John Andrew Frederick is a walking contradiction, and he knows it. The black watch frontman calls himself a “recovering quitter” who has walked away from teaching, smoking, marriage and fiction writing. But music? That he cannot quit, despite threatening to with every album. Now 26 records deep since 1988, Frederick is releasing Varied Superstitions on 27 February via Blue Matter Records, the label run by fellow restless spirit Nick Saloman of The Bevis Frond.
Speaking from Los Angeles to Jason Barnard, Frederick is characteristically open about his creative process and profound ambivalence toward definitiveness. “I don’t seem to be able to say anything quite definitively straightforwardly in a lyric,” he admits. “There’s a quite quiet voice in my head always that queries ‘Are you really sure about that?'” It’s this willingness to sit with uncertainty, to let contradictions coexist without resolution, that has defined the black watch. As his shrink once predicted after watching a disastrous early gig: “Those kids are going to be stars; but you, John, are going to be an artist.”
What made you choose Varied Superstitions as the album title, and how does that title track set the tone for the whole record?
Hi, Jason. Chuffed you like the new record and very much dig The Strange Brew site. Quite a few of our albums bear punny titles—all puns being egregious, of course. It’s a nod I suppose to Stevie Wonder whom I adore—just as Led Zeppelin Five was a sort of cheeky homage to Plant & Co., and Jiggery-Pokery pointed up our deep Beatles geekery and Icing the Snow Queen was a homophonic pun/thing about fairy tales (and a very cold princess type I was dating at the time and I-sing-ing about). I don’t know that the eponymous track really does set the tone for the record as a whole. Superstition Studies aren’t one of my hobbyhorses or anything—and I’m not a particularly woo-woo sort of person, anyway, though a bit psychic sometimes. I think—though of course good old T.S. Eliot’s Intentional Fallacy comes into play here—the song’s about aggressively rejecting superstitious behavior. Oh, it just struck me that track four, ‘Precious Little,’ starts with the observation that The Tarot “will often tell you/what you want to hear.” I’ve known—this being LA—a few people who became addicted to going to soothsayers. And of course there are two on every corner here. Surely a sign of deep desperation—to be desperate to hear something positive. It’s sad and of course narcissistic; even people who go to mediums for a lark seem to be hoping beyond hope for something hopeful. I write so palpably from my unconscious sometimes that I daresay I’m the last person to ask about the ostensible meaning of my songs. Varied Superstitions is the most New Orderish track on the LP, that’s certain. The other tracks aren’t quite so dance-y. I don’t mind acknowledging that influence. NO are far and away one of my favorite bands of all time. The more guitar-y stuff on ‘Brotherhood and Movement’ especially.
Given that, are there themes across the LP – musically and/or lyrically, and if so was that intentional or something that naturally occurred?
Once again, I beg off with respect to the aforementioned fallacy. I imagine—though I can’t say for certain—that there are scads of little twists and turns within each individual song. I don’t seem to be able to say anything quite definitively straightforwardly in a lyric. Not that obfuscation’s any sort of goal or anything. There’s a quite quiet voice in my head always that queries “Are you really sure about that?” I try to write from a perspective of wonder—I do know that much… and I don’t mean Stevie. There I go punning. Oh, that was quite not good. Sorry.
The album starts with ‘It Is What It Isn’t.’ That’s a pretty perfect contradiction. What sparked that song – is it about a relationship?
Contradictions (I seem to have anticipated this notion in my response to the previous question) are my raison d’etre, I swear to God. Everything’s potentially oxymoronic. ‘It Is What It Isn’t’ is more about my abhorrence of cliches and platitudes. Their seeming inevitability in modern day conversations prevents me some days leaving the house! Have you read Martin Amis’ The War on Cliché? It’s one of his best non-fiction works. Brian Wilson wasn’t the only one who “just wasn’t made for these times.” People’s use of modish phrases makes me mental; and of course that song’s about how—from my perspective—nothing is what it is. Furthermore, the key line in that song’s to do with people just assuming that, because one had a fancy education, one agrees with others’ political beliefs. I hate politics and politic talk. But I hate even more that many friends and acquaintances just blithely reckon that I’m on their side. I’m on Plato’s side is whose side I’m on. Ever quixotic, me. Phrases like “everything happens for a reason” kill me. What if something happened because chaos holds sway over everything and the world’s absurd? That awful phrase just shows you how the ninnies of this world go rationalizing things away. I just wince at stuff like that.
