Out Of The Cellar: Interview with Dangerous Toys/Broken Teeth singer Jason McMaster
Everywhere you look on the internet there's an interview with Jason McMaster. It seems the Dangerous Toys/Broken Teeth frontman has talked to everybody about everything too many times before. However we still pulled him in for a talk and you're in for a special treat with this month's interview. Jason turned out to be very interesting and talked to us about the music industry as well as some of his less well known musical projects. Turns out he's very knowledgeable and experienced and even if you're not a fan of his music career I'm sure you can gain something from reading this interview. For those who haven't heard McMaster but are now feeling rather curious a good place to start out would be with Dangerous Toys 1989 self-titled debut album. A Hard Rockin' mix of Alice Cooper, Guns N' Roses and traditional Texas Rock N' Roll. All right that's all for now, time to talk to The King Of Texas Sleaze!
Jordan: Dangerous Toys has a 20 year anniversary CD and DVD coming out. What can us tell me about that?
Jason McMaster: Dangerous Toys officially started in October of 1987. 20 years and 4 or 5 albums later, a few reunion shows, a couple of trips to Japan and some touring with our idols, we've had a really great time. This is just a celebratory "thank you" to the fans and to rock-n-roll. The DVD was filmed at a club here in Austin where we all still live. When we do reunion shows, generally people fly in from all over the place, Japan and all over the states. The phones blow up and it gets kind of crazy. It's fun and it gave us more reason to celebrate the whole thing. We go real deep into most of the recordings as farthe material we did. We did "Demon Bell", which is the song we did on the soundtrack to Wes Craven's Shocker. It had never been played live until this particular show. The cover will be done by Tommy Pons, the original clown artist who also lives here in Austin now. We're trying to do it as a real Dangerous Toys release, except that unlike most major label releases, this one will be fully band endorsed. No corporate decisions on this one.
Jordan: Speaking of the clown, what is his name and where does he fit in with other mascots like Eddie and Vic Rattlehead?
Jason: His name is Bill Z Bub. There's been some poster art that Tommy has done with Eddie and Bill going at it. It's pretty fun stuff but we haven't been able to release any of it because of copyright infringement. I don't want Bruce Dickenson calling me up saying "hey mate, you owe me some money for using my mascot".That might be bad. I always fuck with Tommy anyway... "Dude, this clown Bill, he's just Eddie with orange hair and clown make-up, right?" He's like, "no, no no". I said, "look at it man, look at it!"
Jordan: You mentioned getting to tour with your idols. The Dangerous Toys song "Scared" is a tribute to Alice Cooper. What was it like to tour with him on Operation: Rock N Roll?
Jason: Being able to tell people that you're touring with Alice Cooper sounded funny to me. It's like, "Oh, you're going out? Who are you touring with?" I'd say, "Oh, Alice Cooper, Motorhead, Judas Priest, Metal Church." Then you step back because you can't believe what just came out of your mouth. that alone right there, not to mention a lot of other stuff we got to do. Our first real US tour was in clubs, but a month later we did 6 weeks with LA Guns. they were hot shit at the time and it was a big to-do. Tora Tora was on it and it was just cool going out there with the new hit MTV Headbangers Ball rock band. It just seemed to continue. We did a tour with The Cult in '90 and right before that we did Europe with Faster Pussycat and The Almighty. We played venues over there that we never would've dreamed of playing. Faster Pussycat had just been over there 6 months earlier opening for Guns N Roses so they were hot shit over there. We played Hammersmith Odeon and some really, really, really cool venues and shit. Yeah, it's been fun.
Jordan: You talked about bands like Judas Priest, Motorhead and Metal Church. Broken Teeth and Dangerous Toys, even though they are Rock N Roll bands, all of the Thrash and Metal fans I know like them...
Jason: Bro, I'm so glad you brought that up. I'm not going to take anything off my bandmembers in the Toys or Broken Teeth by any means. Obviously they're Metalheads and into Punk Rock and things where all that shit kind of comes from anyway. My career pretty much broke with a band called Watchtower that I was in from 1982 until I had to physically quit Watchtower to be with the Toys when the Toys were about to get busy. Are you familiar with Watchtower at all?
