The Black Watch - Biography
The Black Watch is a Los Angeles-based indie rock band that has undergone many different line-up changes over the course of two decades, with the one constant being founder/vocalist/guitarist, John Andrew Frederick. A self-admitted anglophile, Frederick’s pop sensibilities and cerebral songwriting have become as noteworthy as the singer’s bad luck, making The Black Watch a marvel of perseverance. From the time Fredrick formed TBW in 1987, the band’s discography has ballooned into something very extensive and decorated—they’ve released 10 full-length albums and numerous EPs and singles, having put records out with over half a dozen different labels—yet mainstream success has never been more than a weekend flirtation. Through the many obstacles and travails—particularly with the timing of their strong, if little promoted albums—the group in whichever incarnation it is rolled out as has garnered a sizeable underground following and has been continuously lauded by alt-media. The band is also noteworthy for its mysterious practice of playing scant few local gigs and almost never touring.
A Beatles fan growing up along the Central Coast of Santa Barbara who was also captured by the bleak vision of Joy Division, Fredrick received his PhD in English from the University of California at Santa Barbara and started the Black Watch as an alloy to some of his life problems (such as a bad marriage). The earliest iteration of The Black Watch wore kilts and were “terrible,” according to the singer, with a hodgepodge roster that included “a surfer, a Native American and a Joe College UCSB Crew Team Member.” They landed a gig opening for Todd the Wet Sprocket and later, after releasing a four-song demo and having one of the tracks played on regional radio, a spot opening for The Church. The group, for the first time in what would be a recurring theme, fizzled out after these marginal successes. Still treating it as a hobby, Fredrick got new players involved and recorded a 10-song album that would become the band’s debut—the self-released St. Valentine (1987) on his own Eskimo Records—which was received well by local media.
After forays as a novelist and as an editor of an alt-weekly newspaper, Fredrick moved to Los Angeles where he met J’Anna Jacoby, a violinist/guitarist, and the duo formed the nexus of The Black Watch for the next decade. With a new line-up and a bedrock late-’60s sounding form of post-punk indie-pop, TBW was aptly compared to The Cure and My Bloody Valentine, as well as Yo La Tengo. They would bring on drummer Randy Leasure and bassist Roger Butchers and release and EP called Short Stories and eventually the sophomore album, Flowering (1989), on Dr. Dream Records. The label didn’t get behind the album, even as the single “Terrific” received heavy airplay on college radio.
The band asked (and was granted) release from its obligations with Dr. Dream, and soon signed with Zero Hour for the next album, Amphetamines (1994), which is now out of print. At the time the single “Whatever You Need” received a fair amount of commercial airplay, but again the label didn’t back the band with any major push, leaving Fredrick and company in the lurch, discouraged by anticipation and unmet expectations.
With the nucleus of Jacoby and Fredrick still intact, The Black Watch returned with Seven Rollercoasters and, after a hiatus to write his first novel called The King of Good Intentions, returned with an album by the same name (1999 Not Lame). While the book (about an indie rock band) was originally to be published by Henry Rollins’ 2.13.61 company, it was dropped just before hitting the printers due to the imprint’s financial instability. The record, however, had a rotation of sub rosa LA-based musicians cameoing and again registered with alt-weeklies and tastemakers as an American version of The Go-Between’s while somehow missing the larger public. It was considered the band’s opus at the time, with superior production and Fredrick’s Robert Smith-like voice and pithy, cut-to-the-bone lyricism top-heavy over Jacoby’s sweeping instrumentations.
In 2000, TBW returned with Lime Green Girl (Saltwater), a 16-track arrangement which featured a seven-song retrospective of the band’s earlier material of the previous decade as well as nine new songs. Since the beginning of the aughts, Fredrick took a position teaching English at Santa Monica College and Jacoby went on to play with Rod Stewart as a violinist/mandolinist.
Even with the new gigs, The Black Watch has released new albums steadily throughout the mid-2000s, including the breezy Jiggery-Pokery (2002 Stonegarden), Very Mary Beth (2003 Stonegarden), the reverent long player The Hypnotizing Sea (2005 Pink Hedgehog), with its songs to Dylan and Shakespeare, Tatterdemalion (2006 Stonegarden) and Icing the Snow Queen (2008 Eskimo). Though commercial success has eluded The Black Watch for the balance of its 20-plus years of existence, Fredrick’s songwriting and passion make up The Black Watch’s impressive discography, making them one of the more enigmatic stalwarts on the LA scene.
