ifitbeyourwill Podcast
“ifitbeyourwill" Podcasts is on a mission to talk to amazing indie artists from around the world! Join us for cozy, conversational episodes where you'll hear from talented and charismatic singer-songwriters, bands from all walks of life talk about their musical journey. Let's celebrate being music lovers!
Season Four runs from September 2024 to December 2024
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ifitbeyourwill Podcast
ifitbeyourwill S04E06 • John Andrew Frederick of The Black Watch
Can relentless creativity be a double-edged sword? In our latest episode, we sit down with John Andrew Frederick of The Black Watch, a band boasting an extraordinary catalog of 24 records. Hear John's inspiring journey from a childhood accident to his academic ventures in English literature, revealing how these experiences shaped his prolific musical career. We chat about the band's humble beginnings, including one of their first gigs with Toad the Wet Sprocket.
The transformative role of producers and engineers, the influence of bands like The Beatles and The Cure, and the impact of different band members—John covers it all. Explore how The Black Watch's sound has evolved over decades. Finally, reflect on the changing landscape of the music industry since their first record in 1988, offering valuable insights for both emerging and seasoned musicians navigating today's digital age.
here we are, episode number. I've already lost track, but we're gonna do it anyway. Right here we have John Andrew Frederick from the Black Watch. Wow, john, your catalog is insane. You're prolific. I shared your newest record with a friend of mine. They listened to it and they're like, wow, this is really cool.
Speaker 2:And then they're like, holy shit, this guy's got 20 records 24 to be precise, unbelievable unbelievable, I think the first word you used insane, I heard the other day I ran into an old friend who used to run both a label and a club and she asked me because I hadn't seen her since before the pandemic. And she asked me what I was up to and I said well, we released two records this year and about five or six in the last four years or something. And she goes you're insane. That's the first thing which, um, apparently, has been echoed by you.
Speaker 1:Well, two full lengths I mean this is. This is really quite amazing. You know, like, before we get into that, we will get into that. I'd just like to start off like just kind of getting your backstory a bit Like when did all this music you know, writing and recording and releasing and touring, when did all that really start for you in your timeline?
Speaker 2:When did all the madness begin in other?
Speaker 3:words you're asking.
Speaker 2:Well, the happy madness chris, if I'm, if I'm, if you, if you and my friend uh are, are you know, are correct, then, uh, you're asking a mad person to explain the madness which is the irony it might have started.
Speaker 2:It might have started because the beatles were my favorite band since I was five years old. My parents always talked about how they were driving along and on the radio, when I was five, I want to hold your hand or she loves you. One of those two, uh, came on and I just started pogoing in the back seat before the days of children, you know, strapped in, captured by, you know, car seats. But then, when I was 11, when the White Album came out, I broke my leg playing American football so badly that it didn't heal for about a year.
Speaker 2:So I spent a year in bed and my parents were either, uh, either sadistic or perspicacious enough to say look, kid, you're not, you know, you're not going to watch, you're not going to become a vegetable watching telly all day. Um, you're going to get an hour and a half, maybe two, four up watching tv. So I just started reading like mad, and I'd been taking a guitar from a hippie chick who, uh, in Montecito, uh, who kept uh, teaching me, you know, finger picking and Donovan songs, and you know, uh, uh, beatles songs would have been too, too complex, um and uh. So I propped my little silver tone guitar and I started writing songs when I was 11, not that any of those have, thankfully, survived you know they might have you know they might have all have been had a major theme of being bedridden on.
Speaker 2:You know my resentment that me, as you know very much a jock, a sports person, uh, you know, couldn't, yeah, it couldn't. You know, go go out and and play football or basketball or baseball or what have you. And then I finished my doctorate and hung out at UCSB where I realized, gosh, this is so difficult that I can write three or four songs in the time it takes to write one page of prose. I mean, it was just so arduous. I mean, I've always believed novels are like pancakes You've got to throw the first one out to prime the griddle somehow.
