By Ryan Sparks
 

When Broken Teeth front man Jason McMaster discusses the varied musical roads he has traversed over the course of his career, the word lineage is dropped on more than one occasion. In McMaster’s vernacular the word, which is defined as relating to one’s ancestry or direct relations, takes on a somewhat slightly different meaning. Whether Jason is reflecting back on his earliest musical epiphanies, courtesy of both his younger and older brothers’ record collection, or talking about a career which has spanned over two decades, and allowed him to connect personally with some of the most influential musicians in the rock world, it’s clear that music drives his very soul.

It’s going on ten years now that McMaster has been front and center in what surely has to be one of the most lethal and certainly underrated rock ‘n roll bands in America. While the musical conglomerates seek out new trends and ways to market their sugar coated flavours of the week to the masses in today’s digitized world, Broken Teeth remain unabashedly old school in their overall mission to keep good old fashioned below the belt rock ‘n roll alive and well. This isn’t to say that McMaster has turned his back or ignored the changing of the times in the music business; because in fact nothing could be further from the truth. That being said, interviewing Jason is like shooting the shit about all things music, with an older brother or best friend over some beers at the local watering hole.  His knowledge runs deep and he always comes off as a fan of music first and foremost. Considering his lengthy track record in the business (Watchtower, Dangerous Toys) and the high profile musicians who have either worked with him or just mentioned his name, it’s sometimes hard to fathom why he isn’t globally recognized.

Broken Teeth’s latest offering Electric features some of the most unadulterated and uncompromising examples of what primal, kick ass rock n’ roll should sound like. It burns with an immediate intensity that is in your face at all times. Jason (or Pastor McMaster) has been known to deliver a sermon or two from the stage, pontificating about the powers of the Teeth’s dangerous brand of rock n’ roll that your parents love to hate. In a perfect world McMaster and his band would be massive and have the weight of a massive record company behind them, nonetheless he soldiers on keeping the torch burning for people that still appreciate real music. Just don’t ask him to be passing that torch on just yet though as there is still quite a bit of fire left in the belly of the beast. 
 

Ryan: Your new disc Electric has got twelve songs on it, six are new songs so to speak, although they’ve been in your live set for awhile now.

Jason: There are six songs which we’ve redone that were previously released on earlier studio recordings. For people who have been fans of the band for many years, there’s sort of a greatest hits vibe on Electric. The title track, “Roll Over” and four other songs, which we call new, even though they’ve been in the set for a while, have never been recorded. “Bonfire” is the only exception because there was a live version on our live record Blood on The Radio. The reason we did the record this way was because we changed guitar players and we kind of wanted to give everyone a glimpse into what we’d done with Paul Lidel, as well as introduce the new guitar player. The songs are a bit more energetic and there’s a better production value to it. I think the attack of the band is little fiercer especially with the newer versions of the older songs. Paul was more of a bluesy, behind the beat Jimmy Page kind of guitar player, whereas Jared Tutten and David Beeson aren’t necessarily that way, and that’s not a bad thing, that’s a good thing. With this line up our fangs are a little bit more gnashing now. Our claws are out and  it feels good. I like a little bit more aggression and it’s alsoa little tighter.

Ryan: You can hear the changes in songs like “Hangin by The Skin Of Your Teeth” and “Devil Money”, the tempos are faster. A song like “Devil Money” is a real fast song to begin with, but with your immediate vocal delivery on that track you shaved a few seconds off it as well.

Jason: Yeah I think that’s what I was hoping to achieve on the original versions of those songs. Some of those up tempo songs like “She’s Gonna Blow”, “Devil Money”, “El Diablo”, are pretty much going for broke live anyway. To go into the studio and feel like I’m toning it down, that’s the wrong direction. I don’t want to go into the studio and tone down something that should be going the other way.

Ryan: For a musician that lives for the stage as much as you do it must be quite a challenge to harness that live energy when it comes to recording in the studio. 

Jason:  It’s so important to us. There is more energy on our live record Blood On The Radio than there is on any of our previous studio releases. However with Paul offering his slot in the band to David Beeson, which is basically what happened, there was no bad blood between us just so people know, it was like a turning point in attitude for the band. I thought that the energy had finally been harnessed, and that we needed to capture this in the studio, so that was another reason to make Electric.

Ryan: I guess the reasons for doing this are really two fold aren’t they? Not only are you harnessing that live energy and injecting that into these recordings, but you’re also giving this new line up a chance to put their own stamp on these songs as well.

