John Andrew Fredrick formed the black watch in 1987 after he'd received his Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He was married and deeply unhappy, a great change from his perhaps excessively felicitous childhood growing up as he did in Santa Barbara flying kites, playing sports, listening to The Beatles, going to Goleta Beach and trying hard not to get in trouble with Jesus. (He was raised a Lutheran and rather strictly.) The first incarnation of the band included a surfer, a Native American, and a Joe College UCSB Crew Team Member. They played in kilts and were very terrible. They listened to too much Joy Division and The Cure and opened for Toad the Wet Sprocket who collectively said nasty things behind their backs as people in catty provincial coastline California towns will do. They made a demo of four songs which you will never hear, got one of those songs on a commercial alternative specialty show in their hometown, opened for The Church, and kind of drifted apart.

Thank God for that!

In 1987 Fredrick, wishing to continue with the band so as to attempt to develop his art and be out of the house as much as possible, found three new musicians–two taciturn brothers and a handsome blonde guy who could barely play bass–and recorded ten songs on a 16-track. The record was called St. Valentine and put out by John himself, on his own label, called eskimo. The disc got some nice reviews in Option and Alternative Press and stuff and some airplay on college radio; people talked about the band as sort of a very catchy/Englishy American Music Club (a group of which John had never heard but later came to love–like anyone with any sense at all). In the winter quarter of that same year Fredrick, who had been teaching Freshman English at his Alma Mater, received an award for Lecturer of the Year, but in the spring he was laid off.

Now jobless, Fredrick spent his days trying to write a novel, penning more songs, and taking care of his awesome son Chandler. In the summer of 1988 he got a job in Los Angeles editing a bi-weekly newspaper–writing film, record, and restaurant reviews and trying hard to keep a comic strip going despite the fact that, as he'd be the first to admit, he can't draw a stickman. He moved in with a friend in Santa Monica and got a nice divorce. He was superpoor. He looked for musicians to join the black watch and talked to a lot of people with too much hair and too much unmitigated cockiness who wanted mercenary salaries and writing credit on songs they had not written.

He started jamming with a drummer who owned a huge house in the Koreatown district and a crapulous little practice shed, and a bass player who liked Peter Murphy and Cocteau Twins and played a left-handed Rickenbacker. The drummer let rooms to people in order to make ends meet. One of them was J'Anna Jacoby. Minor legend has it that, one night, after rehearsal, Fredrick went outside to smoke and heard the most beautiful violin playing imaginable coming from an upstairs window; he inquired as to who was the responsible party, met J'Anna, and asked her to play some songs with the band.

J'Anna played violin and guitar and the true nucleus of the black watch came into being. The band found a producer in expatriate Irishman Iain O'Higgins who had worked with three of Fredrick's favorite artists: Robyn Hitchcock, The Jazz Butcher, and The House of Love. With "Higgledy" at the helm (and Scott Campbell, who would later produce most of the band's best work, engineering) the band recorded the EP Short Stories and the Flowering CD and got signed to Dr. Dream, the first of several horrible, utterly incompetent record labels the band would find itself on.

Two new members–drummer Randy Leasure and bassist Roger Butchers–came on board during the recording of Flowering (see reviews section). the black watch did a few regional and Midwest tours and tried to keep a sense of humor about being in a jangly indie pop band in the midst of the grunge era.

The single from Flowering, "Terrific," got tons of airplay on a handful of commercial alternative radio stations. And Dr. Dream did fuck-all about it.

At once heartened and discouraged, the band asked to be dropped from the label. Request granted.

Thank God for that!

In 1990 tbw hooked up, at Dr. Dream's suggestion, with Joe Chicarrelli, one of the nicest producers in the western hemisphere, a guy who'd worked with AMC, The Verlaines, et alia, and whose picture you can see in our glorious picture gallery. The result was Amphetamines, a CD which is now out of print, and which was originally put out by Zero Hour Records. It garnered lots more nice commentary from the underground press and included a single, "Whatever You Need," that also got some decent commercial airplay. Try and find it on E-Bay if you can. Oh yeah: the disc was also produced by Chris Apthorp and Scott Campbell.

the black watch changed members (except for J'Anna and John) over the next few years, and even broke up completely for a half a year in 1997 after the Seven Rollercoasters CD/EP came out. During that time Fredrick wrote his first novel, called the king of good intentions, about (big surprise!) an indie rock band. You can download and read it by going to the "novel" section of this site. The book was accepted for publication in 1998 by Henry Rollins 2.13.61 Publications. But just before the novel was supposed to be sent to the typesetters, John got a heartbreaking call from the Managing Editor informing him that Rollins had been advised by his lawyers to stop printing anything but his own books: the house had lost too much money. Drag! tbw recorded the king of good intentions CD as a companion piece to the yet-to-be-released novel. Everyone seemed to think it was the band's best work yet (again, see reviews)--until, that is, 2000's Lime Green Girl emerged, including nine new songs and a seven-song retrospective of the band's first 10 years.

tbw continues to play shows and record (now with Scott Taylor on bass and Rick Woodard drumming: both from a Silver Lake punk-pop band called Velouria)–there's lots more music coming from this little indie pop band that could. In 1999 J'Anna got a gig in Rod Stewart's band playing violin and mandolin; she's the first woman ever to play with Rod. Er, musically, we mean. John's teaching English at Santa Monica College and has written another short comic novel called the knucklehead chronicles.

You can expect a new CD/EP called the Christopher Smart EP from the black watch sometime in the Spring of 2001.