Speaker 2:So I jettisoned a 500-page novel going. This is utterly plotless. This is before I realized plots are for graveyards. Uh, you know, you don't need a plot to write a book, you can just. You know, you just write beautifully. So I just I formed with a couple of my student of the friends, uh, at UCSB, just the, the fledgling uh version of the Watch, and I convinced one of the three people who joined me to wear a kilt with me on stage because, the band's been named after the Scottish regiment and the first gig we ever did was with Toad the Wet Sprocket, who went on to become, you know, humongous, and we went on to become something else.
Speaker 2:I guess prolific, that word, that I you know, I'll countenance it, but it's also, why can't you guys just say genius instead of?
Speaker 1:And John, what did you get your degree in?
Speaker 2:He said ever, modestly. I mean, I know that it kind of it's weird because it puts me in a spot. Though, chris, because you know, what do I say to that? Yes, I am, you know, it's. It's true that I've put out a lot of stuff, but songs just pour out of me and the the beatles catalog has so many. You know, they've been the sort of damocles slash, uh, rainbow above me, to mix metaphors or whatever. So there's so many songs for me to do. I mean, we just finished a 21, 21 new songs.
Speaker 2:Uh, actually that there's going to be a double record next year. I just don't. I, I must be insane I think this is your podcast is my final realization.
Speaker 1:What was your PhD in? What did you study?
Speaker 2:in English literature, I wrote a. I mean, that's a great way for anybody who's in I don't know if you're an academic or or if you went on to graduate school it's a wonderful way to kill your, kill off your interest in writing about other people's stuff. After I finished my dissertation I said I vow I will never write another word about anybody else's stuff, but I'll make my own stuff, which goes to show you you should never say never, because I ended up writing a book on the early films of Wes Anderson Again. So don't ever. We often say things like I don't know if you concur, but we often say like, oh, I'll never do that again, or I'll never talk to this person again, but we don't know what we'll do.
Speaker 2:So I've learned never to say never.
Speaker 1:I think that's one thing I've learned. So, john, how do you, what's your process? Like, like, how do you get all this stuff out? Um, like, how does the song come to be that that would become a black watch song?
Speaker 2:okay, uh, I, I love playing guitar ever, I mean ever, since I took it up, uh, um, with the hippie chick and um, I just, I don't know, I just I get great pleasure out of trying to figure out different melodies and tunings. Um, sometimes there are substances involved with these, the process which loosens one up somehow. And you know, I have reams and reams of notebooks and notebooks, and they're just, you know, within the realms of sex and death and love and loss. There are, you know, infinite variations on those various themes, it seems to me. And you know, lyrics aren't poetry for me. So there's not the pressure of going. This has to be some perfect poem, it just has to fit the song. And I'm willing to make a fool of myself too. I mean, I think the great film critic Pauline Kael once said you know, the artist's first duty is to make a fool of himself.
Speaker 1:And I believe I've done that quite admirably at this point. Well, go ahead, finish up.
Speaker 2:Just because it's a foolish adventure, it seems, and it's the only thing. My bandmate, andy Creighton, who's absolutely a genius, musically, way more accomplished than I am, he said music is sacred the other day to me and that really struck me. It sounds like such a saccharine thing to say, but he's right. You know it really is. You know it really is a sacred thing, somehow A sacred thing, maybe you have to do sacrilegiously in a way.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean you can't touch music right. Once it's created, it's in the air, it's in the ether. Like you can't touch music right, once it's created, it's in the air, it's in the ether. Like you can't get rid of it, it's out there, which is amazing. I mean, regardless of CDs or tapes or records, I mean all these tactile things songs live beyond those. Even if all those were to disappear today, the songs you created would still be there. What prompted you to start the Blackwatch? Like, how did it all come together as a group? Where you guys, you know, became a, where it became a band?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I, I, I reckon that it was just it's to hear a song for the first time come together with you know, it's all it's, it's, it's always been. You know two guitars, or guitar and violin. When Jana Jacoby, who's now in Rod Stewart's band, who was in the band for 10 years, you know, and, and a bass player and a drummer, when a song first emerges, that's a buzz, better than any drug I don't reference drugs again, or whatever Better than any drug I've ever had. It's just a euphoric feeling and there's a way in which you might even say, aesthetically, the song will never be, maybe better somehow than that first. You know, as a feeling, maybe not as a recorded thing, but just that buzz that you get for the first time, where everybody puts in their parts and it really feels like it's a song.