Jason: Yeah. The way the band needs to be heard is Electric and not necessarily - I’m not saying that I hate Broken Teeth’s early recordings [laughing]. I’m just saying that Electric is a step forward in the way that we want to be heard as a band, with all respect to Paul and what he and I created when we wrote all those early songs.

Ryan: When it came to choosing which of the earlier songs would be re-recorded, how did you decide?

Jason: It came pretty much from just looking at the live set list. There were songs that obviously had different attitudes behind them for whatever reason, and I think those just kind of bubbled to the surface. It was a fairly easy job. There might have been one or two that slipped by that would have been cool. As a matter of fact I think we had picked eleven and then we decided that we might as well do “Hanging By The Skin”. As of late we’ve also been in the studio recording a brand new record, and for years we’ve been playing stuff like “Crash Landing Affair” and “Chain Gang”, which have been in our live set forever, but those songs are gone now. We’ve added brand new songs into the live set that no one has heard, so those songs have been born, for lack of a better word, in the same way that “Roll Over” and “Hell For Sale” were.

Ryan: The last time we spoke you mentioned the title of another song that you were playing live, “Bullets and Booze”, what happened to that one?

Jason: That’s “Hell For Sale”. “Bullets and Booze” was a title that we thought wasn’t very strong; it had kind of a cheesy ring to it. It was also a title that I had taken from a list of lyrical ideas that Paul Lidel had submitted to me. When he left the band and we were rethinking Electric, I was tightening up a few things, and “Bullets and Booze” felt like a glam rock title or something.  I thought “Hell For Sale” was more appropriate to the monster that we were trying to create. The time that we spoke we had been doing demos off and on that year building those songs. We were building the attitude of what was to be a batch of new songs, and it was going good. It’s still turning but I’m glad that these new songs are finally out.

Ryan: You described the material at the time as being angry and super serious and I think you definitely achieved that.

Jason: I think the direction is turning into what the name of the band implies, what we do live, and I think we’ve finally achieved that.
 

Ryan: You did some live shows across the States this spring but also had some European dates which were delayed, what happened there?  

Jason: Yeah this record label that we’ve got over in Europe Tex Tone, they’ve got the distribution, the record is out over there and it’s doing real well. We’re getting some great response, but that was a problem with the booking agent that was working for the label. He was putting some stuff together and then the clubs were going “I don’t know who you are, we’ve never heard from you”. No disrespect to the clubs because at least they let me know. I just forwarded all those e-mails to label and that guy got fired, and now they’re working on it again. It was kind of a mess there for a minute but that shit happens all the time and not just to me. I’m not complaining but that stuff just happens everywhere.

Ryan: That’s just another challenge the band has had to face with trying to get your music heard. Thank god there’s the internet and stuff like MySpace where people from all over can at least hear your bands music. Without that you’d confined to just playing in Texas wouldn’t you?

Jason: Yeah there are too many bands- along with how popular the internet is and the way that people run their businesses and their lives and all that shit. Everything is served up on a silver platter immediately. It’s immediately heard, read and understood. The thing that I like the most is that this is the new version of what used to be known in the old days as tape trading. With MySpace having snippets of your songs online anywhere, you can tell someone to go check it out. That’s like “Hey here’s this tape of my band, check it out”. Man that’s how people got record deals back in the day, that’s how people booked your band. You would just walk up and hand someone a tape. There was also the whole fanzine thing; I mean that’s maniacal online now. Everybody’s got a fanzine now and everybody’s got a website. Anyone who has any kind of online real estate, that is into music, in a roundabout way that’s a fanzine. That’s kind of amazing but the downside of that and the stuff I just mentioned is that there are too many bands and there’s so much to take in, it’s so competitive. I don’t want to think of music as being something that would clog the drain or something like that. People get burned out and I don’t want to understand, but I kind of do, why someone would not necessarily be into music anymore because they’re completely clogged.

Ryan: The pro’s are as you said, it’s like the modern version of tape trading in that their response is immediate. They can sample your music and if they like what they hear they may actually be inclined to purchase your music.

Jason: You have to like to shop though man because everyone’s got songs online [laughing].

Ryan: Give me your take on the iPod generation because it seems like some of the major record companies now are moving completely away from CD’s all together and just offering the music as download for purchase. I’ve had this conversation with almost every artist I speak to and it kind of bugs me that you don’t get the same sort of physical feeling of holding a record or a CD in your hands anymore. To me whether it’s going out and seeing a band play live or what have you, there has always been somewhat of a physical element attached to the listening process you know what I mean? With your triple gatefold album cover you’re not only absorbed in the music but in the visuals as well and to me that was all part of the experience.

