John Andrew Fredrick is a most unlikely indie icon. Sidelined by a sporting injury as a youngster, he spent his recuperative period learning to play the guitar… mainly because his parents wouldn’t permit him to while away his time watching TV. He also read voraciously, digesting the entire Encyclopedia Britannica as well as books on history and language. It was a productive period to be sure, one that set the course for his dual careers - as a professor of literature at the University of California in Santa Barbara (the same institution that awarded him a PhD in English) and as the erstwhile leader of the Black Watch, a prodigious outfit that’s released eight albums to date, including their latest, Tatterdemalion. With a sound that’s as articulate and exquisite as those literary leanings might imply -- a rich blend of vibrant, compelling rock ‘n’ roll within a rich melodic tapestry -- the Black Watch have made their mark on the alt-rock universe for the past 17 years. All the while they’ve amassed a succession of changes in personnel (most significantly, Fredrick’s girlfriend and steady musical foil J’Anna Jacoby who departed in 2001) as well as a respectable amount of critical kudos. Nevertheless, even with the setbacks and challenges that have accompanied his struggle to win wider recognition, Fredrick remains unceasingly optimistic and confident of his ability to persevere, even touting a new novel, The Knucklehead Chronicles as further evidence of his unwavering ambitions.
Fredrick recently agreed to open up to Amplifier and, with tongue occasionally planted firmly in cheek; he proceeded to shed some light on his music and his muse in general.
AMPLIFIER: Where did the name the Black Watch come from?
FREDRICK: The Black Watch is the Scottish regiment that plays bagpipes and kills people. I wanted something musical AND martial for a name. We haven't been sued yet by the regiment proper. I think it'd be beneath them!!
AMPLIFIER: Did your parents push you into learning to play an instrument?
FREDRICK: My parents never encouraged me to play guitar; they didn't discourage me. They supported everything I did artistically or athletically. There was no music around the house until Christmas time. It just wasn't part of the equation. It's not like they were these Quakers or Anabaptists or whatever sect that frowns on tunes. I don't think music really occurred to my mom and dad; we all sang in church… but there really weren't many records lying round. A few classical things, and Christmas music, and perhaps the soundtrack of a--bleeeech!--musical or two. I imagine they thought it was very quaint for me to be playing the guitar in bed. They encouraged me to stop playing the drums, that's for sure. I was a drummer as well -- up until high school. I imagine I was, at once, well of course, too loud and pretty awful. I remember playing along to The (Beatles’) White Album quite a bit.
AMPLIFIER: Tell us about some of your earliest influences.
FREDRICK: I watched The Beatles' cartoon show every Saturday. It was like something holy. We -- all of us kids from my neighborhood in Santa Barbara -- were crazy for the Beatles. I was certain that they would never go away. I imagine I was utterly convinced that the cartoon version of them was exactly what their lives were like. Life without them would have been inconceivable. I was devastated to learn that they had split up. I think I had a few Monkees records, and Creedence and Jimi Hendrix without a doubt -- but the Beatles were my world. Still are, kinda.
AMPLIFIER: Is there are a common thread that connects your teaching career to your musical career?
FREDRICK: The thread between teaching and songwriting recording is that they're both performance-based, as it were. Especially in the light of the fact that higher education now is very edutainment oriented. Students love the professors who make the class fun. It's a shame somehow. Not that I don't like fun. I'm rather hilarious in the classroom -- cajoling, punning occasionally, teasing my students into learning how to think and write, vamping, hamming it up. I was a really passionate teacher of literature. I say was because I am now officially burnt out; I desperately need a sabbatical. The job requires so much energy, passion -- as do the acts/arts of songwriting and gigging. Think how resentful you are when you see a band, or hear a record by someone you like, and they seem merely to be peddling along. You feel betrayed somehow.
AMPLIFIER: How does your music impact your literary pursuits… or vice-versa?
FREDRICK: I imagine it's that I try to surround myself with beauty… I behave like an obsessive graduate student to this day -- I'm always promiscuous in my reading and my listening. I read a lot of poetry for its music, that's for sure. I think T.S. Eliot is one of the most musical artists there ever was. You can hear the melodies in his lines. A phrase I come across often occasions a melody idea. I think I may have a profanity-free sort of Tourette’s. I go around all day sometimes singing a four or five word phrase. Yesterday it was a variation on a quotation from “Barfly”: "Hey you with the filthy apron!" …sort of an internal soundtrack that cracks me up. Nicely strung-together words are music, you know.
AMPLIFIER: How do your albums evolving? In other words, is there a preconceived idea in mind that determines how you’ll make the next album different from the ones that preceded it?
