Speaker 1: Hi, This is Bobby Brown and welcome to another fucking podcast.
My livers all twisted up, and you know what I did.
Speaker 2: I loaded up with alcohol, more specifically vodka, whiskey, beer, tequila,
more beer, more vodka, more whisky, and more beer.
Speaker 3: Once an orange whipp ounch whip ounch whip, three orange whips.
Speaker 1: So you're fur I've come here to break your monotony.
Let me have my piece because I'm shooting with this one, folks,
I don't fare man the unsprinted, uncensored, loose tannon of
common tanner. Didn't you say that? Why you come out
with stink like that? Poop can poop out? O? See son,
Old legends never die, They just.
Speaker 3: Lose weight like a legend out of work from with
a lot of light day.
Speaker 2: I've got a midget friend and albino friend and another
friend who thinks Lord of the Rings is real.
Speaker 1: Together we call ourselves the Unforgotable. Which toon is it?
Let the fun begin, Helen, we have heard of Van Halen.
It is party time. It is time for another f podcast.
It's name of the show. I'm Mazie Presley. I'm the
host of the program. Welcome and uh just got done
with a great interview which you can hear in just
just a few minutes with Jason McMaster from Dangerous Toys
and so many other bands, and we dive deep into
his background, we dive deep into metal metal, and we
go all over the place and it's a lot of
fun and we find out. You find out if there's
going to beat Dangerous Toys records in twenty twenty six.
You gotta wait till the end to find that out,
but it's definitely worth it. And you know, we do
the interview. I hammer beers because that's what I do.
But I'm going to kick this off right now. Cheers.
Shot tequila? Why not? Shot tequila? Rip it up? God,
I fucking hate tequila. Tequila all tastes like tequila. It's
like vodka. Vodka tastes like whiskeys. You can, yeah, they
all taste different. Vodka tastes like vodka, Tequila tastes like tequila. Anyways, welcome.
I'm glad you're here. And if you're new here, welcome
to the program. If you've been listening for a while, yeah,
you're on the audio side. You're getting annoyed with the ads,
you're getting with the commercials. I get it, I understand.
But here's your chance to just jump onto the Patreon
Patreon dot com slash real Lizy Presley. It is Thursday.
It is Thursday at is three point thirty pt PM
as I'm recording this intro. Just got done recording with Jason,
phenomenal interview guy can Talk Talk Louder podcast and Dangerous
Toys and all. You know, Jason, dude's got history, knows
what it's all about. But if you're sick of the ads,
go to the Patreon Patreon dot com Slashelzy Presley. It's
only five dollars. About a lot of you spend five
dollars a day or more on your daily copy. This
is five dollars a month to get all this all
this great stuff and you get extra shows, all that
kind of stuff. So check it out Patreon dot com
slash Realizy President and like, if you if you sign up,
and then just go back to yesterday and you'll hear
a show where I'm talking about into the void, life,
death and heavy metal. Do we get into that a
little bit with Jason, but deeper Yesterday, well, at least
on the first few episodes. Zoom meetups, chance to be
on the UH listener, drunken something. It just goes on
and on. Check it out, enjoy it and have fun.
Jump on the Patreon. I also dive into spinal tap
on the last show. Dude, just check it out. Look,
I'm not gonna sit here and talk for twenty minutes
and make you wait for the Jason McMaster interview. I
mean I would because I could, but I won't because
I think you're swell. So let's do this. Here's a
little thing. You heard it on the last week with
Bruce Kulick, and there's a lot of thank you everybody
that enjoyed the Bruce Keek interview. Almost up to five
thousand views on the YouTube, and I appreciate that. And
that's what happens when you have good guests and good interviews.
I'm going to keep bringing those to you, probably next
week Fingers crossed. Brian Slagel got other stuff that I'm
trying to line up as well. So let's just do this.
Let's listen to the beautiful voice of the one and
only Mike Dawson and we'll be right back with Jason
McMaster from Dangerous Toys. A reading from the Gospel of
mister Big Chapter, lean into it verse to.
Speaker 3: Be with you.
Speaker 1: I'm the one who wants to be with you deep inside.
I hope you feel it.
Speaker 3: Too, waited on a line of greens and blues, just
to be the next to be with you. Praise be
to mister Big.
Speaker 1: All right, ladies and gentlemen, we are back and welcoming
to the show for the first time, and I think
it's a very long time coming. I can't believe we
have never done this before, My ginger brethren, the one
and only Jason McMaster Dangerous Toys. Good morning, sir, Good afternoon.
It's afternoon. That's right, it's afternoon. How the hell are you?
Speaker 3: I am fine? How are you?
Speaker 1: Dude? I'm great, but I gotta do one thing.
Speaker 3: Do it?
Speaker 1: Ra crack one for the working man?
Speaker 3: Okay, what do you do you?
Speaker 1: I should have got some lone Star just for this,
but I forgot.
Speaker 3: Well, can you get lone Star at the corner store
where you are?
Speaker 1: There is actually a liquor store that has it. Oh good,
but they don't have the light. They just have the regular,
and the regular is a little too bitey for me. Ye,
how the hell are you? How's Austin. What's going on.
Speaker 3: I'm good. I actually live outside of Austin. I bought
a house out in Lockhart, Texas about seven or eight
years ago, and I love it out here. I can
park wherever I want, I don't have to step over
homeless people, and parking doesn't cost you know, thirty bucks.
Speaker 1: Dude.
Speaker 3: That's always Austin is great until you live there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's kind of how I feel about Los Angeles.
I love La. I miss La. Yeah, and it's just
it's just so goddamn expensive and yeah, almost situation. Yeah,
the taxes and the traffic, it's just too much.
Speaker 3: That sounds like Austin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I was just there.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, you can you can say you can say
about Los Angeles what you can say about Austin. Now
it's like everyone found out how awesome it was. Yeah,
and now the the reason I'm some of the reasons
why people want to move to a cool place because
you're there, can't afford to live there anymore, so they
drive the cool out. So it's still cool, but the
things that made it cool are not really there anymore.
Speaker 1: Well, we're kind of going through that in Vegas here.
You know, with Vamped going down, which sucks because that
was the rock and roll hang and there's not a
rock and they're trying to create a couple more little places,
but Vamped it was like the all time rock and
roll hang. It's like they're they're doing some shows at
a couple places, but it's not their place, you know
what I mean. Yes, it's just you know, we don't
have the rainbow. We don't. We don't have Vamped anymore.
So it's like, God, it's tough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I get that. That's cool. It's it's real. You know,
things are things. All things must pass.
Speaker 1: Well, that's true, that is true, and hopefully things reverberate
or regenerate, I guess. But then again, we're all getting
older and that scene is kind of going away.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we we might miss the new cool because of
where we are, you.
Speaker 1: Know, absolutely. Jason. So you are a part of the
Talking Louder podcast and I just came across this. I
didn't I seen a couple of posts here and there.
When did you get into podcasting? What made you want
to get into podcasting? Because, as we know, I jokingly
named this another fucking podcast twelve years ago and now everybody.
He does have a podcast. What brought you to it?
Speaker 3: Covid? Yeah, yeah, there was no real reason. I mean,
you say twelve years ago, Jesus, twelve years ago. You know,
I don't think I had a cell phone twelve years ago.
If you would have said the word podcast, I would
have thought you were talking about spinal tap or seeing
Angel live in seventy seven, or invasion of the Body
snatchers or a cocoon, you know, fishing with larvae. I
don't know. I think that I think that I found
out about what a podcast actually was when Danko Jones
invited me to be on his podcast, which I've been
on three times. And you get a free patch when
you're on three times. Yeah, I got this cool Danko
Jones patch because anyway, and he invited the first, I
mean invite me, hen, I want you to be on
my podcast, my podcast, and sure, anything you want, Danko,
because I love Danko Jones and we have mutual respect and.
Speaker 1: Well, hold on, but dank did you know that he
does a Peter Cris tribute. Uh?
Speaker 3: I think it's just called Chris or the Chris is
or yeah.
Speaker 1: He just it's just him and tracks and he just
goes out and sticks on it, sits on a stool
and puts some makeup on and does it.
Speaker 3: That's hilarious. I've never seen any any video of that,
but I seem to have heard that, probably from him. Yeah,
but I've never seen any evidence. Uh, but that's not
He's a huge kiss fan, so that doesn't surprise me
one bit.
Speaker 1: I think both of us are. A lot of us are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah. I didn't really know
what podcasting was, and I do not listen to podcasts
regularly anyway. I have one, of course, I've you know,
gotten into them somewhat just to see how it's done correctly,
because I'm not saying that I do it correctly at all.
