Hot Water Music

Hot Water Music began as a circle of friends before it was a band. Chuck Ragan, Jason Black and George Rebelo met in Sarasota, and Chris Wollard came in through a shared storage facility used as a rehearsal space, before the four regrouped in Gainesville, Florida, and formed the band in October 1994. Ragan and Wollard share lead vocals and guitar duties, with Black on bass and Rebelo on drums, a line-up that has stayed largely fixed, with guitarist and vocalist Chris Cresswell joining in 2017. The name comes from a Charles Bukowski short story collection of the same name.

Their first show was at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota in autumn 1994, and their 1997 albums Fuel for the Hate Game and Forever and Counting followed a run of singles and EPs. After a split in August 1998 they reformed that October, then released No Division in 1999 and signed to Epitaph Records, where Caution in 2002 became their commercial breakthrough. A 2006 announcement made their hiatus permanent, though they returned in 2008 for a handful of shows marking the B-sides compilation Till the Wheels Fall Off.