Speaker 1:That's unparalleled for me as a, you know as a venture, as a, as a, as a drug of sorts, right right, and I I mean I guess that propels the, the catalog forward in the sense that there's always these new discoveries, these this new high almost that you get when songs are are made. But what makes a good song like for you, like what songs go on to records and which ones fall to the wayside and are kind of like a stepping stone for something else.
Speaker 2:Oh, chris, they all go on the records. There aren't any songs left in a vault, hardly at all. Maybe there are two or three over the course of 30 plus years now where we just felt that it didn't work like that, and maybe that's I could be faulted for that. Somehow my kid, who's often played on my records and who's my biggest booster and biggest critic as well, in this sort of dialectical sort of way, he's often wondered to me like, like I wonder if you guys might be bigger, had you put out less stuff to make it more of a rare occurrence rather than oh ho home, there's another tbw record. Uh, I'm here and it is daunting.
Speaker 2:I think you know when people go to the used bin, perhaps in particular and see all the releases and just, you know, go like where do I begin? I don't want to buy the wrong one, I want to buy one that I'm gonna love, or whatever, and they might end up not buying anything. But I think things work out as they have done somehow, and so there's isn't really much I can do about that. Um, just in the same way that I don't, I don't know that there's anything, uh, whether it's fate or whatever that I could do to make the band more well-known, because countless are the times that, like you referenced your friend, like, wow, I can't believe I haven't heard of these guys. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that that's kind of touching. Again, dialectically, it's touching and yet it's depressing. Of touching, you know again, dialectically it's touching and yet it's depressing, you know.
Speaker 2:So there you go, but I mean, you know I just, I guess I carry on and deal with it by just making more, making more stuff right, which I seem to be able to.
Speaker 1:Neurotically, I don't seem to be able to help have you ever had a writer's block where you had a long period of time where you just didn't write. There was nothing sparking.
Speaker 2:No, not at all. There's been times where we've shifted members because I've never fired anybody. I think there's been 20 people who've been in the band thus far I've never fired anybody, but they've quit and gone on to great things or gone on to non-musical things or whatever, and tried to stay friends with everyone as well and understanding uh, about about that. But there's been times where I spent the time where I didn't have a core of people to play with. Um right then, writing fiction as a, as a way to, you know, um, quell the neurosis right these are existential ventures.
Speaker 2:To do these podcasts because you know it's dangerous to make people think about their motivations and manias and what they're.
Speaker 1:Yes, we like to turn this around on you, sir. Oh, I'm not the musician putting out records you are john, I know to great delight to great delight. Um, thank you. Tell me about, like, your sound over these years. How do you find that it's evolved or changed or shifted, and have band members had enough power to influence the sound of records? Like, just walk us through that timeline, a little bit of of your record catalog, and maybe any shifts that have happened throughout that timeline?
Speaker 2:that's a great. That's a great question. I mean, initially I tried to mask my influences. I mean, the beatles influence is very I think it's kind of kind of subtle because they're sort of inimitable unless you become one of these kind of skinny tie, wearing, you know, mop top, sporting um kind of tribute, sorts of the things where you're overtly doing that. But the sort of I've been because of my academic training. I've been very, very much aware of the fact that your duty as an artist is to incorporate your influences, which everybody has, but also to do your level best to mask them. So I really tried to get away.