So I know all about that. Yeah. So so I
like your ARI twenty though. Those those are great mix man,
that's great. I've got an s M seven over here
that I usually use for this, but uh, that's a
long story, so we'll get into that equipment for podcasting. So, uh,
not really knowing what the hell it was really all
about until I was a guest on quite a few
of them. COVID hit and everyone was in lockdown and uh,
my guitar player songwriting partner Jared Tutan from Broken Teeth
Uh text messages me and my buddy Metal Dave and
he says, hey, you know when you guys get together
at a party or whatever and you guys start nerding
out on Motorhead or kiss or whatever, then Lizzy, you
guys just start talking about something and you either clear
the room or you bunch the room. Like everybody comes
in like flies, and you are the shit, right, and
everyone's landing on you because they're amazed at the nerd
out that's going on, right, And we were like, yeah, yeah,
I understand. You either clear the room or you draw
them in. And Jared said, that's a fucking podcast. Yeah,
that's that's how that works. All you need is a
couple of nerds and some good topic and people will
check it out because people like to play with their
phones and listen to really boring things on the radio.
So why wouldn't we have a podcast of just a
bunch of nerds talking bybe blah blah, Bye bye, he
Freely Bye bye bye bye, Paul Stanley, Bye bye bye.
You know that's a podcast. And I'm like, oh right, okay,
so we get a couple of them in the canon.
It's just me and Dave, you know, shooting the show.
We'll pick a topic. Hey man, what do we talk about? Okay?
Speaker 1: Cool?
Speaker 3: So we you know, we did like two or three
episodes of us just nerding out on something and then
went on for hours and my buddy Jared would adedit
them and they were great, and we were like, wow,
that was fun. Cool, Hey, what's for dinner? And Jared's like,
hold the phone, no, no, no, We're talking hundreds of these.
We're talking decades if we have a hit, you know,
decades of doing and we're like, oh my god, you
know it was it was something else to realize that.
So once we got over that and took our medication
in order to understand what he was asking of us,
the commitment. Here we are five years into it, the
Talk Louder podcast, and we've had our idols on there,
from Wolf Hoffman to Graham Bonnett to Ripper Owen's to dude,
it's crazy and you know, our friends, we have all
our friends on, and we have authors on, and we
have you know, really just really cool guests sometimes and
every once in a while we'll go back and do
the original idea, which was just Beavis and Butt heead
Wayne's World type, you know, rip off that metal show
and turn it into Wayne's World kind of thing. So,
which is great. That's all great programming, and especially if
you like rock and roll, because when rock and roll
people get together, cool shirt, dude, you know, it's like
some people just watch it. I think to see my shirt,
you know, which I am wearing. Which I am wearing
quite an awesome fucking shirt right now.
Speaker 1: I can't see the bottom of it. Is that Is
that a Metal Blade shirt?
Speaker 3: It's a Metal Blade record shirt.
Speaker 1: And ironically, when's the last time you've been to Vegas
because there's a Metal Blade museum museum.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I I've never been. I've had Brian Slego on
Paclouder podcast. I've worshiped probably a little too much. He's
one of my idols, Brian slegl Uh. You know, I
used to bug him a lot and now I don't
bug him anymore. But he's he's uh, he's really created.
I don't have to tell anybody. Everybody knows Brian, and
if if you and if you don't, you need to figure.
Speaker 1: Out, uh right, Brian's great and uh. Actually, ironically how
this ties into you. Last year he had me moving
his some stuff from his Phoenix apartment because the Coyotes
left to Dallas. And when I'm pulling into Texas, I'm
bright and early in the morning, I'm wearing my uh,
I'm wearing my Dangerous Toy shirt.
Speaker 3: Nice and I.
Speaker 1: Stop at a gas station to get like a breakfast burrito,
and there's this black kid, probably twenty three years old.
He's like, dude, dangerous Toys. I'm like, hold on, fuck,
you know, dangerous Toy. It's like, dude, everybody on the
job side, think, listen to this shit. I love it.
Speaker 3: Well, young rockers unite, I know, you know, and and
keep the old dudes alive. That's what that's what that's.
You know, old dude pull pulls in to get some gas.
Young dude goes, dude, your shirt rule you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Hey, that's how the vikings recognize it's a flag. I
get it, man, exactly.
Speaker 1: So you said the start this thing, this podcast started
during COVID, and a lot of podcasts starting during COVID,
and a lot of them in away. Yeah, and it
props to you for keeping it going because a lot
of people like, all right, I'm just doing this to
fill time, and all a sudden life starts again. It's like, yeah,
I don't have time for this shit anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, well again I get that, and I understand that.
You know, our numbers are not great. I feel like
we do it because we have fallen in love with it. Yeah,
and that's enough. That's just enough.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: I think that it keeps your chops up. I think
that it's important to talk about the things that you
care about, whether they're new or old. There's always a topic.
We're always meeting new people. We've got some great guests
coming up. Do you know who Dorothea Taylor is?
Speaker 1: She does she just by Dorothy? Is this this singer
gal that's out there now? Like big numbers? Okay, No,
she's the drummer.
Speaker 3: She's the old drummer, lady down with the sickness. She's
been on Jimmy Fallon. She's in the new new new
Spinal Tap movie show.
Speaker 1: Spinal Tap. Did you see the new Spinal Tap yet?
Speaker 3: Did you want to have it?
Speaker 1: You? Do you want to go see it?
Speaker 3: Yes? I do, Yes, I do.
Speaker 1: Well. I mean if you go to the theater, you
can pretty much have a private screening because it's not
selling tickets. But you get a private screening a spinal
tap dumb down here's and a lot of people are
like complaining about it. It's like, dude, it's not the
original fucking film, you know, come on, I have a
little common sense here, I say, if you're gonna see it,
have the mentality of your watching it behind the music
of a band reuniting that does not like each other,
and just it's the awkwardness that makes it phenomenal. I
loved it. I thought he was great.
Speaker 3: Well, I want to see it just because it has
all the legendary people on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, no, that's great too. I mean yeah, I
mean Paul McCartney, you know, yeah, John Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's phenomenal. So the thing that I love about doing
this talking to people like you who I know, who
I'm you know. I don't know if you know this,
but like even in the MySpace days, we were messaging.
Speaker 3: Oh far out uh yeah, I think, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Think you're broken Yeah, your broken teeth.
Speaker 3: Page I think I recall.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But because I like getting the stories, you know,
It's like I like having the conversation I don't have
questions like for this one, I got a couple of
things written down. A lot of times it's just boom,
let's just shoot the ship and see where it goes.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: What I mean is it that the cool part for
you too is like talking like to your friends and
learning about them that you don't need.
Speaker 3: That's right. I think that where you're going with this is,
you know, scripting everything is bullshit. It's not gonna work
for you because I've done I've guessed it on podcasts.
I've checked out podcasts that have fucking incredible numbers, like
annihilate my numbers. I've got, like, you know, a couple thousand.
I don't have shit. And there's a dude who has
you know, tens gazillion you know, trillion followers and subscribers,
and they're reading the question off of the paper and
they sound like this, and I'm like, really, dude, and
their mic sounds like shit and just the whole thing.
And I'm not I'm not being a dick. I'm just
I'm being a production manager. That's all I'm being. I'm
I'm listening, uh, to the topic, to the format, to
the delivery, which there's none there's no delivery and this,
and and sometimes the guest is like, wow, I'm wondering
if they fucking paid them to be there.
Speaker 1: Well, I think my problem with because, like I'm not
gonna lie. When I first started doing this, I had,
you know, I had history and radio, I had history
in print. But when I first started doing this, I
had questions and I had them written out. But you can,
like you said, you guys, first tell and but the
problem is a lot of these people that do this,
they have the questions written out, but they don't have
the ability to ask the follow up questions. And that's
where the good stuff comes out. And they just just
like boom, they're just reading their questions, all right, cool,
thank you see you later. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well that's where metal Dave comes in, isn't The
real name is David Glessner. His mother did not name
him metal well.
Speaker 1: Would be pretty badass of he's.
Speaker 3: The funny thing is about about Dave is he's more
into like Hanoi Rocks and the Ramones and Aerosmith than
he is you know, an ac DC anything with like
swagger and shit than he is fucking you know. But
he likes Voivod too. So I get it. I get it.
But he's more like you know, Ramones, Aerosmith and not
so much uh, you know Celtic Frost and Slayer. You know,
so Uh. He is a journalist. He's interviewed David Bowie
and David Lee Roth and Angus Young and Ozzy Osbourne
and is he wanted, Gene Simmons and Lemmy and you know,
you know he's he's a fucking journalist. Yea. Now he does.
It's a side hustle for him now because he works
for a corporate company and he probably writes reviews for
you know, sofa people who make sofas or something. I
don't know what it is, cars or something, who knows.
