A Conversation with Jared Watson of Dirty Heads

A rockstar and an old friend walk into Daydream Surf Shop...

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I went to high school with Jared Watson [Dirty J] of the band Dirty Heads. His band mate Dustin Bushnell [Duddy B] was on my baseball team. The percussionist Jon Olazabal was one of the best longboarders on our surf team. I’ve known them for all years. Jared is one of those guys who I can go a decade between coffees or surfs and pick up right where we left off. Just authentic, raw and fun.

In high school, he wasn’t a musician but there was always something charismatic about him. He commanded your attention without trying. He was a sick artist and my friends and I would always do whatever we could to make him think we were cool. He was a year older than us and impressing him was critical. Somehow he noticed. Maybe it was our cutbacks or ability to chug beer. Not sure which. Maybe both.

I've watched him and Dirty Heads achieve nearly every kind of musical success you can have: they ripped at high school parties, had national radio hits, critically acclaimed records, viral TikToks, sold-out tours, and wrote the song that comes to mind when you watch the greatest surf film of all time, Surf's Up — the one that my daughter belts out every time we get in the car. Stand tall it gets a little better!

It took me one text to get him to agree to this and 12 hours later I was sitting down to shoot the shit with an old friend.

His insights into rock star life, the music industry, sobriety, rehab, fatherhood, surfing, art and culture are fascinating and genuine. He still maintains that as cheesy as all of us surfers are, a large body of water is all we need.

It’s sunny and 70 degrees at Daydream Surf Shop and I hit record somewhere in the middle of one of our early tangents so I’m throwing you in mid thought. And away we go.—Travis Ferré

Travis Ferre: I should hit records now I suppose if you’re cool to talk about this stuff. Ok, so catching everyone up. You recently came out of rehab and cool to chat through it…

Jared Watson: Yeah, cool, I thought we were on. I say anything dude [laughs]. I was saying I don't think I would've become an addict or an alcoholic if I didn't go down the music life. Everybody wants to party, everybody wants to drink beers at night. You have one and a half hours of work and it's work that requires you to be entertaining, elevated.

It really is easy to see how so many musicians are sent down that difficult path.

You get on the hamster wheel and you're like, Well, we got two months of this [touring]. So I either get off it completely or just stay on it. And for a good 15 years, I just stayed on it and I was finally like, I'm probably going to die.

When did you realize you needed to step off the wheel?

I stepped off and it even scared the guys [in the band]. They were like, “Oh shit, we didn't think you were going to be the one.” So they all pumped the brakes. Once I brought it up, I think they realized they saw me fucking spiraling. So when I finally was like, Hey guys, I got an issue. I'm going to take care of it. Don't worry about it. I'm very much that dude where it's like, I'm not going to let the band send me to rehab, right? I'm going to fix my shit so nobody has to deal with it. They all were like, "Oh, maybe I drink a little bit too much." So it was good for everybody to talk about. The spillage was a good thing. Everybody put their shit in check.

How has the industry changed since you guys started? And just now compared to back in the day.

Just the way that we looked at shows and the culture and the industry. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, everybody was dying young, right? Like, not making it to 30. Now it's still acceptable to party, especially in our genre, but I just saw this stat that the top earners in the music industry in touring are like 38 to 50 now when it used to be 20 to 28. I think so few were able to go on [because] it was so gnarly back then.

It's cleaning up. I have bands that I've followed since I was a tiny kid and most of them have found healthier ways to deal with the lifestyle. A lot of musicians actually seem to find surfing as that outlet actually.

That connection to the water seems universal for musicians.

Dude, when you have homies that can come grab you and take you surfing while you’re out on tour, or just get by the water — and I get it, people from the Midwest love to hear us say it [that we surf] and anybody who lives in California is like, “Don't be fucking so cliche.” But when you're landlocked for a month and a half … even when I get to Chicago and there's just a large body of water, I'm like, ‘Fuck. Chicago, beautiful. There’s water.

I surfed fucking two-foot Outer Banks and it was so fun. But it was after two months of touring the Midwest and literally a fan that I've never met came and got me to go surf. This dude is like:

"Hey, what's up? My name's Chris. I got a wife, I got a couple kids. I'm not fucking weird. I just want to take you surfing and make you some tacos on the beach." And I looked at his Instagram and it looked pretty normal. I was like, “Fuck it, dude. Pick me up.”

You weren't a musician in high school. You didn’t play in “The Bowl” when other bands would. How crazy is looking back on that for you? You sort of invented your role and absolutely made the most of it and were so good at it.

It was all Dusty [Duddy B]. It was all Dustin. His mom sang, his dad was in plays and shit. His brother was in a band and then we would fuck around as jokes and then he was like, "You're good." I'm like, "You're good." And it was almost like one of those happy accidents too, where it was just like everything aligned. Because I have friends that are 45 and on their fifth career and it's just not the one thing, and I'm like, “Fuck.” I'm so lucky that I found the one thing that I love that I'm good at so fucking early.

I definitely check myself a lot. We had a flight from Annapolis to Chicago at 5:30 in the morning, so we had to get up at 3:45. I was complaining to my buddy Mike. He's like a stuntman, so he fucking travels a lot and we do it all the time. He was like, "16-year-old Jared would tell you to shut up. What would you do to play that show last night?" And I was like, you're right. But I had no plans for this.

I remember you were pretty good at drawing.

Yeah, I was going to go to art school, but there's no money in that, so I'll just become a tattoo artist. And the music thing happened and I was like, “What?” And then it took me a while to be like, “Oh, imposter syndrome was like a decade, maybe more.”

You guys have had radio hits. Huge records. Soundtrack hits. Covers. Massive tours. And then more recently, a TikTok explosion with "Vacation.” That must have felt surreal.

Literally, I was sitting at home during COVID. I don't have TikTok so the only reason I knew is because the guys play video games with college kids and they were like, "Dude, you guys are blowing up on TikTok."

It took a week before anybody at the record label even knew it was even happening. Everybody scrambled. They put a budget together. I don't give a fuck, I'll tell everybody what goes behind it. Everybody thinks, "Oh, it just went viral." It's not viral. Motherfuckers are putting in money and they're getting influencers and they're paying this and they're pushing it. There is a campaign. Things go viral and then if you have a good label, they will try and continue to keep it going.