Jordan: I am. They were one of those bands that I heard about, but never got to hear. I think guitarist Billy White was in Watchtower as well.
Jason: Billy was a founding member that actually went on to make that Don Dokken record. He quit Watchtower in '86 and we replaced him with Ron Jarzombek, who's brother is Bobby Jarzombek who played drums on all the Halford albums. Bobby and Ronnie are big Texas musicians. They're amazing. But anyway, there are a lot of Metal bands and Thrash bands that saw through the name association with Dangerous Toys. You know what I mean, everybody thought we were from Hollywood. They saw us tour with LA Guns. We opened for Warrant and Extreme and all that kind of stuff. The cool thing is that we toured with The Cult. We got thrown in with Judas Priest and Motorhead. There's still this Texas boogie Rock N Roll. We were the New York Dolls on speed, throw in some Foghat, ZZ Top and Aerosmith. You could tell that we were into old Metallica and Anthrax. I'm wearing my Venom shirt one day and then Thin Lizzy the next. They knew we weren't stupid. We were just being ourselves as much as we could. We were trying to not wear the costume that says "look at me, I'm a glam fag". Not so much conscious of that, but just trying to be ourselves as much as we could. I'm not going to come out wearing 16 penny nails in leather wristbands and let people think we're a Speed ,etal band. Alan Tecchio of Hades, who took my place as vocalist of Watchtower in 1980 can tell you the same kind of thing. He brought it up at the time how amazing it was that a lot of Metal bands and Thrash bands got Dangerous Toys and weren't lumping them in as some kind of GN'R clone or some Sunset Strip reject. I feel really lucky about that and it's a cool trophy to have for the other guys in the Toys to just be kind of accepted in a more underground style. The Broken Teeth thing, there's a lot of Stoner Doom Metal bands and underground Metal bands that we get good reviews from as well. Broken Teeth is a little more bluesy, AC/DC kind of a vibe on the studio records that have been floating around for the last several years. But we have a new record that we're working on that's called "Electric" and we're really working on it, trying to get it out this year. Man, I gotta tell you, it is bloody fangs. It is fierce. As far as style, it's still the same kind of AC/DC fueled bluesy riffs, and it even has some of the older material recut. But I swear, if you squint, there's some reminiscence of Screaming For Vengeance and Ace Of Spades on there. It's definitely running lower and fasterthan the first Broken Teeth records. Once again, to Heavy Metal people who can handle Broken Teeth not really being a Metal or Thrash band, I think they'll give even more good reviews once they hear this album.
Jordan: After Dangerous Toys had run it's course you went back to Texas and decided not to just do reunion tours for the next 20 years and instead wanted to stake another claim in the music industry. For those who haven't been up to speed on your career lately, how did Broken Teeth come together?
Jason: I like the way you're asking that question and you're making it easy to answer. I had all these other projects going on anyway. I was playing bass and singing in a Metal band called Gahdzilla Motor Company, which was kind of short lived. I guess we were around for about 5 and a half years. The industry knew who we were, we were trying to sell our stuff online, but we didn't have any kind of backing or label support. We didn't get to tour a whole lot. We did some regional dates and got as far as Detroit. That ws about it. There's about 20 songs that have been recorded. A few of them have been mixed. It's unreleased material. Long story short, that was a band that had a lot of potential but never really got off the ground. I played bass in the Union Underground for 2 years, right up until they got signed. I was playing guitar in an Industrial ,etal band called Terminal 46 during that same time and I had to quit both bands to get serious with Gahdzilla Motor Company. That was all happening 2 or 3 years before I got a call from Paul Lidel, who's from Rochester, NT and moved here specifically to play second guitar in Dangerous Toys. He had been a song writing partner for that long and he is the one who started Broken Teeth. This was in 1999 when called one day. Tom Mathers at Perris Records, which is sort of a mail-order company/record label/recording studio, had called Paul back in '89 and said "hey, I want to make this sort of biker rock album ala Motorhead or AC/DC thing that I can push over in Europe and I want it to be an all-star band". Paul needed a studio to record so he told him that he'd write the record for him and in trade use Tom's studio for his other band. Paul called me one day and was telling me about it on the side. he wasn't trying to hire me out for it or get me involved at all. He was telling me