You know, he takes the writing gig that he that
he can get because he's a writer. But he's a
journalist and he knows how to talk to people, ask
questions and read the reviews and make assumptions and and
and lay it out for the consumer or whatever it
is he's doing, which is what a fucking journalist does.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Him being a hardcore rock and roll fan is important
to what it is you and I are doing here.
So he's the real journalist between the two so he
would be the Wayne and I the Garth. He would
be the butt head and I would be the Beavis.
You know, he would be he would be the Eddie Trunk,
and I would be probably Florentine.
Speaker 1: No reason for that, that's brutal. I don't know. I
don't know that he's the reason for that. But he
you know, he's a Ginger too. He's a yeah, you know,
as Ginger's. We get along, that's what we do.
Speaker 3: That's does he have the lowest voice you ever heard?
Speaker 1: Jesus, it's just down there. It's like, you know, he
just does you know, no reason.
Speaker 3: It's like lower than that though anyway, I know I
love those guys so much. Anyway, the point is you're
not wrong. When COVID hit everybody, I'll start a podcast,
you know. And we were part of the sheep that
followed us. So the great thing is is between me
and Jared, and between me and Jared, we had enough
gear to just set it all up and go. And
I was already in the process of learning being teaching
myself as well as learning from the company I worked
for the School of Rock how to teach musical lessons online. Yeah,
because we couldn't leave the house. We couldn't leave the house.
So I'm sorry, even in Texas, even in Texas. Wow,
So we had we had enough gear. Of course, the
gear has gotten a little bit better as we've gone through,
but I've I've had to buy minimal stuff. You know.
Speaker 1: First, if you have all the recording gear, you've got
the gear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, However you can use it if you have
a mixer that's got that takes a USB cable into
your into your uh, your router, You're done. Yeah, you're
you're kind of done. That's all you really need. But
you know, I need to hear it back a certain
way and la la la. So anyway, the and then
Jared does all the editing and it's never live, so
you know, we can edit, Uh, we can go long winded.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: We've had Todd Lttory on the show, you know, four
times or three times or something, and he'll go for
three hours. You know, he's got a lot to say.
I love that dude. I am such a huge fan
of that dude. And anyway, it's been great. The Talk
Ladder podcast dot com. You can see a list of
all of our guests and it's going strong and we've
got some fun stuff coming up. And yeah, that's just
one of the many, many, many things that have going on.
There's actually a link that came out today. I'll just
segue into this because it's super fresh. It just hit
the internet a few hours ago. I've been working and
we started this probably a few years ago with Jack Frost,
who plays guitar in Aldanova. Okay, but he was also
in Sabotage back in the day and he's played with everybody.
I think he just filled in with the Bullet Boys
like a few months back. Anyway, Jack Frost, he's been
around forever. Ace Guitar Player released a couple of records
Got a decade ago, fifteen twenty years ago. Alan Techio
did one or two. He's a Jersey singer. He replaced
me in Watchtower when I jumped to the Toys. It's
the band it's called Seven Witches. Stay with me. He
also did another seven Witches, maybe two seven Witches records
with my buddy James Rivera, who sings for hell Star
and they're a legendary Texas metal band too. So he
gets these Jersey meets Texas guys to be on this
seven Witches band project type thing. Well, he contacted me
and we've always wanted to work together. Started sending me songs.
We have an EP that came out digitally or is available.
You get a bundle of vinyl, a T shirt, a
CD of blah blah blah. But the project, he changed
the name of it. He wanted to tie it in,
but he wants it to be a band. And it's
called Night Terror. Okay, that's what it's called Night Night Terror,
and he decided to call it that after the fail.
Oh and the EP is called Return of the Witches.
So in with this seven Witches, but it's not seven
Witches because it's different people kind of and uh, it's
got members from you know, the drummer was in Diamond
Head for a minute.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there's all this there's this stuff. There's these
dudes that he has, you know, that he works with,
and he just anyway, night Terror. Check it out. It's
it's information is flowing on the web as we speak,
and it's fresh pickings. Yeah yeah, and it's fun. It's
power metal kind of stuff. It's it's very sabotage, it's
you know, it's it's metal. Yeah, you like it's groovy.
It's groovy met.
Speaker 1: Like a metal metal guy, like, do you dive into
like the death metal? Do you dive into the real
heavy shit?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I go way back when you know, I could
name two hundred metal bands and there wasn't. You can't.
You couldn't name two hundred and one metal bands because
there wasn't two hundred and one there was on I go,
I've been a metal head forever. So at the when
the dam broke, as I like to say, around eighty
one and eighty two, I started to get into a
lot of early underground metal. And this goes back to
you know, I mentioned Voivod before and Celtic Frost and
hell Hammer and anything that was sort of esoteric and underground.
This is pre Metallica and pre you know, this is
earlier type of things that I started to get Venom,
you know, motor had you know, you find Motorhead, you
find Motorhead added you know in nineteen eighty well, Asus
Spades was brand new in eighty so you start finding
out all about all this other new waver British heavy metal,
right and the dam breaks. After that you become a
giant Saxon fan from there, you're just my angel Witch
and just all of this stuff and Merciful Fate and
then American bands like Queens Reich and I was already
into bands like Riot and stuff like that. So you know,
if my friends know I'm into all of that stuff,
it just rains. And I was big on the tape
trading thing, underground tape trading anything I say, pre internet.
So you know, I remember hearing a Los Angeles Slayer
for the very first time and going wow, you know
what I mean, And just like the first time you
heard Kill Them All and Metallica, Wow, you know. And
I like to make the somewhat of a joke and
I'm not trashing anybody's record collection. But when you hear
that kind of stuff, first thing you say is, I
didn't know that you could do that with guitars and drums.
I didn't know that you could play guitars and drums
and sing like that. And then it also earns it
is this punk rock, you know what I mean. People
don't know, They just don't know, and then they start
to really wonder why do I like this kind of
a thing, And eventually it makes you want to throw
away your docking record.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know if I know that far.
Speaker 3: Well, that's what I'm in. That's why I prefaced it
with That's why I prefaced it with, like, hey, I
love butt rock. I'll take I love button Obviously I'm
a butt rock king. But the point that I'm making
is the dirgier, doomier and faster and when you get
to the ceiling, I want to break the ceiling and
go faster. It's impossible with the music that's out there now.
As far as Sabbath Worship goes, and the doom and
the sludge and the you know, you break out the
floor and let's go to hell and go as low
and as slow as we get, you can't do it.
It's been done already. So that's how metal I am is.
I have been called omnivorous to my metal like. I
like it all. I'll lead at all. I don't care.
I like it all. Yeah, I can find something good.
I love music. So in nineteen eighty two I joined
a band. It was my first singing gay ever. I
joined a band called Watchtower, the most weirdo progressive arguably
arguably created PROGM thrash metal. Arguably I'm throwing quotes saying
arguably pioneers, arguably pioneered progressive thrash metal. Now you can
ask You could ask Chuck Shuldener of death, but he's
no longer with us. Championed, championed, championed the band his
entire career. People that were in his band, like Gene Hoagland,
who plays drums in Dark Angel, who's been in opethan Testament,
sat in with Anthrax, and he's in that clock. He's
he's fucking Gene Hogland. If you don't know who Gene
Hogland is and you're missing out, especially if you're a drummer.
He's probably next to Chuck Shuldener, our biggest fan, been
championing Watchtower forever. So in eighty two, I joined this band,
cut my teeth as a singer in this prag thrash band,
and me liking ac DC and Silly Slow. You know,
I like tiny tim and you know Sesame Street songs
and country and thrash, and while like it, oh the
country too, Yeah, I love it. So so moving forward,
I start Moonlighting and the rest is history. I joined
the Toys and that would have been like Spring of
eighty eight. Record comes out in eighty nine and everybody
knows the toys history. So staying on Watchtower, we are
in the middle of sell brating a five show run
in September of twenty twenty five, celebrating our fortieth year
anniversary of our debut record, which came out in eighty five. Wow,
so forty years of Energetic Disassembly. The first record is
called Energetic Disassembly and it had Billy White on guitar,
founding member who ended up on Don docin Up from
the Ashes with Mickey Dion drums, John norm on second guitar.
Billy played most of the solos Peter Balti is from
except on bass boom. What a band. Speaking of Dowcin, Yeah,
so that would have been in eighty eight, eighty nine,
ninety as well, so me and him. He jumped ship
watch Hour in eighty six to do other things and
then got a call from California and went in an
auditioned for Dowkin and got the gig and played in
a killer band with half of his record collection, which
is awesome. For Billy. I was moonlighting and someone walked
into a bar and saw the toys and said, got
a bag of money if you want it. You know, yeah,
and I took it, and you know, I had a chance.
Here's here's something. And I mean no disrespect to Watchhower,
but I had a chance to write my own songs,
which was attractive to me too, right of course, because
Watchtower had its own thing and I didn't want to
mess with that when I joined Watchhower. These were these
We were in high school, you know, it's like eighty
one eighty two, that's high school.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I walk into the room and they need a singer,
and I'm their singer, and they play me their original
material and it's like Frank Zappa meets Rush in a blender.