Speaker 2:I'll even mention, you know, like I was hugely initially influenced by the Cure and some early, not exactly rave reviews had called us the California Cure somehow. And I'm going well, I guess I'd better labor a little harder to disguise my love for that band or for New Order, another one, um, an early influence. And of course, you know, because I play guitar and because I like this, I'm not a metal guy in the slightest, you know, I like lots of prog as well, but I'm not proficient enough for that. So I think it's sort of maybe organically, you know, evolved and then when janna was in the band. She's a classical violinist, absolutely brilliant. So we featured that, uh for that for a good five records or so. And then she said something along the lines of, wow, I want the violin out by 2001 because we were kind of sick of it. And she was a very incredible guitar player who didn't really know what she was doing. A lot of great guitar players are not, mus know, musos or, uh, maestros or anything like that. So she, she came up with wonderful chords for that. But then she, you know, we've split up as a couple as well. And then, uh, she went on to you know great heights with rod stewart or whatever. So I was back to going like, I don't want another violinist in there, nobody will compare to her. So, so it's, you know more guitars. And so, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And also the last two records, weird Rooms and the Morning Papers, have given us the vapors. These things were greatly shaped by producers and engineers where, in fact, with the Weird Rooms, I let Misha Bullock, the guy from Yorkshire who lives in Austin, and produce that record and he's a drummer and multi-instrumentalist. I recorded the basic things and then I left Austin. I said, misha, you finish it. So it was a great leap of faith for me, but I really trust him, as I do Andy Creighton, who just finished yet another new record for us, so involving myself with people much better, uh, at at being at playing instruments than I am, who have great taste too and know my taste, because there's enough of it out there that they can, you know, do a do a study of it. Um, so it just seemed to have worked out that's really cool.
Speaker 1:That's really cool. And um, do you have specific times when you kind of stop writing music and turn to more literature, or is it kind of a mishmash of it all?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a mishmash of it all. There's a thriller that I wrote. I don't really read thrillers, but I wrote a novel. That's a thriller about two people who are greatly in love with my Bloody Valentine. That's where they sort of bond. But it's more of a thriller and I haven't been able to find a publisher for that one, sadly. So I don't really have an idea for a book. I always say maybe I'll write an autobiography, but I'm not really interested in the subject. So I kind of even did something even crazier. I've been writing an autobiography in verse because I published some poems down the years.
Speaker 2:So I thought, gosh, you know, a memoir, an autobiography or whatever. Maybe this would just be a nice way for me to, you know, start writing really long poems, and I published a couple of those, but I don't do anything by rote. They always say that Paul Simon, apparently to this day, sits in a room for an hour and forces himself to write, and I'm much more touchy-feely about that of just going when the muse, the inspiration strikes. That's when I go for it somehow. But it really is pretty much every day that I play guitar and maybe a melody will hit me and I think, okay, this one's very much worth finding some words for. It always comes that way the music first and then lyrics.
Speaker 1:Very cool, Very cool. Now this catalog spans over three decades. Am I safe to say that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the first record came out in 1988.
Speaker 1:Wow, and how has the industry, the music industry, evolved, changed over that period of time? Because we have lots of new musicians that come on here, have have their first record coming out, second record we rarely have somebody that's gone through the industry for a nice period of time. In your opinion, what? How has it shifted or changed throughout the years to where it is now?
Speaker 2:i'll'll reference one of the producers, scott Campbell, who's been with us on and off since the early 90s. He's worked with Stevie Nicks and the Acetone wonderful LA band. His singer killed himself. Yeah, richie was an old friend of mine, great guy, and Scott's been around and he's seen it all too.
Speaker 2:And he said, you know, in part there aren't any real bands because everybody fancies that they're an auteur. Um, you know, there are bands, but in in lots of ways, that notion of four people contributing, or five contributing equally to, to to things, and I don't really pay that much, even though I'm in the hub, one of the hubs of the music industry in Los, and I don't really pay that much, even though I'm in the hub, one of the hubs of the music industry in Los Angeles. I don't really pay attention to the, you know, the ever shifting flavor of the month motif. Somehow I think it was a lot easier to tour in the 90s when we were, you know, certainly when we were younger and didn't have as many responsibilities, and that it's more difficult now and it's a lot easier to tour, say, england or or europe, where we've never we've never had a european tour, but we've had several um tours of england and we'll do another one in um in march actually of next year, um, which is great.
Speaker 2:But I think, I don't know, there's a certain cynicism that comes from people at labels wanting to find out how many people we have on Instagram or Facebook. And I already showed you my flip phone. I can barely check my email, so that's not really our strong suit, even though we have a Facebook page, instagram thingy or whatever. So I mean that takes the focus certainly away. Strong suit, even though we have a facebook page and instagram thingy or whatever. So I mean that that takes the focus certainly away from the quality of the music, notwithstanding the fact that there are good bands out there. There's good music out there.
