JASON MCMASTER Talks The 'Cult' That Is WATCHTOWER: 'You Either Get It Or You Don't'

By David E. Gehlke

The history of WATCHTOWER is every bit as complicated as the music they play. Formed in Austin, Texas, in 1982, the band has produced only two studio albums and an EP, the latter of which came eight years ago by way of "Concepts Of Math: Book One". Yet, it always goes back to their 1985 "Energetic Disassembly" debut and 1989 "Control And Resistance" follow-up. About as good as technical thrash can get, both albums — through eccentric riffing, jarring time signatures and the crazed, helium-lung vocals of Jason McMaster and then Alan Tecchio — have long entered the stratosphere as underground metal classics.

Yet, WATCHTOWER has never found the reason to release a third album, and it's possible they may never will. The band's internal dynamics and the impossibly high bar set by "Energetic" and "Control" are both valid reasons, which has led WATCHTOWER to play the occasional reunion set with either McMaster or Tecchio out front. McMaster (also of DANGEROUS TOYS) has recently held down the lead singer fort and is working on the 40th-anniversary reissue of "Energetic". Before that, the frontman has managed to rescue more than a few tours for other veteran metal acts, a good place to start when BLABBERMOUTH.NET got him on the horn.

Blabbermouth: You have become one of the main fill-in vocalists lately with ACCEPT, ARMORED SAINT and soon S.A. SLAYER. How did you end up in this position?

Jason: "People get sick or die. I don't like either one, but when you think about it, almost every band ever has had to replace their singer. It could have been before they were a known band or before they played their first gig. Usually, the singer is always being replaced. Not that it is a full-on topic, but it is, actually. We've covered that on my podcast. It started with ACCEPT and Mark Tornillo basically couldn't breathe. It turned out to be the RSV crap. He was on a quick recovery. The ARMORED SAINT thing came up six weeks later, which is really weird between Mark and John Bush. They were both hit on the eastern seaboard and coming down with some kind of upper-respiratory thing, or they were drying out. Those guys are both monsters. They both sing really loud and powerful. Something weird was happening. I'm not a doctor or scientist. I was trying to put it all together on why it was happening at the same time of year, which was in the fall. It could have stemmed from allergies…I don't know. It happened again with ARMORED SAINT. I've done it twice with them. Lightning striking in the same place twice? How about three times?"

Blabbermouth: Are you always just prepared? Do you know the songs?

Jason: "No. I don't know the songs. [Laughs] Wolf Hoffmann [ACCEPT] calls: 'Can you be on a plane tomorrow?' 'Sure.' That means no rehearsal. You show up at soundcheck and you're onstage with guys you don't know. Dude, just think about it. I had some heart-to-heart with the ACCEPT guys saying, 'What if?' 'What about?' How come?' I'm just being a bit of a ninny about it. It's like anything: 'What if you called me to replace Scott [Dalhover, guitar] in DANGEROUS TOYS? What if the gig is tomorrow?' 'Here you go and learn 'Teas'n Pleas'n' and the first two records.' 'Overnight?' 'Yeah, overnight.' It would be the same kind of thing."

Blabbermouth: Yet you sort it out. You make it happen somehow.

Jason: "Sometimes you see the teleprompter, the confidence monitor—I wouldn't have been able to do it without some kind of notes and cues and prep and things like that. But it's like, 'Okay. Go. Tomorrow. Now!' The prep is staying up all night until I have to leave for the airport, hitting the button on the printer. You get good fast when you do that kind of shit."

Blabbermouth: You're still hitting the notes, as evidenced by the recent WATCHTOWER gigs. Do you have any secrets?

Jason: "I'll be 60 in March. Use it or lose it. Don't smoke. Don't drink. Drink a lot of water. Get a lot of rest. Warming up, sure, that's great. But some of the greatest singers in the world don't do that."

Blabbermouth: Ronnie James Dio didn't warm up.

Jason: "Yeah, he's not the only one. There's a bunch of people who get up there. Dio used to say, 'If you need to warm up, you don't have anything to warm up in the first place.' It sounded derogatory when I read it. It's interesting, his take on it. I think it's like, 'You get up there and relax and have a good time and get to know the audience by telepathy and through your songs.' In the first three or four songs, you just find your shoes and walk around."