Jason: Yeah. I think the only thing they’re coming up with to sort of address that issue is there is a software for iTunes and whatever, that will go and find the artwork and the liner notes for you. You can upload it right there on your screen while the music is playing. So they’re trying to make that type of fan happy, but it’s still not the same thing. It’s much like you said, you’d buy a record and get home, you’re listening to it and holding it in your hands, looking at the whole thing and totally having this fantasia moment, it can be like a seductive drug. In the old days we wouldn’t even be talking like this, it would be like “Are you going to the concert?” You know so and so are playing at the Town Hall and “I’m going to go by thirty tickets and we’re all going to go. It’s going to be this tribal, celebratory - it’s going to be sick” You would get into it that way and have that fantasia moment, but that is a psychical act. That’s where tailgate partying came from and all of that stuff. It was very, very tribal, but that shit is over.  That’s the movie Heavy Metal Parking Lot. 

Ryan: You couldn’t even buy that many tickets now even if you wanted to, even if you have one of those stupid wristbands.

Jason: Yeah and the reason for that is the scalping thing was real, real big for a long time.

Ryan: We did talk about this before, but the harsh reality for a lot of bands out on the road is that the high price of gas today can determine whether or not a band like Broken Teeth can make it to the next town and to the next show.

Jason: That’s right, things are in the shitter. It’s going to be $4 a gallon for everybody pretty much everywhere. It might fluctuate a little bit but that’s a lot of money for a gallon of petrol, it’s ridiculous. It’s tough but there’s something to be learned quick when your in a do it yourself world, producing your own records, taking your own vehicles and paying your own bills for leasing a bus or renting gear. That saying of it’s just the cost of doing business is so true. We’re going to tour no matter what; our cumulative dates at the end of the year may be cut in half because it’s getting so bad out there. Some of these clubs don’t want to pay us and we charge minimal. We’re trying to make it easier for them to book us, just as we want to make it easier for them to have a low ticket price. That still means we have to take the money that they’re paying us and put it in the gas tank, so you want to be fair with the whole thing. We probably won’t tour half as much as we have over the past few years, maybe just in selective markets.

Ryan: When you go out with Dangerous Toys does the name and reputation of that band command more money?

Jason: Well the Toys don’t tour. 

Ryan: Yeah but you do go out and do a few shows here and there. Not that long ago you did a couple of shows with Junkyard and Rhino Bucket.

Jason: Those were lightly attended, it was bad. We were giving people a special peak into the Toys by playing all the old songs, but ticket sales were bad. Rhino Bucket had to cancel but we were on the bill with Junkyard and the attendance was so light. We were lucky to get two or three hundred people which is what Broken Teeth draws. The whole thing just seems to be in the shitter unless you’ve got American Idol tattooed on your forehead.

Ryan: Broken Teeth have been getting some pretty good endorsements along the way from your peers like Airbourne & Danko Jones who all seem to be doing pretty good these days. 

Jason: Danko calls us the B level bands. Danko still can’t get arrested in the States. His home base is in Scandinavia and he does well over there. Of course he’s been going over there and touring for seven or eight years.

Ryan: He also has his own radio show as well.

Jason: Yeah he’s definitely got it going on and he’s definitely met the right people over there. They love him and who doesn’t because he’s got this great amount of rock n’ roll energy. He’s a great MC for that fist pumping rock. I don’t know what it is about the States; I think they’re still mourning Britney Spears or something, I don’t know man [laughing].

Ryan: Then you have a young band like Airbourne that comes along and they’re not even from here. Their look and sound are totally retro yet its just good straight ahead kick ass rock ‘n roll. 

Jason: This is exactly what Broken Teeth and Danko are all about. 

Ryan:  So how do you take Broken Teeth to that next level?

Jason:  This isn’t a bad thing but those Airbourne guys could be my sons. I don’t want to mince words but I’m not a young man anymore. You wouldn’t think that because I think I’m holding up real good. I’m making great records and I’m still able to tour. My energy level is 150% and I’ve got a great fuckin’ band. Danko is doing real good but shit he’s still ten years older than they are. When you look at it like that, I think a lot of the major labels are not signing thirty year olds; they’re signing twenty year olds.  

Ryan: You’re saying it’s becoming more of a young mans game? 

