Water Tower: Climbing Up and “Owling Out”

Kenny Feinstein began busking at the age of 12 in Santa Cruz, California. “It was the 1990s, and I was heavy into punk.” Kenny says he didn’t grow up in a musical family. “I just liked music—the Beatles. Blink 182. Nirvana. Also, gangster rap. All the stuff I watched on MTV. I grew up in the culture of skateboarding.” Kenny spent first through seventh grade in Singapore, then eighth through tenth grades in Mexico City before moving to Portland, Oregon. “But I say Santa Cruz is where I’m from because it’s the only constant throughout that period.”

He played in punk bands during his teens, but when he was 16, Kenny went to a square dance and was exposed to bluegrass music for the first time. “I was mesmerized – I like bluegrass because of its improvisational nature.”

Kenny attended the University of Oregon, where he earned a jazz guitar degree. “I was on tour much of the time and missed a lot of school. I was playing bluegrass music and then practicing jazz guitar. I remember practicing outside from 2 am to 3 am in a sketchy part of San Francisco because I didn’t want to wake anyone up. Fortunately, I had friends who would spot me so no one would steal my guitar.” Once he earned his degree, Kenny says he went “full hillbilly,” playing old-timey and bluegrass music, adding, “I did play it a bit jazzy and improvisational.”

Going back to his busking days, Kenny had the idea for the bluegrass band he was in to play at the farmer’s market in Portland. “We took fifty CDs with us that we had burned ourselves and sold them all in the first three hours. We loved that we could make money with music. It was a punk rock ethic and attitude, real D.I.Y.”

The first iteration of Water Tower, the band he fronts now, was called Water Tower Bucket Boys, formed in 2005. That morphed into Water Tower String Band. The band first recorded as Water Tower in 2012 before Kenny spent seven years “getting in trouble.” He moved to Los Angeles in 2018 and connected with Tommy Drinkard, who, while already an accomplished electric and acoustic guitar player, took banjo lessons from Kenny. Within a year, Tommy took the first-place prize for intermediate banjo at the Topanga Banjo and Fiddle Competition. Tommy and Kenny began collaborating on songwriting while forming their unique sound. Jesse Blue Eads joined the group after a chance meeting while busking on the Hermosa Beach Pier in 2021. The 19-year-old jazz bassist had just received a jazz award from the Berklee School of Music but held his own on the banjo. Taylor Estes joined the band, and soon the “family” was complete.

“We do think of ourselves as a family,” says Kenny. “We also have auxiliary members for the band – those who come in to join us or sub for other band members from time to time.” The band also has a strong core of fans, with multiple Facebook groups. “They call themselves Owls, or some variation of that, which began during Covid.” When the pandemic hit, the band was forced to move indoors. “We had never been much into social media, but we did an about-face and began doing daily live streams at noon and five daily from our house in downtown Los Angeles. It was not uncommon for us to have 150 people watching us. We did it for a year, and it was so much fun.” The shows were interactive, with viewers singing along to some of the songs.

“For some reason, I had a few owls on a shelf in the background, and at the end of each show, we’d do a closeup of an owl light, and everyone would say ‘owl out!” People began sending owls to our house, and we started putting owls on all our merchandise. Then it became a whole thing about how owls perch on the top of the water tower to protect the water supply from additives or other contaminants.”

The fan groups for Water Tower include the Tower Heads, the Tower Ladies, Dudes of the Tower, Juice’s Mustache, Kenny’s Shoes, Drinkard’s Denims, Drinkard’s Hair, and other fan-created groups. There are even fans with tattoos of Water Tower song lyrics. “That’s a pretty big affirmation for us,” Kenny laughs. “It’s also very inspirational. It just makes me happy because our band’s mission is to contribute to the lessening of suffering. I have a lot of gratitude for our fans.”

Water Tower’s unique sound is influenced by Foghorn Stringband, an old-time string band from Portland known for their intense dedication to the old-time tradition. “We are also heavily influenced by Bill Monroe, Clarence White, and Don Reno.” The band’s debut album, Fly Around, was released in 2020. The concept album is designed to listen all the way through (at least, the first time) from beginning to end. The album pushes boundaries, blending old-time and bluegrass sounds with rock, pop, punk, and psychedelia for a unique and captivating sound.

The members of Water Tower attended the IBMA World of Bluegrass in Raleigh for the first time last fall. “It was absolutely worth it,” says Kenny. “Because of that, we got some amazing gigs, including the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado and the Strawberry Bluegrass Festival in Grass Valley, California.”

www.watertowerband.com