Blabbermouth: Let's be clear, though: Your WATCHTOWER songs aren't a walk in the park.

Jason: "Yeah and I kept that vernacular. In DANGEROUS TOYS, too, when that all happened. We still play. It's the same: Standard tuning. The trick is to relax, have a good time and not stress out. If you're having a bad day, that's going to be your nemesis. I know that sounds weak, but it's a thing. You have to think positively: 'Oh, I have to wash the car.' 'Why don't you try to make washing the car fun?' You see what I mean? It's kind of kung-fu. Just because you're doing kung-fu doesn't mean you have to break the boards."

Blabbermouth: You have been in and out of WATCHTOWER. Do you feel like there's some unfinished business?

Jason: "I wouldn't say the fans are pawing at this very small club called WATCHTOWER to produce and produce and produce and tour and produce and tour and produce and tour and produce. I really think that it's a rabid fan club kind of thing with a cult following, literally the sense of a cult following. You either get it, or you don't. I think that the fact I was friends with Alan in the whole tape trading and pen pal thing, which I was enamored with. It was a romantic moment in my rock and roll life. The pen palling and the pen to paper, licking paper, tape trading, fanzines—that whole network and how some of the people I networked with have become massive rock stars, or they don't. But they're still playing music 50 years later, which is awesome. That's the kind of club Alan and I are from. It's great that we're close and we're friends. The first time that I called him to say that he should come to do this would have been back in 1988. He declined. He did a HADES tour in Europe and came back a couple of months later and goes, 'Hey, you got Doug's [Keyser, bass] number?' It was like that. He had to think about it. Some sour things happened between A and Z, and when he got home, he said, 'I'm going to fly to Germany and do that record.' I went, 'Fuck yes!' I was so happy. They did well with that. Regarding the 'Control' record and my input on that, Alan continued the legacy with all of the writing I did on that record, for which I'm uncredited. I'm not angry about it; it's not a topic. Those melodies are mine. Alan knows that; the band knows that. Anyway, the fact that it blew up and still makes all these top-20 lists of 'Most Killer Prog Records' is a fantastic achievement in this small club WATCHTOWER that is a fucking unicorn."

Blabbermouth: Absolutely. Both records are classics and every time you do a show, it's an event. Is that why you do it?

Jason: "It becomes the most important thing that I will do that week. I don't let it consume me. Face it: It's another rock and roll gig. But the excitement doesn't happen until the opening band starts or the doors open. It's a reunion. People fly in from all over the place to see it because it's a unicorn and they're never going to see it again. The fact that we're all still alive is great. And we're healthy. Once we go, you'll see the footage. We're all in our 60s and we're running around like little kids. We're a little sloppy live. [Laughs] No one notices that except us unless you record it and listen back. We don't care because we like the opportunity to be daredevils and celebrate those songs. They're fucking old, those songs. 'Concepts Of Math: Book One', I can't tell how well that's been received or not. The guys are not unhappy it's out, but they're second-guessing it, and I wish they wouldn't. It's always been a thing for at least Ron [Jarzombek, guitar] and Doug. There's this very weird relationship that they have: 'Should we or shouldn't do anything?' I'm the cheerleader in this whole thing, even when I wasn't working as an employee of the band. That sounds bad. Even when I wasn't playing with the band, in my second or third or fourth time, it wasn't a problem for me to go, 'Okay, done.' 'What else?' 'Okay, done.' Getting those guys to move forward on something is like pulling teeth."

Blabbermouth: Is it a case where Ron wants to do stuff and Doug doesn't?

Jason: "It could be that. It's kind of the way it's always been. I'm not talking any smack about bandmates. Everyone knows and it's no secret that it takes a long time. There's a reason for that. As an example, they would have a conversation, and I would start demoing songs that ended up on 'Concepts Of Math: Book One'. I had demos of me singing some of those tunes. Then, in the middle of that, I'd get a phone call saying, 'Yeah, no, we're going to call Alan. We like the idea of having Alan.' And my reaction is, 'That's fine. Awesome.' Then Alan and I have a phone call and laugh about it without missing a beat. He'll call me, and I'll call him, and we'll finally get on the phone, and we're already laughing before we say a word because of what I just mentioned: The way decisions are made or not made in the WATCHTOWER camp. It seems like the older we've all gotten, the more we realize we're very excited and happy to celebrate, be alive, and do anything together under the banner of WATCHTOWER. I just love it. I have so much love and respect for those guys. There should be no secret that I cut my teeth as a singer in that band. I was only a singer for about six months before I joined WATCHTOWER in May '82."