Jason: Well it has been for a long, long time. I don’t think established bands in the 90’s were necessarily teenagers, but if they were in their mid twenties then they’re now in their mid to late thirties. You can argue the fact that I’m saying age has something to do with it but let’s talk about Airbourne. You’ve got these kids from Australia who have the AC/DC sound, but what better chance would an American label have to give a kick in behind to a bunch of lame, tired pseudo alternative rock fans or nu-metal fans, just to quote another bad media slang, to clean the palette. To let everyone know that rock ‘n roll is still useful and energetic and this is the way that it needs to be. Ron Burman at Roadrunner is the man responsible for actually giving Airbourne their US deal and bless him. It’s so important to make sure that everyone knows how rock n’ roll is supposed to be played, in a world where they’re afraid of it. At the end of the day I think that when everybody that’s in the music business in the States knows exactly how they think it should be someone finds a band like Airbourne. They just come in and play two chords, kick your ass and pretty much clean off the fuckin’ plate of anything that’s happened in music in the States in the last ten years. It’s beautiful.

Ryan: You’re a fan of all kinds of music. Has music become too complicated? Airbourne comes in and cleans the slate by keeping things simple and they’re just going back to that primal, three chord rock ‘n roll.

Jason: I’ve got some terminology that I use to describe exactly what it is I think you’re trying to say about two or three chord rock ‘n roll. Those bands that can be so simple and make a career out of it, like AC/DC, The Ramones, Motorhead, those are institutionalized bands that have been around for a lifetime or generations. They are still doing it or have members that are still doing it, you know what I mean? The Ramones are dead and bless them for what they did, and what they are still doing because their music is still saving rock ‘n roll. It was an institution that never got the notoriety or the airplay that they deserved. They wrote great catchy little fun, poppy rock n’ roll songs.

Ryan: They never deviated from that or changed the formula.

Jason: No. It was three chord, fast, slow, ballads, boogie songs, sock hop songs, you name it. They were the epitome of what rock ‘n roll is, and they were fun the entire time. They had dark subjects, political subjects, it was sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, and politics. It was the turning of the tides; it was all of that stuff man. It was genius because it was so simple and people want to call it retro, but I don’t think so. They had a lot of 50’s and 60’s sock hop influences, they were mod; they were all of these things. So if you like Motorhead, you like the Ramones, but ok how is that relative to a music fan? [laughing] The way that it’s relative is how simple, and how primal and guttural it really was. I call it very cave man and very beginnings of earth kind of thing. People could relate to it on many, many levels. I think that bands like Motorhead, Judas Priest and even Broken Teeth, Rhino Bucket, Danko Jones, Dirty Looks, Rose Tattoo and AC/DC, the list is stupid. There are old and new bands that are fighting the same fight. I was talking about this with a friend of mine the other day. I was at the super technical forefront of the beginnings of what was to be called math metal or progressive, over the top, with lots of time changes, with my old band Watchtower. We kind of pioneered that movement so long ago, and now it’s normal and there’s so much technical, over the top, extreme music out there like Meshuggah and bands like that. It’s so popular and has been now for years, but for me to have that in my lineage and then to have a band like Broken Teeth going on for over nine years now. You know one note all the way through, it’s quite a feat [laughing].

Ryan: It’s kind of ironic isn’t it?

Jason: Yeah but how I look at it is that it’s nice to be able to bring it back down to the sort of ground level of how it all began anyway. That would be the groove and the fluidity of the bass and drums. That’s how primal, tribal rock n’ roll originally started out and how fun it can be. It’s a reminder of when you first heard rock n’ roll. It takes you back to the reason why you are a metal head, or it takes you back to the reason why you love rock n’ roll so much. Whether you’ve changed the stuff you like or you’re all over the place, music like this keeps the plateau even and keeps you human I think. Once again its not easy to try to make a career out of three chord rock n’ roll but everyone has done it basically. There are a lot of bands that have kept that as their foundation and never strayed from it and I think that is beautiful. I think it’s also beautiful - if you’re into technical metal or you’re into Oompa music or Britney Spears or whatever it is, it’s good to have an open mind and be into different kinds of music. However that primal, original thud and pounding feel of just a couple of chords over a basic rhythm section, I think that’s where it began and that’s what the premise of all these bands is.

Ryan: It was also appealing to kids who were starting out playing instruments in a band as well because they figured if The Ramones or Motorhead could do it then so could they.

Jason: Yeah that’s how a lot of bands started. That’s how Iron Maiden started.

Ryan: I’m sure that’s probably how you started.