You know. It's fucked up, you know, and I'm going, wait,
what where's the downbeat? You know, because it's just all
of the instruments falling down the stairs in time on
rapid fire, right right right? Love it? And uh, you know,
our biggest fans, Our biggest fans have always been Mike Portnoy,
Chuck Shuldener, uh and uh and Gene Hoagland and then
there's a you know, and anything that's related to those
guys just turns into branches, right right.
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you this because I want to
dive into this a little bit after this. But so
you said, the thing that was that really excited you about,
you know, the toys thing is you got to write
your own music. How did you develop as a songwriter
if you weren't writing the songs with with that?
Speaker 3: Well, I had, I had obviously dabbled, and I knew
how to structure a song of course, you know, but
as far as like I was terrible at writing lyrics,
I was. I could play guitar, okay, so I could
write riffs and and you know, find melodies. Yeah, zero
training in anything. And now I've been working for School
of Rock twenty years. How does that compute right anyway? Well,
I don't have a degree. I have ped degree, right,
So yeah, that's a great that's a great question. I
kind of just fell into it, you know, man. I
think that it's because I'm such a fan of just music. Yeah,
and and you know, knowing what should come next and
in the way that a song feels, in a way
that a song as much as it feels as much
as it sounds, and how long a rest should be,
you know, counting your measures, you know, what's long enough
to get that emotional value in a song where the
pin drops and then the explosion happened. You know that
that kind of shit is important to know other than
just like strummy, strummy strum. I've written a hundred songs, Well,
how many of them are good? Are any of them
going to make me cry or get mad or dance
or because if they're not calling some kind of like
pulling the audience heartstrings and emotional things, then you're not
doing anything right.
Speaker 1: You know. It's weird because I was working with this
eighties band and they were like an eighties cover band.
It was the singer, the male singer was from this
He was from a vocal band called I can't remember
their name, but they're from Fargo. But they did the
song McDonald's Girl, which was in the commercial Yaha YadA
YadA f McDonald's. And their female singer was Johnny Lang's
sister Jesse, who was top ten on American Idol. And
it was just it was all eighties pop stuff, you know,
So there was a lot of tracks to fill it
up because with that stuff you have to you can't
bring a full fucking band playing bars, but I'd bring
up songs. He goes, well, what's the crowd gonna do.
Are they gonna dance? They're not gonna dan, so that
what are they going to do? So that when you
just said what are they going to do? That's what
made me think of that.
Speaker 3: Well, the song. You know, in a cover band, the
song has to be right for your band. Do you
does your band sound good playing that song is? If not,
you need to get rid of it. If you have
to use too many tracks because you can't reproduce that
song with the band that you've got, you need to
get rid of it. The songs need to apply with
the band, with the band's agility, availability, what they look
and feel like when they're singing it, when they're playing it.
If it's not just about oh, we need to drop
that because the audience doesn't doesn't have anything to do
well first off, going to a rehearsal. I'm not telling
anybody what to do. I'm just saying if you have
a band and for some reason you're going, man, something's
just not right. You know what? You know that if
the song doesn't fit, you need to need to find
the kind of song that works for for your band
and for what it is that you're trying to do
That's that's important stuff right there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, ye.
Speaker 3: But but back to your question about you know, well,
you know you wanted to write your own songs, and
you know, dude, I didn't like any This might fuck
your mind a little bit. I didn't really like any
of the songs I was part of, you know, the
writing process until I was about thirty years old. Well,
that First Toys record came out, and you know I
was twenty two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so think.
Speaker 3: About that, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. I wasn't really
happy with what emotionally I was my output was, and
how it came back to me and how it felt
when I sang it or when I played it, or
when I wrote it or when I even fucking listened
to it. Now, yeah, I didn't really, I mean yeah,
I mean, the First Toys Are record is great, it's fun.
It's a classic now if I may say so myself,
I'm bias, of course, but it's a classic rock album
and sold the shit done and blah blah lah. But
the point, the point is the point as a writer.
You know, it took me a few more years to
actually go I'm proud, I'm this one. I could play
for your grandma you go check this out. See what
I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, are there song like talking about that First
Toys record? Are there songs that you're not proud of?
Speaker 3: Well, I think that there's songs on there that are
better than the song before it or the song after it,
if that makes any sense. My favorite song is probably
Bones in the Gutter, And I think that that the
band writing that you know, that funky rift and it's
Bones in the Gutter is totally different than anything else
on the record too, when you kind of really spin
your brain around it. Yeah, maybe the chorus you know,
sounds like quote dangerous Toys when you're broken. Oh, then
you know you can kind of feel the band right there.
But there's some crazy, funky aerosmith he kind of weird,
I don't know, something going on in the verses and
the bridges, And it's the lyric, it's the storytelling that
I'm proud of on that. It's not so much of
the same emotional value that I might be talking about
that it's a little more delicate. Yeah, there's no power
ballads really on that First Toys record. But I did
write the lyrics to Feels like a Hammer, which is
probably the closest thing to a power ballad on there,
but it's still kind of heavy. It's just dirgy, and
it has a breakdown and you know, and you know,
there's some emotional things. I mean, a young person going
through some things and writing it down and oh, okay,
well this will work for that that song, you know,
teasing Police, And I didn't write the lyrics for that. Outlaw,
did not write the lyrics for that ten Boots. I
did not write the lyrics for that. So I wrote
Scared Bones in the Gutter.
Speaker 1: At that dog, Uh sporting a woody?
Speaker 3: Uh, just sporting a woody, Take me drunk.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I was writing these silly, funny things that just became
easy for me to write. And I was around, you know,
the the band. The guys in the band, we were
fun to bounce things off of because they talked like that.
You know, each every band has its own language, and
so there was, you know, there was some silliness going on,
and so I felt like some of that crept its
way in.
Speaker 1: Uh oh oh no, oh no, we lost them. We're
gonna pause.
Speaker 3: So, you know, writing songs was new to me to
an extent, but it wasn't completely foreign because of the
experience that I had working with these incredible musicians in Watchhower,
which you know was literally like having Alan Holdsworth on guitar,
Geddy Lee on bass, and Neil Purt on drums.
Speaker 1: Right right, Well that's what it was like. Yeah, So
getting back to the metal thing, it's like sometimes when
I do this, I just kind of go off in
weird tangents. I jump all the fine. I like it.
You're talking about the metal metal stuff. And I texted
you earlier asking if you had had a chance to
see the End of the Void on the Hulu. If
you don't have Hulu, one of the rod you brought
up one of the bands. They have an episode on Death.
There's an episode on the band Death. And that's all
new to me. Enemy new to me. I mean the
Dimebag thing, the Randy Rose thing, the Judas Priest trial.
So so you knew about Death, you knew about did
you know about Enemy? Did you know about bands like that?
Speaker 3: I don't think I know Enemy, but but I know
Death because you know they were they were called something else.
There was there were fanzines. The tape t mentioned the
tape trading thing. The fanzine thing was really big. And
that's you know, I remember burning, you know, to two
cassette deck, burning all day long cassettes of my demos, Watchtower,
ship whatever, and putting them in regular envelopes and licking
and puttings and hoping that it wouldn't get smashed in
the machine at the post office. And the whole tape
training thing was big. The fansying thing was big. And
I had heard about Death and there they were called
something else before they were called Death. But there were
kids just like me. Yeah, so that was a big,
big deal. So you know, as we, you know, work
on our silly metal band here in Austin, Texas, and
Chuck's over there working on his silly metal band, and
you know, we don't have training. I don't know how
to really sing, you know, Okay, guitar player may have
had a couple lessons, you know, la la la. Everybody's
just figuring it out on their own. And these are people,
you know, like Chuck became a great heavy metal singer
as he figured it out album to album. Yeah, and
he was always looking for something new and different. He
loved Queens Reich, he loved Watchtower, he liked these bands
were always sort of pushing, you know, the envelope until
they found something that really worked for their band. I mean,
I feel like Queenswid really peaked and found this thing
that they were great at and they're still phenomenal at.
And they've even got this whole other leg now on
their Monster with the Todd Littoria out front. Of course,
of course, yes, amazing, and that rarely happens. So, you know,
Chuck was one of those guys. He's just one of me.
He's just one of us. So when he found out
about Watchtower and I found out about death, it was
it's fast friend, you know, wow, and there were knew him?
Speaker 1: Did you know him?
Speaker 3: It was yeah, really yeah, hold on here you go.
Speaker 1: Wow, dude.
