest to follow directly towards pleasure and away from pain (or so I thought).
I drew up directly from the purest water that had given me and my friends our purpose.
Alone in the woods, I had my "Under the Bridge" moments right there in solemn silence of the grey tower.
The only time I put a knife to my heart it seemed in a vain attempt to scare my parents (if you read this I'm sorry Mom and Dad I Love you) and as a last ditch effort to buy just a couple more hours to have one more chance to get high.
One more chance to control myself, the only way I knew how at that point, as I had cornered myself.
Who knows if I really wanted to end my life that day, I surely knew that I had alienated everyone that I cared about in my life to the point of what I thought was "no return."
The band seemed non-existent.
Therefore, nothing much mattered other than my relationship to my behavior that made me feel like I had control.
I ran.
Towards the tower.
As I crouched in the woods, under the shade of the tower, I heard the sirens and ran deeper into the woods.
I took solace for two weeks after this (before I went to rehab) at the neighbor's house next to the other side of the tower, always hearing it's eternal silence: stoic, proud, life-giving, full of opportunity, outside this new bedroom window, but on the opposite side of the tower that I had always slept. The water still came from the same source, but now I was looking at it from the other side.
I finally got some help after that, as I needed it badly. My life began to change.
I started chasing my recovery, and we decided to kick the bucket.
We became Water Tower.
It took us seven years and the help of crowdfunding AND a label (Dutch Records) to finally release Fly Around on April 24, 2020 in the middle of a pandemic.
Initially I had told Don Bolles it would take us three weeks, tops.
But apparently I had other plans.
That is a whole other story though...
I spent so long building an empire of dirt, that I learned how to build a large reservoir of water in my soul that I can share through the music.
The music is a vehicle for my experience of bliss to overflow into your cup.
When you join me onstage, whether you are a fan, a friend, or a musician, we share in the water of our souls and when we combine we are like captain planet only more rad.
I want to break down the fan/band wall and to encourage everyone to join in the experience. I encourage our fans to bring instruments and art and poetry to our shows so that we can combine it as one, and use it as our weapons.
There is a bit of good in the worst of us, and a bit of bad in the best of us, but Water Tower symbolizes the idea that we can all live together as one as long as there is music. We all heal in music.
I have dived deep into the depths and brought with me a plentiful bounty of clean water to share.
The water is shared through music and the sharing of that music.
We are constantly inspired by our fans (The Owls) who fight to become better people with us. They help me become a better person and inspire me to do my very best. I am forever grateful for every person who listens to and shares in our music. Every soul is one more reason to keep shining as bright of a light as I possibly can, and each soul adds to the wattage of our collective light.
Thank you for such a rad question.