Jason: That’s exactly right. The first time I heard that groove and that pounding, that loud guitar, those screaming vocals, I was hooked. I talk to people all the time about how you’re either a metal head or a rock fan or you’re not. I don’t really understand these people who go ‘Yeah I used to be into metal’ or ‘I used to have that album’, what do you mean? This stuff attaches itself to you at a young age and doesn’t let go. If you have no connection whatsoever from your childhood, to rock n’ roll or a certain record or even just a song, which would be a reason to create a lifestyle for you, to be the reason why you are who you are, you’re telling me that you can just throw that in the garbage? You can become something else the next day? You’re following trends. I mean sure everything is a trend, you can use that argument with anything but it’s just a word. What happens when you say ‘Yeah I used to be a metal head’? That tells me that you were following a trend. The kid next door had Back in Black and you wanted to be like him so you went and bought Back in Black. You got into it because the other kids at school were into it. They were the cool kids who had more friends; the girls liked them more than they liked you so you wanted to fit in. That’s all you were using it for, you used rock ‘n roll to fit in. Rock ‘n roll is for misfits and outcasts that stay home alone in the dark, and who are afraid of people, so the music is your friend. The music makes you find like minded people who are different or are shy. This is a tribal thing meant for the geeks, dorks and people like that. That’s what heavy metal was for, but people don’t think of it that way, they just think it has this social butterfly thing. No man, this stuff is meant to be scary. The beginnings of rock n’ roll and heavy metal was to draw people to it, not for people to just go out have drinks, be in a room, and who cares what’s on the radio. We just want to be seen in our new hot clothes and our new hot car and all that bullshit. That stuff doesn’t matter to a real metal head, none of that matters. It’s about lightning a fire and dancing around it, beating on rocks with sticks and stones and shit, that’s what rock n’ roll and heavy metal is for, to harness that primal energy. It’s definitely not a social stigma like people think it should be. The people that think this is a social stigma are not metal heads anymore, because they used rock ‘n roll to get to where they were, to the point where they felt like they didn’t need it anymore. They never needed it because they were always going to be a pompous status symbol as opposed to someone who heard the crack of thunder from a fuckin’ Marshall stack and a Les Paul, and it split their head open. That’s their drug. It has to be that way every time or it’s not the same thing, so people who are into that can see a fake a mile away. There are a lot of fans and bands out there that didn’t have this three chord rock ‘n roll as their blueprint. It’s not their fault, it’s because they didn’t have an older brother or sister’s record collection to steal. They didn’t inherit it you know what I mean?

Ryan: Like you did.

Jason: I totally did. Both my older and younger brothers’ record collection totally influenced me. My younger brother actually was the person who turned me on to Judas Priest. It was my neighbourhood friends who turned me on to Kiss and AC/DC. Once I knew about those bands it was all over man that was it. I knew what I wanted to do and I knew what I wanted to throw my life away on.  It was important to me. It was that thing that you ran home from school to be with, your records, the music and the songs. Those songs, those records and bands, those are my friends, that’s my people man. Those are the things that I live for. I think the people that didn’t have those things, the bands that we’ve been talking about, if they’re a lot younger and were growing up in the 90’s, they were kind of being spoon fed by the media as to what rock ‘n roll was. They missed out on a lot of bands that influenced bands like Airbourne, Danko Jones and Broken Teeth. In the 90’s if all they knew was Pantera and Korn, that’s great but guess where they got it you know?

Ryan: It’s always important to go back to the source.

Jason:  Yeah and I think a guy like Dimebag always did that. He had Ace Frehley tattooed on his chest, that’s primal right there. He belonged to a tribe and he was letting everyone know that this is what changed his life. Ace Frehley is a very earthy individual. He’s not the smartest man in the world, he’s not the greatest guitar player in the world, but he has something that people can connect to. You’ve got four characters in Kiss, why would people gravitate to Ace? He’s not one of the front men and he’s not one of the main songwriters, although he did write “Cold Gin”, “Shock Me”, “Strange Ways” and “Parasite”, which is some of  Kiss’’ best material. He’s got his credits but he’s not Gene and Paul.

Ryan: He certainly wasn’t the business man of the group either like Gene was.

Jason: No in fact he was the alcoholic. He was the punk rocker that was giving the other guys problems. Why would people gravitate to that? Because he was the fuckin’ rebel, he was the bad guy. People love the bad guy and that’s what rock ‘n roll is.

Ryan: Even Peter (Criss) was like that. You had two guys on one side and two on the other.