Speaker 3: That was taken in h two thousand. That photos twenty
five years ago.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So six months before he six months before he before
he passed away, watch Hower was doing a reunion and
we were playing this festival in Germany called Bang Your Head,
and we did some warm up shows around here. Him
and his people flew to Texas and came to both
of our warm up shows, and that's when that was taken.
Due he passed away six months later. Yeah, to be clear,
to be clear, we were not close. We were not
you know close, but so much admiration and and he
you know, Gene Hoagland plays on two or three of
his albums. Geene Hoagland was in Death. So Gene Hogland
and Chuck, you know, two of the biggest Watchtower fans
in the fucking world in one band. It's kind of well, I.
Speaker 1: Tell you this is this is why it's so wildly
watching this series is I had no idea who Death was. Okay,
this was just behind them, is basically behind the music
stuff about.
Speaker 3: Can I interrupt for one moment please? On Amazon, there
is a full linked documentary film called I don't want
to get the title wrong, I'm probably gonna oh it's
called Death by Metal, okay, and it's a movie about Chuck.
It's a movie about the band Death And like two
or three of the interviews in the movie he's wearing
a Watchtower shirt. Two or three of the interviews in
it that made it into the film, they're like the
interviewers like, so what are you into? What do you? Oh? Man,
I like a lot of stuff, but I'm really into
this band Watchtower.
Speaker 1: It's wild.
Speaker 3: So it's okay that you're late. But this documentary called
Death by Metal has been on Amazon Prime for years and.
Speaker 1: It's so funny also watching these things, you know what
ties all of this together? Kiss Kiss, It's all fucking
kiss thisss.
Speaker 3: Is the gate all together? Kisses the Gateway band, for sure?
Speaker 1: It really is. You discovered kiss in the seventies, obviously,
and that's why you started playing bass.
Speaker 3: That's correct, you wont yeah, I still want to be Gene.
So the funny thing about that is is, well, it's
not funny, it's it's it's a pretty normal story. You know.
You know, you have a bunch of little forty five's
when you're a little kid and you're like five years
old or whatever, and you know, and I was five
years old in nineteen seventy, so you know, La la la,
babysitter lives across the street, starts playing Yellow Brick Road.
Speaker 1: Wow, what is that?
Speaker 3: That's all. I was totally drawn to Elton Man, just
the tone of his voice and whatever.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: My brothers were all into the Beatles and that's great,
but it didn't it wasn't really talking to me. Elton
did and uh and then I uh, I uh, you know,
was asking the babysitters like, hey, what you know, start
checking out the album and stuff. Man boom, I was hooked.
I started bagging birthdays and Christmases for full for you know,
twelve inch LP, you know. And I just had a
stack of Elton And I would stay in my room
all summer long and just listen to it all day,
come out to eat, go right back in a you know.
I practice riding to you know, popping a wheelie all
the way down the link to my street too, because
that's you were cool if you could do that. Yeah,
so I kept up, you know, appearances by doing that.
But man, I was in there listening to records. Well,
some neighborhood kids had older brothers as well. I had
older brothers. I have younger too, older their record collections
were phenomenal. My it was my younger brother that turned
me onto priest and ac DC. Figure that one out, Yeah, dude, And.
Speaker 1: That wasn't the older brothers. It was the younger brother's wild.
Speaker 3: Younger brothers sometimes can be cooler than the older brothers.
But I know, hey, there's no contest. So I'm down
the street at some neighborhood friends. You know, they're my age.
There are a man, my younger brother. There are our
age and they have older brothers, and there were in
their room. They have to share a room. Yeah, and
he puts on kiss Alive. And I'm like, what the
is that? I heard the crowd screen, you know, yeah, no,
I was like, what what does this? You know, I
was very young still, you know, I don't know eight, yeah,
you know whatever, it was seventy five, you know, I
was ten. There you go, I was ten because it
was it was it was alive, it was kiss Alive
and maybe it might have been early seventy six whatever,
And I was in sixth grade there you go, fifth fifth,
fifth grade, and he goes check it out and I'm
holding the album cover and the same thing that happened
when I heard Elton, the same fucking thing. You know,
your your heart races, you start to in a different color,
and you know, I got the rock and pneumonia and
the what's the song? Yeahog flew that's right? So so
I can't I stack a Kiss record?
Speaker 1: So right?
Speaker 3: And in the and in the interim, Alice Cooper tons
of Queen because Queen was like Kiss meets Elton. Queen
was like that Queen is a metal band. Queen is
a metal band. They're a pop band. They're orchestral. There,
they're punk rock, sometimes they're pop. They're everything, right, kind
of like Pink Floyd. You had said the same kind
of thing about Pink Floyd anyway, never totally got into
Pink Floyd, but mad respect. So all of that, right,
all of that stuff just is the reason. But Kiss
is the gateway. I noticed. Kiss is having all the
fun right right, Yeah, you Kisses sound all the fun.
Speaker 1: So you remember the first time you met anybody from
Kiss And what was that experience?
Speaker 3: Oh, I'll never forget because they couldn't give a shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I met. I met Gene and Paul at a T. J.
Martell Foundation fundraiser. Drummer Mark Gary Dangerous Toys was on
the team. He was on Alice Cooper's team playing softball
raise money. People bought tickets, la la, la, la la.
There was a bowling alley and our publicist took us
in to meet Gene and Paul and they just looked
straight over my head into the sky and while I'm
shaking their hand, Oh my god, you guys fucking changed
my world. They could. They were busy, they didn't care. Yeah,
I have a pretty funny Paul Stanley story, and he's
you know, I'm not hating, not throwing any shade. I
have never figured this mystery out. It's years later, nineties,
early nineties. I know the date I ever written down somewhere.
Kiss was no makeup years yep. And I don't think
it was Revenge era.
Speaker 1: It would have been the would have been the Revenge
tour if it was early nineties, unless it was ninety
it would have been hot in the shade.
Speaker 3: Might have been hot in the shade. Sounds more correct.
Speaker 1: Okay, so hold on, hold on, hold hold on, I
can tell you who is the opening band.
Speaker 3: Well, it's not it's it wasn't a they surely they
were on tour, but it was a festival, so there's
all kinds of ship you know. Lead of Ford and
Pat Travers could have been who knows, you know. And uh,
I don't have any you know, posters or all my
Kiss albums. I don't have any of that stuff with me, right.
Some friends of mine were on the on the Actually,
the producer of my podcast, Jared Tutan, was in a
band on Geffen called Pariah and they were they were
one of the they were one of the opening bands. Anyway.
So I'm there hanging with Pray. I think I got
up and sang a song with him or something. So,
you know, Kiss plays, it's after they play, it's still
daylight out and because it's this big outdoor thing, and
Paul Stanley's out just out in the back Commons area
by himself, just walking from like a trailer to somewhere
Kate who knows, and there's just a few people walking
around and I'm back there, probably coming from the porta potty. Yeah,
and I've got the stick on, you know, the paper
stick on pass you know, a thing on my shirt,
and uh, people are back there with posters and albums
and you know, they got a satchel and he's signing
all of it. He's just standing in the middle of
the Texas Sun signing all of this cool shit and
being cool as fuck to everybody. And I'm like, wow,
this is awesome. I'm at arms linked with one of
my people, and and uh, you know, this is after
my MTV hey Day and everything, right, So so I peel,
I peel the pass off, I stick it on my hands.
So there's a little mini desk for him to sharp
be on my pass and I hold it up like
this and he looks up at me and he looks
at he looks at that, and then he looks at
that and he has the pen in one hand and
the cap in the other and he goes click and
puts it together and turns around and walks away.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I have the same story. Yeah, the
convention tour that they did in ninety five Bloomington, Minnesota,
were there. They do the Q and A, they do
the do the acoustics show. Then they just said come up,
you know, we'll say hi, you can, We'll sign stuff,
you know, go up to Gen. Hey, you doing. It's
good to see you.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It does his thing and Bruce and Eric was super
nice that I get up to where Paul is and
this happened twice within two days. And there's just he's
signing for all these girls, you know, with the pout
mm hmm. I get up to Paul with my the
hat that I was wearing. Then I had the other
guy signed and he looks at me and just starts
walking away, and I turned into Sebastian. Dude. I've been
waiting for this my whole life. And he stops with
the pout, signs it and disappears. The next morning because
we stayed at the hotel that they had this at.
It was the Bloomington the Ratison South in Bloomington. And
I get up. I'm dressed like a complete fucking kiss tard.
I got my convention shirt on, I got my kiss
hat on. Going down to get a mountain dew elevator
was up. Jeans in the elevator, nice, and there's a
bunch of few people. It was like, come along. I'm like, okay,
Jeans Simmons and I said something to him and he
was super cool. And we get down to the lobby
and I go down and I'm sitting on a couch
with Gene Simmons having a conversation, and all of a sudden,
this gal comes up. He goes excuse me, like, oh,
this is fucking over. And I remember he said to her,
He's like, how are you. She's like, I'm good. How
are you? He goes, good, did you get laid last night?