that he was going to try to get George from Rhino Bucket to sing. I said, "Well, how are you going to get George's number? I think I'm the only one in Texas with his number. Bullshit, I'm gonna sing on this motherfucker!" I ended up naming the band Broken Teeth and basically taking over. The first record was recorded 2 weeks after that. I played bass on the first Broken Teeth record. We did it as a 3 piece basically, but wanted to be seen as a five piece band so I came up with fake names for the bass and second guitar on the first record, which were Joey and Willie Yung, like Angus and Malcolm Young of AC/DC but spelled differently. Long story short, the band was formed to be a sort of AC/DC clone on purpose and the record started to sell so we had to form a band to play live. A year or two later I had a full band and we made a second record called Guilty Pleasure. Then a year after that we did a live album and it wasn't until then that we really started to hit the road heavy.A little over 2 years ago we hooked up with Tone Deaf touring out of SXSW music conference and they've kept us on the road since. We do about 150 or more shows a year now.
Jordan: The Texas Hard Rock scene is pretty cool. It spanned the '70s and '80s. One of these bands is Pariah. The guitarist from Paria, Jared Tuten is now in playing in Broken Teeth. What's it like working with him? That must be pretty cool?
Jason: Nice. Well, that's good because not enough people come out and say that because Pariah was one of those bands that were too little, too late. Some A&R people and music critics say the same thing about Dangerous Toys that they say about Pariah that the record came out 5 or 6 years too late. It would have been a huge contingency of Rock N' Roll with that brand of Rock. I tend to agree and that's one of the only things that music critics said about Dangerous Toys and Pariah that made sense. Jared is sort of an evil mad scientist as far as what goes down with Broken Teeth. Paul Lidel is not with Broken Teeth anymore. We tour too much and he prefers to stay home and work his job. It's a sad day in rock n roll when the day job pays more than rock n roll ever did. But, it's a reality and if you have a mortgage and a family it kind of makes sense and no one can get upset about it. We're not children. Let me tel you about the other guy. David Beeson is the guy who took Paul's place. He was actually Paul's roommate and they taught at the Austin guitar school together. It was about like we got a little brother to come in. We didn't hold auditions or anything. We just hit the ground running with David. Back to Jared, he is the producer, songwriter, engineer, Pro Tools master, artist, he's fucking nuts. "Secret Weapon" is the nickname he's got. It's sick. He's on fire too. He'll talk about the biz with you all day and get excited about it. Bands need someone like that to keep shit tight. Otherwise, you're just fuckin' lazy and you don't get shit done. You don't get it done the way you want it to if you're just paying some shmuck to do your shit. Is it really coming out the way you want it to? It pretty much does when you have someone like Jared working it. That's pretty much all I can say about that and it doesn't get any better than that.
Jordan: So you guys are going back out on tour right?
Jason: We're out all the time. I just got back on Saturday, and we're going back out in August. We're doing some 4th of July shows, we're playing here tonight, we're doing a few things in July. In August we're going from Austin to LA all the way into Ohio then back down through Tennesee and Arkansas back into Texas betwen August 7th and August 28th. We're out! We're killing it.
Jordan: One of our previous interviews was with Warrant/Black N Blue singer Jaime St James, who was in the KISS tribute band Cold Gin. You had a KISS tribute as well... Which one is better?
Jason: Jaime St James played Peter Criss in Cold Gin, with Tommy Thayer on guitar. They wore all the make-up and they had all the bombs and the real KISS costumes and were Gene Simmons endorsed. I've actually been onstage with Cold Gin and done a couple of songs with them and it was like being on stage with the real KISS. They were wearing the boots and everything. It was unbelievable. Those guys were so cool and so great. They sounded amazing. I got to see them 2 or 3 times and that was back around the mid 90's, right before the KISS reunion stuff went down. My KISS tribute band is called SSIK. We're a 5 piece. jared is in SSIK and always has been in SSIK. We don't wear make-up or costumes or anything. We basically celebrate the music and all the good songs. We've been doing it since 1991. We played like once last year. it's really slowed down. People ask me about that shit every day too, which is fucked up because it's been going on for so long. It's just something for fun. it's just me and a bunch of my friends who are obviously huge KISS geek freak buddies.