Jason: Sure and usually it’s not supposed to be like that.

Ryan: It sure worked in that band.

Jason: Yeah it did. I think Cheap Trick tried to do that, they had two pretty guys and two dorks.

Ryan: Visually it seemed more blatantly obvious with them.

Jason: Yeah. I just think that was just another band that was in their skin. Whether they were following trends or not, the Beatles weren’t always mod, they looked pretty dorky there for awhile. I think that Bun E. Carlos and Rick Nielson were on to something man, they were the dorks that I was talking about a little while ago, that fell in love with rock n’ roll at an early age and were living it. It didn’t mean that you had to have long hair and that you had to leave your glasses at home. Wear your fuckin’ dorky glasses and your button up shirts and your tie to the Metallica concert, nobody cares.

Ryan: Growing up as a child you had a normal upbringing and you went to church and bible study.

Jason: Sure.

Ryan: Do you think your career in rock ‘n roll and the stuff that you sing about is a way of making up for any childhood repressions?

Jason: No I just think its fun to sing about the devil. I have opinions, and not to get religious or anything because I’m not real religious but I think that when you’re growing up in your family, your parents and your community needs respect. I think that’s what Christianity and the beginning of your childhood are about, if your family has that. It’s a generational thing. If I had kids I wouldn’t make them go to church. I wouldn’t make them do anything they needed to be doing, outside of being good little people. For me I think that was just a family outing and it was completely painless. You learn about yours and other peoples families when you do that and you’re in that situation. When I got old enough to see that, I think my parents could see that, and they didn’t force anything on me. When I was a child up until I was about ten or eleven, it would be safe to say that I had been to church a few hundred times and I guess that was plenty. They knew that I was a good kid, stayed out of jail and that I wasn’t a fucked up kid, so I think there’s reasons why some people need that kind of brainwashing and some of us don’t.

Ryan: Now you’re just leading your own congregation of a different kind.

Jason: That’s exactly right.

Ryan: I’ve heard some of your sermons.

Jason: Oh yeah, its non denominational, well that’s not true because really the denomination is freedom and loud rock n’ roll. The thing with my lyrics and signing songs based around the devil and hell and things like that is because I don’t think hell exists. I don’t think the devil exists, so what perfect fantasia to sing about. I want to sing about dirty rock n’ roll, I don’t want to sing about swords and sorcery.

Ryan: Besides a guy like Dio does that pretty well.

Jason: Yeah and Three Inches of Blood. There are a lot of bands that are making new records that do that, and they’re awesome. Its hilarious, its fun and it’s awesome. I mean I don’t dare call it Harry Potter but that’s kind of what it is.

Ryan: You’re lyrical inspirations seem to originate more from the street level, it’s more what I’d call street poetry.

Jason: Definitely! That’s a great way of putting it. I’m not going to say that I didn’t rip off Bon Scott and Angus Young either, at least lyrically.

Ryan: There is a lyrical magic to something like “I wanna smell your breath, I wanna crystal your meth”.

Jason: Yeah and I took “I wanna crystal your meth” as a phrase from Lemmy off the song “Speedfreak” which was on Iron Fist.  I’ve borrowed from all of my idols and I want to apologize even though I’m unapologetic about it in the songs. You know what it is? It’s celebratory. I’m celebrating Motorhead, I’m celebrating AC/DC, Judas Priest and all of this shit. However, if you want to say that I’m borrowing or that I’m ripping them off, that’s fine because I don’t really care. It’s more important to me that people understand that all I’m doing is celebrating rock ‘n roll in its perfect state. That’s what Broken Teeth is trying to do and we’re trying to break that down for people to understand, that I’m kind of a metal singer singing rock n’ roll.

 If people know me from Watchtower and hell even Dangerous Toys then they know me as a metal singer. Some people might say that I’m a sleaze rock god and I’m like “Oh really?” That’s fine that you might think that, but that’s arguable because someone else on the same street is going to say that he was into all of my metal bands and that Dangerous Toys was cool. He knows what I’m trying to do with Broken Teeth and he digs it.  I’ll get good reviews and all of that, but everybody seems to be into a different facet of the things that I’ve done in my career. There are huge Toys fans, undeniable Toys fans, but there’s the Watchtower fans standing in line right behind them saying that I helped change the world of metal with Watchtower. I have to give credit where credit is due because it was more about the guys writing the riffs in the band that really helped make Watchtower. I was just the singer, I never really wrote any lyrics. I wrote vocal melodies, I was just the voice that helped pioneer an entire generation of progressive thrash metal and extreme music.