She goes, yeah, did you? He goes of course, fucking Jeane, right,
So all of a sudden, Bruce and Eric come down,
and then I realized, oh, they're meeting to get on
the bus to get the fuck out of here, and
somebody had a silver sharpie. My kiss hat is down
like it's not a reach, but it's down here. It's
the one that had him all signed that morning, that morning,
And all of a sudden, Paul comes out of the
elevator and by this time the word had gotten out
that kisses downstairs. Elevator opens up. There's Paul. He's wearing
that fucking bomber jacket with the middle finger on the
back that I still want so fucking bad. His hair
is all fucked up, he's got his sunglasses on. He
walks on, He's like, sees people start signing, gets right
to me and starts walking away. And I did the
exact same thing. I turned back into Sebastian Bach. Don't
have been waiting for this my whole life. And he stopped.
He signed the hat, biggest signature on the hat disappeared.
Same fucking thing, same thing. We have the same story.
But let me ask you this. Who was playing drums?
Was it Eric Singer or Eric carr.
Speaker 3: Uh, I'm gonna say Eric Singer, Okay, so it would
have been hot.
Speaker 1: That would have been revenge. That would have been revenge.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I uh, it just seems like it was
earlier than that. But anyway, nonetheless, that's my Paul Stanley story.
So of course I remember to your question. Of course,
I remember how I felt when I met those guys,
and then you know, in ninety one, which was would
have been just prior to that, I was on tour
with with Uh. That's why it's I'm telling you it's
not revenge, because I was just on tour with Eric
Singer when we were supporting Alice.
Speaker 1: Cooper, gotcha, gotcha? Well that makes sense.
Speaker 3: On the shade then I guess, Yeah, I would have
been on the shade.
Speaker 1: Then I guess. Like I said, we're flopping all over.
But I don't want to keep you way too long.
How long did it take you to find your voice vocally?
Speaker 3: Well, I started singing. I moved to Austin from Corpus Christie,
Gulf of Mexico in like nineteen eighty and I only
I've been playing bass for a few years. I got
a bass when I was about twelve and self taught
and just playing with my records in my room. It
was these kids from you know, in the neighborhood that
were a few years older than me. They were probably
seventeen eighteen and I was fourteen, you know, ish and
by that time anyway, and been playing, you know, messing
with it for a couple of years. And they heard
that I played bass and they needed a bass player.
I was convenient, so, you know, they came over and
guitar player and singer came over and brought a little
lamp and they came up to my room. We played
some Jews, priest or whatever. A couple hours later, they're like, yeah, man,
this will work, this will work. So they really liked
having me around because at my mom's house we had
this room in the back where we could practice. So
I talked to my mom and say, hey, man, these
guys want me to be in their band. Can we
prec Oh sure, no problem. So that was great and
I did that for you know, it's seem like it
was just gonna last forever, your first real band, you know.
And I remember we played well, I just I guess
you could call it top forty. We played hold the Line,
but now now you know, and we played a ton
of priests and a ton of ac DC, and I
don't remember really doing any kiss. We may have done
like a Legs Diamond song. Who knows. It was fun,
it was great.
Speaker 1: We played.
Speaker 3: I think I remember playing one gig with him, and
it was at a backyard party high school. Oh no, hey, yeah, hi, Hi,
let's do this again. So I'm are you recording?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, I'm playing. I'm playing bass in this band
at this high school party with my first band. We're
called Rampage. We play everything we know. We're taking a break.
It's probably nine o'clock at night, ten o'clock at night,
and I'm like, I'm like fIF I'm young, fourteen or
fifteen or something, and I'm you know, it's in my neighborhood,
you know whatever, and we put I put down my
base and I start tugging on T shirts and my
bandmates going, we're gonna play anymore. We're gonna play again.
And it was kind of like, get away from me, kid,
you cramping my style because there's girls everywhere. Of course,
well I'm not. I don't know girls yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So.
Speaker 3: I think that that was my That was it. I
think that they were done with me because as I
was little too, like they you know, it got weird
for them, and I was innocent.
Speaker 1: And the words of the Great Chips enough you're scoring
all the trim.
Speaker 3: Maybe I didn't. I didn't know about that, and I
was I was fine with not knowing about that. I
wanted to fucking play rock and roll.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So you know, it's funny, you know how thirty years
later they mentioned the band still stayed together years later
a version of the band, same singer, I think, and
they mentioned on the website Jason McMaster Dangerous Toys used
to be in our band, but they leave out the
story about how they canned me cause I wasn't cool enough.
It's kind of funny.
Speaker 1: Actually, usually it's usually how it happens. Just three more
things I want to touch on, because, like I said,
I don't want to keep you wait.
Speaker 3: You were asking me about how I found.
Speaker 1: My voice, your singing voice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I moved to Austin a
few years later. I've formed a band with some dudes
I met who I'm still friends with. We were called
Fallen Angel and kind of the same thing. Bunch of priests,
a bunch of rush, bunch of cool stuff like early Crocus.
You know a bunch of cool fun stuff. We tried
out all our high school buddies who said they were singers,
and me and my buddy Mike the drummer, we're looking
at each other during like a rehearsal, going, are you
hearing this thought? They said they were a singer, and
we're not even singers, but we know we're better than
the singer that's in there auditioning. So me and him
just took up vocals. We didn't try to, you know,
learn anything. We just did our best. Well. Six months later,
we we're looking for a guitar player and I find
this card at a music store on the bulletin board
pre Internet. Of course, this would have been in nineteen
eighty one or eighty two, eighty one, early eighty two,
maybe eighty one, and uh, you know, seventeen or some shit, right,
And I thought, oh, watch hour, I think I've heard
about that. And it says heavy metal and available for parties.
And it had their mom's phone number. Remember when you
could put your mom's fucking phone number one?
Speaker 1: You still do?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I hate it?
Speaker 3: So yeah, of course, so anyway, uh, you can't do
that shit anymore. I called him and I said, look,
you know, I said, can I talk to Billy? And
they're like, hold on a second. And Billy gets on
the phone. He's like hello, and I'm like, you don't
know me. My name is Jason, but I'm kind of
only been in Austin for a little while, less than
a year, and I have this band and we've heard
of you, and I'm like, how is wait? Stop? So
I'm not trying to headhunt you as a guitar player.
I'm asked calling to ask, Hi've minded people? Do you
know any guitar players that want to play heavy metal
and hard rock with me and my drummer dude? Because
when we want to keep it going, you should come over. Okay, awesome.
I came over. I brought my bass. This is where
Watchtower ended up rehearsing the first few years of its infancy.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 3: And I walk in. I set my bass down. I'm
wearing a leather jacket, you know. But Billy answer answers
the door. Here's this sixteen year old kid with hair
down to his ass. I go in his room is
the converted garage. There's Iron Maiden in UFO and Randy
Rhads posters everywhere. Whatever would have been eighty one eighty
two by then, because Randy Rhodes, he was all about
Randy Rhoads. Yeah, And before I can really get my
bass out of my case, he turns on his vamp
and gets his guitar and starts playing eruption perfect note
for note Randy Rhodes solos and shit, and I'm going
hold on the set, put the bass back in the case,
lifted to put it aside, and I'm like, all right, cool,
So how about you know any numbers. I don't want
to take up your fucking time.
Speaker 1: I am not.
Speaker 3: I am potatoes and you are fucking delicious fried chicken.
Uh you know, I'm the side dish. And so we
end up we got along great man, and we ended
up introduced me to his bass player. We ended up
hanging around at it a week later. I was their
singer fast forward. That means I'm not playing bass, yeah,
because they have a bass player. Doug Keezer is the
bass player. He's like Getty Lee on Crack anyway, So uh,
and I'm the singer Getty Lee on Crack. Take two
of us to make one Getty on Crack. So yeah,
I went, oh, here you go. I got invited to
a rehearsal. That's what it was. Just a couple of
days after we met and hung out, and that's the
first time I met the drummer extraordinary, Rick Kola Luka,
who's an alien from another planet. No one plays like him,
No one would want to because it's like what wait,
what what It's like drums falling down the stairs in time.
Mike Portnoy goes, no one plays like him. Geene Hoagland goes,
no one plays like him. So anyway, I love you, Rick,
So anyway, I show up to the rehearsal. They had
a singer prior to me, someone named a ghost named
Travis Allen. I've never met the man. He didn't show
up to rehearsal that day. So I'm in Billy White's room,
the room I was hearing him just shred on, you know,
seventy two hours prior. And I'm there for like an
hour just going, oh my god, awesome, listen to him
play all this original, crazy, wicked, crazy metal music. That's
like I said, rush on dope. And there's a set
list next to my head on the wall, like I'm
leaning in the kind of in the doorway and there's
this you know, three foot set list of tons of shit.