Speaker 2:I'm always looking for it myself I'm still a music fan and I still buy lots of records as well, unlike certain people like my kid, who knows all these bands way before I do, but he doesn't support them by buying their stuff, he's you know. So there's a different generational motif, chris, absolutely there um that you know where us, us old schoolish kind of people are going like, don't you want at least the cassette? You know I bought a. I bought a lexus a few years ago and it had a cassette player. I said this is the selling point.
Speaker 1:All of those cassettes in my closet will live again oh my god, the boxes of cassettes and cds, even like yeah, truly yeah it's like everything streams now, hey, like, other than lps still seem to be something that people buy, um, but the other forms eight track cassette cd just have come and gone um, and over a very short period of time as well. Hey, um, absolutely, you said something too that that was fascinating, that I. I was listening to a podcast. They were talking about the death of bands. Like they're like, bands don't exist much anymore, like, if you look at your top 40, your top 50 it's all individual artists, um, with very few bands that actually make it, other than your cold plays or your oasis with their comeback. Oh sure, your tour, um, why do you think that is like? Why, why is the music industry kind of shifted over to this kind of singer, songwriter, one, one person, one woman, you know, like what? Do you think, in your opinion, that that has caused some of that change?
Speaker 2:Well, could you could? You could put it kind of glibly as the Instagramification of music, in a way of everybody fancying, in a kind of narcissistic sort of way of saying you know, I'm the centerpiece, I'm the sinister, I'm the person we should focus on, and or not wanting somebody to spoil that vision with their own input or what have you? I don't know, I think it's a very individual case, but I don't really have a. I mean, do you have a theory about why that is? Because you're not wrong at all.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, I think it's easier as an artist to put out your I mean to record, produce, like I've talked to a ton of musicians and it's a one-person kind of thing now. Like you could do it, it's not a problem. You know, I can record on my computer. I can then upload it onto Bandcampcamp. I can do a live online show. If I wanted. I could go on twitch and whatever. Like there's so many avenues. I think that weren't available.
Speaker 2:Five ten years ago yeah, you can lay that technology yeah too, because because a number of my engineer and producer friends who are, you know, more and more out of work and having to search your farther afield to do live shows or to learn how to master a record or, uh, you know, be tour managers or whatever, real realizing that bands, you know now that pro tools is just, you know, uh, predominant, that people can record their record, whether it sounds great or not, that's another issue, but it's made it available. You know that, that dream of I think it was spielberg who said, you know, if every once everybody has a camera, it'll be just like pen and paper. So I mean, and that's good, and once again, it's good and bad because there's a glut, you know, obviously there's a spate and a glut of stuff that's out there, that's just absolute rubbish. So, but god bless everybody else, for you know they're, they're certainly you know I've got license to license to try, license to ill absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Well said, well said, john, thank you. Thank you just to kind of like bring things. We'll wrap things up. I know your, your time is precious. Um, two records came out. If you had somebody asked you a question like I'm going to ask you right now, how would you answer it? What is If you had to describe them as children, as two different kind of entities? How would you Classify them? How would you describe? Each one is their own kind of unique character.
Speaker 2:Between the two records that came out this year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Morning Paper has given us the vapors in Weird Rooms.
Speaker 2:Okay, weird Rooms is a very well-behaved but batty sort of child, because we included all kinds of made-up radio show things as a kind of unwitting, until we did it. Homage to the who sellout, my favorite who record by far, and so that's. But the Morning Papers is schizoid in a different way, because the songs were from a bunch of different sessions and so sonically they don't. They're not, they don't adhere. And this kind of harks back to a question you asked about um, that. What I'll just explain it that each of our records kind of is a reaction against the one that we've just done. Um, maybe they're not that disparate as sonically or generically, uh, but somehow every record I do I look at the last one I go. I'm gonna try in my mind, I'm gonna fancy at least that I'm doing something, you know, diametrically opposed, not diametrically opposed, but just, you know, as a reaction against that, against that so weird.