Blabbermouth: You have talked about the forthcoming reissue of "Energetic Disassembly" in previous interviews. Can you share its progress?

Jason: "I have the master two-inch reels. The guy who remixed it, Jared Tuten, and I went into a studio that's not there anymore in downtown Austin called Top Hat Recording. They moved that studio to Knoxville, Tennessee. We baked those tapes. We put them on the machine and digitized them all. We got to sit there for hours and just mute all the tracks and then go one by one and go, 'Here's the kick drum. Wow.' 'Here's the snare. Wow.' 'Here's [original guitarist] Billy White's guitar without all that fucking reverb. Wow.' 'Here's Billy White's guitar.' 'Oh shit. He recorded that track with the flanger turned on ten.'

"Two years ago, whatever it was now, I got a call from Christian Larson of Hell's Heroes, which is a festival out of Houston. He said, 'What will it take for you guys to do the 'Energetic' record from top to bottom?' I go, 'Holy shit.' The most ironic, crazy thing, is that I hadn't talked to Ric [Colaluca, drums] in 10, 15 years. I was having lunch with him the next day as a sort of get together as a send-off for a friend of ours we call 'Swiss Chris', from Zurich, Switzerland, who had been living in Hollywood and had been living in Texas and was the roommate of Ric and Doug right around the time Ron joined the band. A long time ago. He was coming through Texas. He was staying at Bobby Jarzombek's house. They all came up to Lockhart, where I live, which is an hour away. We had a barbecue. The night before, I'm talking to Christian Larson. I say, 'Dude. Wow. This is weird. I'm having lunch with Ric tomorrow! I'll ask him about it.' I did, and Ric said he would call Ron and Doug, and he did. Boom. The next thing, we were on it. Then, they started promoting it. I think it might have been three days after they announced the lineup for Hell's Heroes, Oliver Weinsheimer, Keep It True, I got an email: 'Uh-oh. Got to have you.' We did that in October and Hell's Heroes was in March. We did Keep It True before Hell's Heroes. We had warm-up shows before and in between. And then got booked a couple more times. We have one coming up in January, and that may or may not be the slowdown."

Blabbermouth: Then, will that give you time to work on the reissue?

Jason: "Well, it's mixed. It's mastered. There were some things on the tapes that I had forgotten and the band had forgotten were on there. There is a two-minute Billy White classical guitar solo. There is a two-minute drum solo, which I suspect was so the engineer could get tones. We're going back to 1985. This is all recorded in '85. And, 'Argonne Forest', Billy and Doug had an extended intro there that adds another minute to it, which is really cool and very reminiscent of a song that's on 'Concepts Of Math: Book One'. On the same reels, the masters for 'The Eldritch' and 'Instruments Of Random Murder' with Ron on guitar. Those were also recorded at Cedar Creek Studios along with the bulk of 'Energetic'. They were recorded on the same tapes. All of these little easter eggs were on all these. I go, 'Holy Christ!' I was talking to Doug and he goes, 'Next year is our 40th anniversary.' I'm like, 'I'm going to start working on this shit now. I'm going to take this hard drive over to Jared, who is my songwriting partner in BROKEN TEETH. He runs monitors for fucking Smokey Robinson. He's a bad motherfucker. He used to take lessons from Ron when he was a kid. He's in the family — all of these great things. Ron's picture will be on the reissue because he's on two songs. So everything else will be the original—I don't know how they will do the layout. Will Ron's photo be next to all of ours, as if it were on the original cover? Probably not. It will probably be on the inner sleeve with all the liners and such. The idea is to do something different with the art yet keep it the same. It sounds amazing. I'm a little biased. [Laughs] I love the stuff. Stuff you record when you're 19 or 20 years old can freak a man out, but Jared, he just mixed what was there, and there might have been very little stuff of, 'Hey, Jared, turn that note higher just a little and turn that lower one up.' Or, 'What does that sound like without the double?' Little things like that. I just want it to sound really solid as opposed to swimming in reverb without losing what fans from way back fell in love with."