I knew, you know, yah, Stack and Priest keep going
Van whatever, Van Halen, Ufo whatever, tons of rush, you know,
and they go, hey, it doesn't look like he's going
to show up. You want to sing a song with us?
And I'm like, I would love to. Yeah, So I
grabbed the mic and I The first song I ever
sang with Watchtower was Motorcycle Man by Saxon.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, No. I wouldn't even try to impress them.
I was just a massive Saxon fan and they were like,
you know, you know Sack, Well, it's on their list,
It's on their set list. Yeah, so that will always
go down in history. You know, I had only been
really singing, like fronting a rock of course, I was
a singing bass player. Yeah, but I had no ever
like just held the mic like what do I do?
Until that day and so, you know, a bunch of
gigs later, here I am still doing it, and I
owe it all to Watchtower finding my voice. You know,
I have old tapes from back then, eighty two, eighty three,
eighty four boombox recordings of us singing like you know,
here's one that came out last week. It's Black Sabbath
with their new singer Ronnie James Dio. This is called
Heaven in Hell. You know, it's that kind of shit,
you know what I mean? This record no one's heard yet.
This is called this is off a record called Too
Fast for Love. This is called Live Wire. I dare
you to tell me the name of the band. No
one could.
Speaker 1: Do you still have those? I do?
Speaker 3: I do? Oh wow, So I sound fucking awful, So
you know I'm still I had like this little kid
chest voice and then nothing in between, and then I
had this high pitch like Mickey Mouse. So I had
no bridge. You know, I had no like middle mid
range crooning voice. I had as high as I.
Speaker 1: Can go with my chest voice, and then nothing.
Speaker 3: And then, you know, so I could go, you know,
I could sing a Judas Priest with the screams, but
if it was too high in the middle somewhere, I
just had to fake it. Until one day I didn't
you know, I'd built the bridge and I found a
way to sing in the break and realize that a
lot of my favorite singers do use that. Janice Joplin
used the break. Uh, Stephen Tyler sings on the break.
Rob Harvard has you know, ten voices that he uses.
He's got one, he sings on, I just had to
figure it out on my own, you.
Speaker 1: Know, dude, it's wild. So we just saw davely Roth
here in Vegas. I'm sorry, well, hold on, it was fun.
It was fun. Yes, it was fun. It's what you
would expected.
Speaker 3: Davidie Roth supposed to be fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But because if it's not fun, why are we
doing it? So I was talking to hell Sparks, who
fronts of Van Halen tribute called Your.
Speaker 3: Love Love how Sparks don't know him personally, but he's great.
Speaker 1: Great dude. He's a great dude. And we were talking
about it after outside after the show, and he goes,
you know, what would actually help Dave is to do
it in standard tuning because you just bring him up
that half step and it would be easier for him.
And I'm like, oh, that's an interesting concept. And he's like,
I'm actually thinking about doing that with nerd Halen because
it would be easier for me to sing it. It's like, wow,
that's an interesting concept as a singer. What is your
thought on that?
Speaker 3: That means that that's a personal preference, because that means
that their the break and their voice is in a different,
entirely different place, and mine would be right. Not every
singer has the same range, right, here's your range, here's
my range, here's his range, here's her range. So wherever
the notes needed to sing this song or that song,
they might be in like this danger zone where your
weakest point in your range is and you're in danger
of ruining that part because you're not strong there. Right,
So Hal is suggesting that David Lee Roth's voice has
changed so it'd be easier for him to sing that
melody in a higher pitch than it was back in
the day.
Speaker 1: I find that very interesting. Yeah, yeah, I just wanted
to throw that by another singer, you know, sure.
Speaker 3: No, that's it's very interesting the fact that how would
would would feel strongly enough about that to bring it
up in a conversation as a trip, because usually it's
the other way around. If a singer can't if a
singer can't sing right there where they've worn a hole
in the rug, it's like dancing to one place your
whole life. Well, you've worn out that note in your
range and you can't hit it anymore, so you got
to move it over a little bit. Maybe he means that,
but usually it's a lower note and not a higher note.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. I just I just thought it was an
interesting concept being a Texas guy. Do you have any
good Pantera stories? I don't.
Speaker 3: Those guys. You know, we're more of like on the
glamy side when I was more of on the thrash
metal side. And then we sort of do some role
reversal a little bit, right when you don't think well,
like I said, we started this convo with me saying, look,
I'm omnivorous. I write Christmas music, I write country songs.
You know the point is that I'm making when when
you bring up Pantera is they were this cover band
that was like these young guys that threw it in
a van and went all around Texas all the way
up to Tennessee and turned around and did it again
all the way back. And Darryl, this guitar player kid,
was winning all these shred contests yep. And he never
had to buy any strings or picks or guitars or
amps because they the prizes were money and gear. So
who was legend about this band? Pantera? For all these
and also back then they didn't have Philip and Zelmo, right,
I mean until they did. But they didn't have Philip,
they had Terry Glaze. So when they lost Terry Glaze,
this would have been wet eighty six, seven eighty six
or seven eighty six or eighty seven, guessing. I don't
know the timeline. Mister Abbott, Darryl and Vinnie's father called
me to ask me to audition for Pantero, and I
said no, and I had good reasons. I was still
in Watchtower. That was maybe one of the reasons. Unfortunately,
with the departure of Billy White and the entry of
phenomenal virtuoso guitar player Ron jar Zombek, whose brother is
the drummer for George Strait, as well as Fate's Warning
who used to play with Sebastian who has played with everybody,
Bobby jar Zambac anyway, Ron jar Zombac had just They're
from San Antonio, their families down the road. I had
just gotten Ron to replace Billy. I don't know of
anybody else in Texas anyway that would have fit in
Watchtower because it's very esoteric. So I needed a Steve
I Frank Zappa type of a weirdo, and Ron was
perfect to when he was already friends of ours, He's
friends with Billy. Everything was lead Domino's were going to
Ron anyway. That was probably a reason. Hey man, I
just got this back, you know, on the rails. I'm
trying to you know, Da Da Da Da Da. And
it was shortly after that I started to moonlight with
these guys that ended up becoming a band called Dangerous Toys.
But yeah, but beside the fact, a week later after
I hung up with mister Abbot, Vince called me. Vinnie
Vinnie Paul Abbott called me, and he was pretty much like, hey, man,
are you sure you know sure?
Speaker 1: You know what this is.
Speaker 3: To be clear for internet cyber world, this is not
an offer to join the band. This is an offer
to audition. And I turned it down. And then you know,
I ended up in the Toys and they ended up
getting fill up and just explosions going on, which I
think is great. Obviously they got the right guy, and
I made a great decision, and obviously everything worked out
and we were all friends in the end, and Da
Da Da, which is really great. And the same thing
happened with skid Row. Snake called me twice. Yeah, it
would have been ninety ninety four right.
Speaker 1: After Ah, it would have been late they got rid of.
Well it was ninety four five, Yeabasha got fired. Yeah,
because yeah, you wanted to do the Kiss Reunion tour.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they So I'm sticking with I'm sticking with
ninety four.
Speaker 1: Well no, no, because that Kiss Reunion tour didn't happen
till ninety six.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, I had just recorded the Pissed album, which
was recorded in Los Angeles in March of nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 1: Well, hold on, so you got the call when Sebastia
was still in the.
Speaker 3: Band after Well, it's much, it's probably it's probably in
the middle of ninety four. I don't think our tour
it started, but somewhere in between, I'm saying ninety somewhere
between early ninety five and ninety four, let's call middle
mid to late ninety It doesn't matter. Well, it doesn't really.
Speaker 1: Match, no, Jason, it actually really does.
Speaker 3: As far as to me, because I'm not I'm not involved.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. I just want to because as far
as timeline goes, because being the Kiss TRD, that I am,
well that Hold on the Kiss tour was in ninety.
Speaker 3: Five's what's important to me and the answer to some
questionnaires here is the fact that that snake called me
to offer me an audition for skid Row and Funny.
Two weeks later, same as Pantera, he called me again,
are you sure? And I said, and I told him
the same thing. I go, Look, you know, we still
trying to keep the toys together. We just recorded a
new studio record. We're in between things. It's you know,
I want to sing my songs.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure.
Speaker 3: I wrote songs. I write song. I want to sing
my song. Yeah, you know. Was deep down part of
the reason why I have any Thank you very much.
I'm honored, but I can't do it because I've got
I want to sing these songs. Who's going to sing
Who's going to sing these songs? If I don't sing them,
I don't want someone else singing them. I want to
sing them. So there was a little bit of that
with the Watchtower thing. You know, I didn't write those lyrics.
