Guitarist Peter Daggatt, bassist Pat Norris, and drummer Harry Selick joined the band later in 2013 and the four-piece started recording Water Tower's first album.

Fly Around (2020) took seven years to complete and featured guest vocals from former Old Crow Medicine Show member Willie Watson, Bullets & Octane's Gene Louis, and the former singer of Black Flag, Ron Reyes.

They prefer to book their own shows and tours, and a lot of their time is spent playing for passing cars at freeway off-ramps around Los Angeles.

In 2005 guitarist/vocalist Kenny Feinstein formed the band The Water Tower Bucket Boys in Portland, Oregon with his neighbor, Josh Rabie on fiddle.

[1] They named the band after the water tower in the woods behind Feinstein's house that served as a gathering place for the local teenagers to hang out and play music.

[9][8] To do this, he enlisted the help of his friend Jeff Kazor from The Crooked Jades and engineer Bruce Kaphan, and together they created an “acoustic wall of sound” effect to emulate the distorted, dreamlike quality of the original album.

[7] Bolles called Fly Around a “concept album” and described it as featuring “traditional bluegrass/old-time…along with some other elements – rock, psychedelia, pop, punk, and even a semi-ambient synth and SFX interlude”.

The title track “Fly Around” features guest backing vocals from Willie Watson, formerly of Old Crow Medicine Show, and Gene Louis from Bullets and Octane.

[7][11] The last song on the record is a punk influenced track, aptly titled “Anthem”, which is sung by Feinstein and former Black Flag singer Ron Reyes.

[7] The animated music video for “Anthem” was done by Rodd Perry and it depicts black and white cartoon versions of the band floating down the river on a raft from Portland to Los Angeles, where they meet up with Bolles and Reyes.

[8] That same year, Feinstein worked as co-producer on Rosy Nolan's EP Footprints and Broken Branches with punk musician Tim Armstrong of the band Rancid.

[18][16] By 2020 Berglund and Drinkard would replace Daggatt, Norris, and Selick as the main line up, although the others would continue to play in Water Tower occasionally.

[8] One of their online livestreams was a show hosted by Feinstein and Drinkard called Producing the Internet during which they would invite their fans to participate in the songwriting process with them.

[20] It was while busking that Water Tower met another new member, Jesse Blue Eads, a young banjo player and electric bassist who had dropped out of college to pursue music.

[24] When they returned from touring, Feinstein and Drinkard started hosting a monthly bluegrass open mic event at Silverlake Lounge in Silver Lake called “Hillbilly Hype House”.

[8] The band played the main stage at the 2022 Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest & Folk Festival in May alongside AJ Lee & Blue Summit as part of the tour.

[28] In December, Feinstein hosted a house show in Echo Park featuring flat-pick guitarist Jake Eddy and Jordan Tice.

At the start of January 2023, Water Tower played pop star Katy Perry's New Year's Eve party at the Carriage & Western Arts Museum in Santa Barbara, California.

The album was recorded all in one day at Palomino Studios in Los Angeles after the band returned home from a two month tour the previous summer.

[8][33][34] Water Tower played the main stage at the CBA Father's Day Festival in Grass Valley, California along with Molly Tuttle & The Golden Highway in June 2023.

[43] The next month, Kenny Feinstein introduced Nick Hexum and Sierra Ferrell onstage moments before the three performed an impromptu song with Water Tower and other musicians at the Desert 5 Spot in Hollywood.

The last track on the album, “Anthem” is sung by both Feinstein and Ron Reyes, the former lead singer of punk rock band Black Flag.

[49] Some themes that appear in Water Tower's songs include hope of recovery, the good and bad times in life, love, acceptance, and death.

Water Tower also has a punk rock, DIY attitude off-stage, preferring to independently record and release albums and schedule their own house shows, events, and tours with friends in the scene.