The Toys was a happy accident on the coattails of the success of Guns ‘n Roses’ popularity. Everyone knows that. Some people are in denial and that’s ok. It wasn’t just Dangerous Toys; there were a hundred bands that got record deals in 1987-89 off the coattails of Guns ‘n Roses. That’s no secret. Even to continue along the musical timeline,  but if grunge, and I hate to use the word grunge because that’s just another bad media term, but if that had never happened then all of those shitty bands that got record deals off of the popularity of Guns ‘n Roses, might still be making shitty records. I don’t want to hear those fuckin’ bands anymore. Thank god that Nirvana happened cleaned the slate.

Ryan: It’s funny because if you remember that many people at the time felt the opposite and thought that grunge was actually killing rock.

Jason: Thank god that happened because there was a lot of lame ass, cock rock. I talk about this shit in my sermons all the time but a lot of people don’t look at it that way, you’re exactly right. They sit around and say “I’m so happy that our music is coming back”. Coming back, where did you leave it? Obviously you’re admitting that you left it. You’ve got to press play. Are they waiting for the trend to come back or waiting for someone to spoon feed them something that tastes good to them? Fuck that! You’ve got to press play. You threw away your CD and you’re waiting for it to come back to you? It’s not a boomerang, it’s a CD. It’s a window in time to which you just shut the window. Don’t expect MTV or the radio to open the window for you because it doesn’t work that way. Think about the old days when there was no MTV and no radio playing hard rock, what did you do? You found out about it somehow didn’t you? Hello? Shit bubbles to the top and if you’re a rocker then you know what’s coming and what’s going on. My friends have kids or are 18, or 20, and they have multi color hair and they have Guns n Roses belt buckles. It’s like where were you 20 years ago? They weren’t even alive but they know about this shit because of the media and from their parent’s record collection. The same way that I found out about music was from a sibling or a friend’s record collection. It’s lineage.

Ryan: That’s the best kind of musical education you can get right there.

Jason: Amen to that man. It’s not fuckin’ coca-cola commercials with the Guns n Roses song in the background that will be your lineage, but that happens. People rely on trends for that to be the ultimate say or the taste maker for what rock n’ roll should be.

Ryan: Yeah because god forbid you’re one of those kids growing up today that doesn’t fit in.

Jason: Yeah well the kid that doesn’t fit in is the kid that I want to talk to.

Ryan: He’s the next one in the army.

Jason: That’s right man.

Ryan: I want to ask you about some of the tribute bands you’ve been involved in. The stuff you did with your Kiss tribute band SSIK sounded amazing. The two songs you had up on the MySpace site “I Stole Your Love” and “Rock Bottom” are amazing.

Jason: It’s kind of like punk rock Kiss isn’t it?

Ryan: Yeah super dirty sounding Kiss. Are you still doing this band?

Jason:  Well “I Stole Your Love” was just recorded a few months ago for a Kiss tribute that is coming out on Versailles Records. I’ve done other things for them as well; I did a Cult tribute where I did “King Contrary Man”. I also did a Motley Crue one fairly recently as well. I did “Kickstart My Heart”

Ryan: What about Sad Wings, your Judas Pries tribute?

Jason: Oh my god I loved that, it was so fun. We’ve been doing it for a couple of years now and we only play about 6 or 7 shows a year. I do the whole Rob Halford thing and I’ve created a monster. When we first started Sad Wings, the line-up of musicians was going to be slightly different; it was going to be more retro Priest. We were going to do stuff off of Rocka Rolla and wanted to focus on really obscure Priest songs. We had some stuff worked out, and then I realized that probably no one would come to see this. After the first show it would be just a bunch of old guys in the audience so I needed to make it more appealing. I upped the idea to basically try to recreate Unleashed In The East because that’s like a greatest hits for Judas Priest anyways. They were focusing on a certain three or four records there, which were Sad Wings of Destiny, Hell Bent For Leather, Sin After Sin and Stained Class, and it was really a good time for Judas Priest. Those songs on Unleashed In The East are undeniable in that they are the songs that created what we know as popular Heavy Metal, with the leather and studs and the attitude of metal. That along with Black Sabbath and the dark side of music, just in the way that Sabbath and Priest were both basing everything off of the blues. Both bands were also into early Deep Purple and that’s where it all comes from, but that’s a whole other conversation.