I wrote all those melody lines and all those old
Watchtower songs on the first two records, even well ninety
percent of the second record. But the point is the point,
the bulk of it. That's that's my influence on Watchtower.
When I left the band, it's like, I want to
write lyrics. I want to write songs that d d
d da dah. This was part of a reason I
could go. And there's a bag of money. And you know,
when you're a kid, yeah, got shit in your early twenties,
you don't want to flip Burger's or go to college,
kind of gotta do what you gotta do. It was
all of these different little things that were building up
that could have been helping me make that decision. And
no regrets, right right, no regrets. So yeah, it's been
a wild, a wild, wild wild world. I'll always remember
you with just a smile.
Speaker 1: Girl, I love it. Dude, simple man, you gotta record,
simple Man.
Speaker 3: Who did you play with Leonard Skinner?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the cover?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the guy that produced the Pissed album from the
Dangerous Toys Pissed album from nineteen ninety four. His name
is Billy Sherwood. Do you know who that is?
Speaker 1: I know Billy Sherwood.
Speaker 3: Yes, Billy Sherwood was or is in the band in
the Prog band.
Speaker 1: Yes, and he's a this guy now, and I read
the grocery like a month ago.
Speaker 3: Tell him. I said, hello, I will. I love that
dude so much. That's him playing that on Simple Man.
That's him playing drums, guitar, bass, that's him playing it all.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So he called me, go, hey man, I'm doing some
side gig for Cleopatra or whatever label that was that
was doing that that stuff. And you know, I got
a few hundred bucks for you to just cut some
vocals and said, you know, I did a couple of them.
I did Tush, I did Simple Man. I think it
was for the same company and it was Billy Sherwood. Yeah.
He he produced the the third studio record, Dangerous Toys.
Speaker 1: Such a Small World Dude, Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3: And then he put me on the guest list when
I went and saw Yes and Austin. Years later, when
he was he either replaced Trevor Raven on guitar or
Chris Squire on bass because he's done both. Replace Yeah,
you replaced Trevor Raven on guitar and Yes, and then
years later he replaced Chris Quiet.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So let me just say, you gotta be the baddest
motherfucker at the grocery store. If you can say, yeah,
I've replaced two different members of Yes, that's just I
just knew I didn't not at the same time, not
at the same time.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's wild.
Speaker 3: So yeah, a lot of those I love those cover
songs for tribute albums. It's just you know, grocery money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, And I'm just leave you with this.
And we didn't even dive into Oh dude, there's so much. Well,
we're gonna we're gonna save this for a second, but
we're gonna. I'm gonna have you back, Okay, if you
would like to come back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1: According to Wikipedia in twenty twenty six, there are two
Dangerous Toys records coming. Is this true? And is this true?
Speaker 3: I don't believe it myself. I don't believe it. You
want it, yeah, So I'll start on the I'll start
on the current end of it. Dangerous Toys doesn't have
quite enough material yet. I'll throw nets. I'll throw nets
here and there to catch the believers who just want
to drink the kool aid. No matter what, we don't
have enough new material to call it a full album yet.
But we do have some new songs. As you know,
we've been playing a couple of great new Dangerous Toys
songs on the past few cruises and whenever we play out.
And those songs are Hangman Boogie and Whole Your Horses,
and they are strong and they sound like Dangerous fucking
Toys and we are proud of those. So we've raised
the bar on those writing those two tunes in our
age age group now, which I just call long in
the tooth, right, I love it?
Speaker 1: Uh so?
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe on the brand new material release. I fuck yes,
because I was fully on, fully invested and involved in
the producing and making an archival discovery of a Dangerous
Toys rejected demo recordings songs album. Oh yeah, rejected material.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we have an album, we have the album cover,
are done everything. I'm looking at late January pop possibly
as some sort of announcement of release date. Okay, ten
songs I can give some titles please, Rhapsody and barbed Wire,
Total Dangerous Toys, absolutely Shot to Hell This which was
written way before Zach Wilde had a Shot to Hell
with Black label. But you know it was rejected. It
never came out. Let's see what's another one? Oh, here's
one your sista, Yes, sista, I love it. That's a
song title.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: Uh burning Bridges. Uh no, it shows a softer side
to the band. Uh yeah, I don't. I don't have
any care. I don't have anything to go on that.
That must be an inside joke.
Speaker 1: Well, they had a song called Burning Bridges on their
first record.
Speaker 3: Didn't know that. I'm innocent, let's see. Uh anyway, ten
tense oh uh? Backstreet Girl, rock Shock Cowboy Uh uh
come out swinging.
Speaker 1: That's very dangerous toys.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, but it's not what you think. It's very
uh brotherly, it's very tribal. It's not necessarily about, you know,
related to sport and a.
Speaker 1: Witty Okay, and so I'm assuming that all these songs
are being or have been re recorded.
Speaker 3: No, no, these are demo. These are old. During the act, Jason,
what did you do during COVID? I digitized a ship
ton of old cassette four track and eight track maybe
recordings of old never recorded proffessally dangerous toys demos.
Speaker 1: Dude. That's great.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and you know what, it was really fun
putting this compilation of rejects together. The record is called
Demo Lition.
Speaker 1: Smart.
Speaker 3: I like it. You gotta call it something catchy it works,
or demolition demolition right, and it's a I'll tell you
it's the clown with a giant hammer smashing a giant
oversized cassette tape.
Speaker 1: It's fucking awesome, perfect, absolutely perfect, dude.
Speaker 3: Claudio Claudio Bergermann did the art, he did Judas Priest, Firepower.
Speaker 1: Nice. Nice, He's a king, brother. I appreciate this. I'm
gonna hit my ultro music just so I know I
have my cue, and I think you will appreciate the
ultra music if you ever hear it. It is the
live ending from nineteen eighty four is animlyzed live on
censer of Black Diving, Jason McMaster, Dangerous Toys and every dude.
We didn't even touch on the on the bands that
you fucking jumped in on.
Speaker 3: I told you about it. I told you about a
new one. Yes you did Night Night Terror, Night Terror, Yes,
go get it.
Speaker 1: Can't to accept you didn't jump into right, we didn't
jump into any of that.
Speaker 3: Deep into the arts, Armored Saint and except I was
a band aid'.
Speaker 1: You're liking the bull deck and we'll dive into that.
So when when this demolition is ready to come out
or when you announce it, we'll have you back on okay,
and then well then we'll dive deep into the toys,
we'll dive into this other stuff. Jason. If people want
to find you, where can they find you? And where
can they fight? All your stuff?
Speaker 3: Well, it's not all updated at Jason McMaster dot net.
But I'm easy to find. You can google me, you
can go to your socials. I'm pretty much all over
the place. Uh. I'm not very good at social media.
I pride myself in that. But you know, my stuff
is out there. There's a shit ton of it listed
on my website. Probably a good place to start, Jason
McMaster dot net. I am fronting the forty three year
old version of San Antonio Slayer. Their singer passed away
in six There used to be two bands called Slayer,
so san Antonio Slayer, Uh, they're my some of my
oldest friends, Watchtower and and Slayer. San Antonio Slayer used
to play shows together all the time before the other
Slayer was like, hey dude, we're called Slayer too. Okay,
y'all can have it. And then San Antonio Slayer, the
bass players in Riot, the drummers in Sacred Reich. He
was in Machine Head for twenty three years, so obviously
everybody got real bit. Ronjar Zombek, who plays in Watchtower
since eighty seven, is from SA Slayer. See what I
mean By the way. Ronjar Zombik was Marty Friedman's touring
guitar player, second guitar. That'll tell you how good Ron jars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: So everybody just check it out out Saslayer dot com,
Watchtower band dot com, Jason McMaster dot net. That's plenty.
Speaker 1: And uh, don't forget about Talk Louder Talklouder podcast dot com,
Broken Teeth dot com.
Speaker 3: See we have hours, we use things to talk about.
Speaker 1: It has been an honor, it really has. I'm proud
to call you a friend and I'm proud of job.
Finally welcome you to another fucking podcast. Uh you guys
know the drill hit up ball his socials, hit up
my socials, Real, Izzie Presley, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook show page,
another refor podcast, and of course, most importantly, the fucking
Patreon real is he Presley on page part It's only
five dollars a month it's less than your cup of coffee,
and you can get every fucking day. And then, uh,
you guys will be on the Monster's of Rock Cruise
next year.
Speaker 3: That is correct.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna now that I know you're a bass player,
I'm gonna tap you because I do that cruiser jam.
We have artists and cruisers playing together. I think we're
gonna get you up to play some bass. I think
we're gonna have to be a glorious idea. We'll talk
about that, Ladies and gentlemen. Is Presley dot com. Everything
is right there, and don't forget the show's another referent podcast.
My name is Izzy Presley. When I lack in talent,
I make up for the cock.
Speaker 3: Is that true?
Speaker 1: Not really