That year in bed with a broken leg in 1968, eleven months reading English history and writing songs, seems to have made you who you are. Do you ever wonder who you’d be if you hadn’t broken that leg?
I’m sure I would’ve been an Olympian. Haha. If only I’d have started tennis lessons when I was ten rather than twenty-seven! I think it taught me to make the most of loneliness: your friends come by the first week to say sorry and sign your cast; then, for the next year or so, you hear them on Saturdays playing football in the street. And you don’t hear them weekdays ‘cause they’re in school and you have a doddering old home teacher who nods off during your lessons. As my parents loved reading so much, and were so encouraging and supportive, I’d have been a artist—but perhaps not such an intense/uncompromising one? An idyllic childhood can be, strangely enough, as artist-making as some Dickensian one. I often think that my boyhood was so wonderful that I’ll never recover from it. You look around as an adult and go: “Really? This?” That sort of injury awakens in one the importance of Acceptance—in an almost Zen sense? I am convinced that that is crucial to the artist’s way of life. Kicking against the pricks is well important as well; but a kind of laissez-faire attitude towards one’s own work is a kinda sine qua non for longevity. And sanity. One cares too much about how one’s work’s received/perceived….that way lies madness. Aside from being a recovering Anglophile, I’m also a recovering control freak. Quite possibly fully recovered nowadays, seeing as that tendency to hold on, as it were, to one’s own reins and to those of others has had its way with me down the years and I’ve learned to let go. One can learn, surprisingly! And grow—platitudinous as that sounds! Haha.
You’ve described yourself as a “recovering Anglophile… something I’ll never recover from.” What does British culture give you that American culture doesn’t?
Oh God, where to I begin? I don’t think I know, consciously speaking, all that much about American culture. At least I didn’t till I spent the first year I spent hitchhiking round the UK and Ireland. By culture I mean books and records. I’ve just never really connected till the past few years with American bands save The Byrds and Hendrix and The Beach Boys. And in grad school a sort of anti-American snobbery was full on encouraged by one’s profs. I love Flannery O’Connor and Hemingway and all but nary a yank writer or songsmith (save Brian Wislon) compares, for me, to English poets, novelists, and bands. I can tell you that one of my favorite things about myself when I am “over” is that I am significantly quieter and more demure—sitting reading in a pub, culture-vulturing down the lane going to The Tate and Sir John Soane’s and all. There’s heaps to do here in Los Angeles—I just don’t do those things! Haha. Too busy writing, I reckon. American culture, so-called, can be so vulgar and brash—as we all know. The best American thing, for me, is baseball. I’m a tennis freak, and play five days a week, but baseball and my worship of The San Francisco Giants is the greatest thing ever. Especially as I live three blocks from Dodger Stadium and my kid Chandler is a Dodgers fan.
You’ve been making records in LA since the late 1980s. How has the city’s music scene changed, and have you changed with it?