Ryan: Have you ever gotten any feedback on any of this stuff from the artists you’ve covered. For example have you ever heard back as to what Gene thinks about SSIK?

Jason: I don’t think they’ve sat down and listened to anything that I’ve recorded. I know they are aware of SSIK. They know there is a five piece band from Texas that doesn’t wear the makeup, and that I’m in the band. I think in the Kisstory book, that one of our flyers made the cut and got in there.

Ryan: The artwork on those were great, who did that?

Jason: The same guy that did the stuff for Dangerous Toys, Tommy Pons. The rotting Gene, Ace, Peter and Paul, yeah I love those. He actually put those out in a portfolio; I think there were five prints all together. They’re out of print at the moment but he called them Sick Things, like the Alice Cooper song. It was the perfect play on words with the band being called SSIK, and with these rotting corpses of the guys in Kiss.

Ryan: You also had the mock Dressed to Kill called Dressed to Ill cover as well.

Jason: Yeah that’s just fun with Photoshop. Get another body for Paul Stanley and flip it over and put it on the other side and you’ve got five members. Danko was really into the stuff I did with SSIK as well.

Ryan: Any plans to release that?

Jason: We used to play live all the time and we played a few Kiss conventions and stuff like that. As far as touring and doing anything serious no, but SSIK has actually been around in some formation or another since about ’91 or ’92. We have done recordings. There is a CD that has that cover, the Dressed to Ill cover. In ’95 we recorded “God Of Thunder”, “Shock Me”, ‘King Of The Night Time World”, “Ladies Room” and a couple of others, “Watchin’ You” and “She”. Those were all on that CD. It was never mass produced because of copyright laws. You know because it’s not our material and we’d have to pay the royalties and all that. The CD’s that we did make, we probably charged just enough to cover the cost of burning the damn things and we just gave those away.

Ryan: How did the Rush tribute Cygnus and The Sea Monsters project come about?

Jason: Mike Portnoy and I have been buddies for a long time. He used to write to me when I was in Watchtower, like fan mail and I use that term loosely.

Ryan: Much like you were doing with the guys in Metallica.

Jason: Yeah exactly. Those were glory days. All of that were the earliest beginnings of Dream Theater, Metallica and Watchtower. Dude there’s people that I’m friends with that were pen pals of mine in the early 80’s. There’s this guy Killjoy from Necrophagia who’s been a pen pal of mine since like ’83.  I’m still in contact with that guy. It’s crazy because we’re talking about 25 years of lineage, of fandom, or pen pals or whatever you want to call it. It’s completely crazy to think how it’s all kind of just water under the bridge. Jason Newsted, John Bush, James Hetfield, Mike Portnoy these guys are my guilty pleasures who I can actually say were my pen pals.

Ryan: So how in the case of Portnoy did you go from being pen pals to actually working together?

Jason: Well he was always a Watchtower fan, when they were in Berkley in Boston working on their music theory in college; they were creating their own version of progressive rock music. We got to be pen pals and as things went on I went on to join Dangerous Toys, and all the DT guys would come out to see me when I would play out on Long Island. It was great to meet them first hand, which would have been around ’89. This was about four or five years after we had started writing to each other. They took off and it’s been incredible what they been able to do, it’s just great. We stayed friendly and I got a call in 2005 from Mike saying he was putting a Rush tribute together, he needed a Geddy Lee and that he wanted me to sing. That was basically it, and of course I jumped on it. Just to be able to say that I was in the same room and onstage with Sean Malone, Paul Gilbert and Mike Portnoy. Musicians can go their whole lives without having some of those guys as their reasons for living, and dude I did it in one weekend. It was incredible. Have you seen the DVD?

Ryan:  No I haven’t but I’ve seen a clip of “YYZ”

Jason: Oh yeah that clip ended up on Portnoy’s instructional video. Thank god that was recorded, the only place you can get the CD and or the DVD is on his website. If you’re a fan of any of the band members who were involved in that project then it’s worth it. On top of that, if you’re a Rush fan it’s really a great window into those old Rush songs.

Ryan: Anything you’d like to add as far as Broken Teeth goes?

Jason: Well Away from Voivod is designing a new T-shirt for the band as we speak. He did one for Danko and he turned me on to him. He was like “Dude you gotta get Away to do something for you”. That goes back to what I’ve been saying in this interview about lineage, that’s all part of it. When I was in Watchtower I played on the bill with Celtic Frost and Voivod back in ’86. Voivod’s album artwork covers were being done by someone in the band for their entire career, that’s sick.