FREDRICK: I can't really assess my musical progression. How many artists do you trust as so-called reliable assessors of their work? It's funny -- I got audited by the IRS a few years ago and the CPA goes: ‘Well, they are trying to determine if you are an artist or not’ (I file as an artist) ... and I said, ‘Isn't that for the critics to determine?’ (laughs) I have no idea whether the stuff I wrote in 1989 is any more fully realized or any less than what's on Tatterdemalion.
AMPLIFIER: Where do you draw your inspiration from?
FREDRICK: My inspiration? I read this article by Francine du Plessix Gray who kinda delivered this jeremiad against talk show hosts and interviewers incessantly trying to get at the artists' secrets, his shamanistic creative/emotional reserve. Life, Nietzsche says, would be inconceivable without music. I say ‘fucking A, Friedrich!’ It's a sort of negative way to put it but I simply couldn't not write… so I write.
AMPLIFIER: What’s your new book, The Knucklehead Chronicles, about?
FREDRICK: It's kinda a novel-in-stories, with one central character, the Knucklehead, appearing in every section. The narrator is sort of 18th Century-esque -- melding hipster-speak and a very, very high, formal style...like Fielding or Richardson or Smollet...it's lowbrow, highbrow -- kinda like a slapstick Barry Lyndon... it's very moralistic -- satire is, when you think about it, a very didactic genre...
AMPLIFER: Who among your current peers do you admire these days?
FREDRICK: I like Yo La Tengo, Sparklehorse. I think Steve Kilbey still does some brilliant gobblegook--as does Kurt Heasley. Is Andy Partridge my peer? (laughs) I reckon you want me to tout some new band. Ok -- the Radio Dept. Oh, the Clientele. I love the Clientele! I wish the Swirlies were still around. And Prefab Sprout. Mogwai I am fascinated by -- I buy all their stuff.
AMPLIFIER: It says in your bio that the new album took you 20 years to make. What’s that all about?
FREDRICK: My note about how the new thing took 20 years to make was just me being glib. A holistic -- dreadful word, isn't it? -- approach to the latest in a longish string of records. You put your whole life into good works of art. Sounds all trippy-hippy-dippy but I for one credit it, you know.
AMPLIFIER: Are you happy to dwell in the indie existence or is there a point where you hope a major label will come along and make you an offer you can’t refuse?
FREDRICK: I have no desire to be on a major label. I say that in the craven hope that some major label A & R rep will take that as a gauntlet thrown, as it were, and throw thousands of dollars at me to try to get me to change my mind! (laughs) I wanna make a very, very, very low-fi record next. I wanna make something that sounds terrible! That's brilliantly written, of course, but that has a bad drum sound and a lousy bass sound. I'm not completely serious, but I am sick of good sounding records.
I hate the fact that so many people like what they are told to like. Capitol's latest message to the masses (is) "Be into the Decemberists or risk utter uncoolness!" The Decemberists are a silliness whose trendiness will be lamented -- mark my words. As in ‘Oh my god, why was I ever into Jackson Browne?!’ Kinda head-scratching motif... majors create false excitement… it's a set up and a scam.
AMPLIFIER: When J’Anna left the band, it must been a double blow, both personally and professionally. How did you reconcile that loss?
FREDRICK: J'Anna had left the Black Watch years before she actually left. She was never meant to play Brownies or the Knitting Factory on a Tuesday night; she was meant for stadiums and for major recording studios. She's a major, major talent. The indie world was a lark to her -- one that lasted twelve years, mind you.
When we broke up, I merely continued doing what I do. She ‘frosted’ my productions (but) she was never integral to the writing of things. I tried to get her into it -- she can write -- but she's too pusillanimous to be an artist. She's afraid of what she'll find in her psyche if she goes a-digging round in it. C'est la guerre.
AMPLIFIER: So at this point is the Black Watch simply a pseudonym for John Andrew Fredrick or is there an actual band dynamic involved?
FREDRICK: We work weirdly. The last four records I go in with my acoustic, do the songs, then the other two come along and add whatever they want, however they want! Then we duke it out later -- in the mixing process. Everyone has immense respect for one another. (Bassist) Scott Taylor, (guitarist) Tim Boland and (drummer) Gary Sullivan are, to a man, some incredible musicians and thinkers about music. They think I am a total snarge (sic) -- that I am dictatorial and controlling and a bastard, basically. And they are right. But they perhaps don't realize exactly how much I treasure their input. I just don't use all of it. Most, actually. We all love, love, love the middle period Beatles; we try to make the songs as satisfying as Magical Mystery Tour. We fail of course. (laughs) But goddamit we try!
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Interview by Lee Zimmerman
The Black Watch's Tatterdemalion is released November 28, 2006 on Stonegarden Records.
http://www.stonegarden.com
