For almost 25 years, John Andrew Fredrick and a revolving cast of characters have been issuing records as the Black Watch. The California-based indie-rock institution is back with 11th album Led Zeppelin Five (Powertool), and it’s the first LP to feature the rock-solid lineup of Fredrick, guitarist Steven Schayer (ex-Chills), bassist Chris Rackford and drummer Rick Woodard. When Fredrick isn’t busy writing and recording songs, he’s teaching English at the University of California, so we thought he’d a be a natural choice to guest edit the MAGNET website. Fredrick, with some assistance from Schayer, will be doing exactly that all week. Read our brand new Q&A with Fredrick.
Fredrick: I’m the kind of guy who sticks with things. Like my band and my vision of how each song I write is supposed to go. I’ve been going to a mom-and-pop Mexican restaurant in Highland Park called La Abeja (“The Bee”) for more than 20 years, and I’ve never had anything there but their enchiladas verdes. How’s the food there? I dunno, but the verdes are mexcellent! Every morning, bar none, I have madeleines and seven or eight cups of coffee. The Proust cookie. I can count on breakfast, that’s for sure. Madeleines are the only reason I get up in the afternoon. Kidding: I am the most reluctant morning person imaginable. I don’t fucking want to be awake at 5:30 a.m. but I am. And I would be hating life without my maddy fix. Dip that shit in a cuppa joe, and dream away like you’re a prolix neurotic in a cork-lined room. It’s the perfect food—not cake, not cookie. It can’t really make up its mind! It doesn’t have to. It’s the star of confections. Steve calls my apartment “The Carbetorium.” He doesn’t eat carbs. He drinks them: Buy him a Jack & Diet when you see us on tour. I am, to say the least, a supercreature of habit. I don’t “try new things.” It makes controlling people crazy. I have played serious tennis since I was in college with the same brand of racket, a Yonex. The sweet spot is big. The shape is sexy. It’s a heavy weapon. It’s the preferred stick of all the tennis girls I’ve ever fancied: Martina (Hingus, obviously), Nicole Vaidisova, Ana Ivanovic, Maria Kirilenko. I only watch women’s tennis. If it’s not in a pleated skirt, why bother? I think my consistency (complacency?) with things harks back to my Catholic-school envy complex: As a Protestant kid, I wished I could go to a school where you had to wear the same thing every day. So now I wear almost the same uniform almost every day: plaid shorts and Lacoste shirts.
Videos after the jump.