Speaker 2:weird room certainly is very it's a very, very tight, tightly knit child, maybe ready to explode at any minute or whatever volatile. And the other one's just very sort of diffused. It's got very pop songs. It's got very down dreamy, acoustic-y things. It's got one serious dance thing. It's got one very new brim-sweet, clean as a very pop know the church-like or wedding present kind of song. So I think that's those two Cool. Yeah, lovely, that's not a good answer to answer that Lovely.
Speaker 3:You've collected.
Speaker 2:so I've looked on your site and your Instagram. You've collected quite a few really interesting people to talk to. Absolutely, I think I'm a little bit envious of your position to get to do this, because I love to talk to people artists about what they do, especially if they're articulate, if they don't have a clue and they're very much just on aesthetic know on on aesthetic, autopilot or whatever. But I think it's. I think it's a great thing.
Speaker 2:We're all in this together, we're all doing this for the love of that sacred thing that is. That is music. So I always appreciate to talk to somebody who has good questions and trenchant questions and can have a laugh at me too while we're you know, while we're doing it.
Speaker 1:Well, no laugh, I mean, I meant insane, like in the sense of the quantic, like I don't know how all of those songs can come out of one one brain, like it just seems. And you still have more. So john 2024, 2025, we're not done yet this party is just still partying here. What's's coming down the pipe for you?
Speaker 2:We have a double record A double record and an EP coming next year and as the aforementioned UK tour in March. But we just finished 24 songs, not 21. The 21 are going on a new album and there's an EP. Just because when I went to Austin to work with Misha Bolick again, I came back going like that, captured a bunch of new things, but I'm inspired to write more, I guess it's failure that, I would say, is the greatest motivator.
Speaker 2:I remember I told my students one time I said you know, if there's a maximum I've ever come up with, it's fail beautifully. In the last day of class, one of them, at the final gate, made a bumper sticker saying fail beautifully for me. I thought, oh, of all the presents I've ever got from students, this is the most beautiful. There's one sticker in existence and of course I lost it. But I think failure is one of the greatest motivators. Somebody said recently you know your failures are your triumphs and your triumphs are your failures in many ways. And I keep on trying to make a record that's as good as the white album, and I never will. I know I won't, but you know it's just to keep on trying to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah I love to talk. I'm an educator, so I love oh cool, your. Your idea of failure is just a new lesson that you add to your tool chest of knowledge that failure is necessary for learning, and if you're not failing, you're not learning. That's what I tell my kids, and I always tell them. The best word that you can always use is yet. You don't have the white album yet, john.
Speaker 2:But it's in there, I'll take that one on the chin.
Speaker 1:I believe in you. I really have been enjoying your records.
Speaker 3:This chat has been really, really enjoyable.
Speaker 1:I think you're a wonderful person to talk to. I love your enthusiasm and your stories and just your catalog, so I mean thank you for taking some time and joining me and sharing this with the group. What do you teach? I help teachers teach kids.
Speaker 2:So I'm kind of a coach for teachers. Never more necessary in this messed up world. Never more necessary.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. It's the hardest job. My two passions.
Speaker 2:It's the hardest job. My kid teaches special ed in high school and um I just I don't. I marvel at it, so yeah great good for you doing that.
Speaker 1:That's thank you. Thank you, well, and thank you, john. So people check out a black watch. Two new records out, another one coming tour, um, and we'll be watching you, john. This is uh, you're on my radar now. I'm never gonna leave, so I'll be waiting for the weight album okay cheers.
Speaker 2:Thanks, chris. Thanks Toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot.
Speaker 3:To Look at the sky, the way of their clouds, don't? They seem to say things to you, strange as can be, like when a child Sleepwalks and dreams and can't stop. Bad, creeprolly things and gladness, blackest cave. When you gonna wake up? When you gonna wake up Now? All the things you make up, all the things you make up, all the things you make up Now, now. So, since you asked, I'd say you were At an impasse. Some sort of face, whether you know or not, blue blooms, weekly ghosts live somewhere. How do you speak? Oh, I don't know. All over again. When are you going to wake up? When are you you gonna wake up? When you gonna wake up now? All the things you make up, all the things you make up now, now. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm.