Not having been a part of any scene at all, I can’t really say. There have been so few LA bands I’ve liked wholeheartedly. And I’m not a joiner. Whenever some LA booker has gone “Well, let’s find some bands you are friends with and…” I’d go: “Oh God!” When I was an English prof I never ever went to meetings. We started in Santa Barbara where I grew up so I’d wager that we’ve always thought of ourselves as a Santa Barbara band—SB where we weren’t part of any scene there, either. The only band we even knew and gigged with was Toad the Wet Sprocket and like many provincial groups they were complete twats and beyond full of themselves. The first gig I ever did was with Toad. A disaster. A shrink I was seeing at the time (we mainly talked about The Police and the novels of Henry James) was there and, oddly, afterwards, he said: “Those kids [meaning Toad] are going to be stars; but you, John, are going to be an artist.” Pretty cool. Pretty true. I still like Idaho—Jeff Martin is a wonderful writer. I like Medicine, though Brad Laner’s solo stuff is cooler (despite the fact that he’s way pretentious and insufferably conceited). We were pretty good friends with Downy Mildew and loved their stuff till they went all Adult Rock on us. X were incredible but that whole punky punk thing—like the Paisley Underground—was a bit before my time. I’m a post punk, mind you, anyway. Too folk-rock and Fabs-damaged to have even known about that entire and of course legendary scene with Black Flag and The Germs and all that ghastly stuff.
Your novels feature characters in fictional bands dealing with LA music scenes. How autobiographical are they, and did writing them help you process your own experiences?
As Nabokov is my fav novelist, playing games with and pranks upon the reader is my main motif. Of course there are quasi-autobiographical things and the main character in all three The King of Good Intentions novels is called John. But that’s a deceptive thing, a kind of Hitchcockian maguffin, I believe. More fool you, reader, if you think that that character is me. Who is anyone, anyway? Do we really exist? Hahaha. I write novels in order to amuse myself and to find out what will happen to my characters. I never plot out anything. Neither do I in life, either. Plots, I always aver, are for graveyards. Same thing with songs: I write to find out where I can go, what I am thinking, pushing myself (I hope!) to react to the songs I’ve written on the previous LP. Good old Vlad said that he wrote fiction “for the pleasure of it.” A true aesthete. In the best way, really.
You’re a self-described “recovering quitter.” You’ve quit teaching, smoking, marriage, fiction writing, tennis. But not music. What’s different about music?
It’s irresistible, I suppose. And my bandmates are my producers/engineers—thus it’s a continued blast. Scott Campbell, Rob Campanella, Misha Bullock, and, when he’s not being an absolute bear, Andy Creighton are a total joy to work with. And they have no little say in how things go down in the studio. Maybe I should do something about that! Kidding. I still have one novel—a thriller about a couple who are obsessed with My Bloody Valentine—that I am trying to find a publisher for. It’s been trying, quite frankly.
You work with Nick Saloman’s Blue Matter Records. How did that relationship develop, and what does it mean to release on a label run by a musical peer?
Nick is a god upon this earth—a very humble and self-deprecating one and one who’s deservedly proud of what he’s achieved. Moreover, he’s like me I shouldn’t wonder in that he’s restless and infinitely curious. He writes every day. I write every day. It’s a joy. (See how I avoided the dreaded “p” word—prolific?) We put out a single on Stu Pope’s label, Hypnotic Bridge, and as Stu loves The Bevis Frond he sent Nick our ‘Crying All the Time’ single. So I started sending Nick and Gary Urwin our stuff and they were going to do the Weird Rooms LP but I owed it to ATOM, our US label; so I made Varied Superstitions expressly for Blue Matter—on account of my love and respect for Nick as a writer, singer, and all around Gent and capital bloke. Love him. He’s the nonpareil of songwriting searchers. He’s swashbuckling, musically. I love that.
You’ve said every album feels like a failure, spurring you to make the next. Does Varied Superstitions feel any different?
Thanks a lot for bringing that up, Jason! Hahaha. I will merely say I like the bulk of it quite a bit; but yeah it inspired me to make the next one which is called The Fuzzy End of the Lollipop plus an 8-song thing we are mixing now.
With another album and EP already recorded, what’s the timeline for 2026 – further releases/live dates?
The LP coming after this one will be out in late summer, perhaps? We’re hoping to tour the UK but desperately need a new agent. Any ideas?
Further information
Varied Superstitions is released on 27 February 2026 on Blue Matter Records. There will be a limited edition of 300 on purple vinyl and 300 CDs, plus digital release.