Jordan: Shadows Fall did a cover of the Dangerous Toys hit Teasin' Pleasin' which you did guest vocals on. Were you a fan of thiers prior to them contacting you about doing the cover?
Jason: Honestly, I had only heard the name Shadows Fall and never seen them live, not before what you're talking about but Shadows fall had been hitting clubs in Texas for 10 years. I heard the name and seen it around, heard great reviews of the band but hadn't heard anything until someone called me and said "dude, I just saw Shadows Fall and when they got off stage one of the guys was walking around wearing an old school vintage Dangerous Toys tour shirt." I said, "you're shitting me" and he said "no, in fact I talked to him and I got his email address and he wants to talk to you". I got the guitar player Matt's email address and we started emailing. It wasn't until when i started talking to those guys that I started catching up their material and meeting more and more Shadows Fall fans. those guys are totally cool and I met them a couple of times. One day I got an email from Matt saying "hey, we want to cover a Toys song" I was trying to sell them "Bones In The Gutter and they weren't having it. They said "fuck that, we want to do the hit!" When you see them play you can't not walk away saying "I just got my ass kicked with Rock". Those guys are not fucking around when they're up to there. They mean that shit and they bring it to the cauldron. You know what I mean? They call you up to it. That what it takes, man. Ultimately, I want my fans just like Shadows Fall wants their fans, just like any Rock band or Metal band. It is Rock and Metal that I'm talking about. It's not any other genre of fans. You're either into it to death from birth or the day you first heard Black Sabbath or whatever your story is. It's not like people you may meet that are just a farce that say "yeah, i used to like Heavy Metal. I had a couple of those albums". That's such bullshit. No, you had a couple of Metal albums because your so called friends at school were into it and you were trying to fit in. That's all that it is for someone who's not a Metalhead from day one. I think it's something that you're drawn to. its a cauldron, it's a roundtable, it's a tribe.
Jordan: Are you saying that Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco aren't going to have the same longevity as Black Sabbath? I'm shocked!
Jason: I don't see it. That's a spoon fed thing. That's learned by an alternative underground Rock scene. I use the word "underground" loosely because I think it's sold the same way that Coca-Cola is sold. Those bands are on those kinds of commercials. Those bands you hear at the food court at the mall.. they're being spoon-fed to you in a slightly different way than other things might be but real Metal is not on Coca Cola commercials. I don't hear even a Poison song on a Coca Cola commercial and of course I don't hear a Slayer song on a Coca Cola commercial. We're gonna talk about magazine Metal, which you can even throw Lamb Of God and Mastodon into that category of what I'm calling "magazine Metal". neither of those bands are selling food products either. You might see Lamb Of God and Mastodon and Slayer at Hot Topic and kids wearing their shirts in the food court. Those bands are THAT popular, but it's not until the last couple of years that that kind of stuff has happened.
Jordan: Those bands got popular because the grass-roots fanbase spread and eventually became this massive thing, not because a corporate machine convinced the kids that it's cool to pretend that you listen to them.
Jason: Right, and I think that that's the way to do it. Slayer has been around for as long as Metallica and whatever it is for them to graduate into where someone's going to be calling them a sell-out. Slayer never sold out. There's no sell out there. Someone called their management and said "dude, I'm getting a lot of fucking requests for Slayer shirts and merchandise and I work at Hot Topic at the mall. I know it's not your thing but we do Iron Maiden and AC/DC and you guys are just as popular as those bands. Why don't we sign a deal?" I'm sure it's easy for them to say 'sure, we have a new record coming out, let's do a deal on that". It's business, and I can undestand that side of things. I'm as non-corporate a Metal fan as they fucking come and it makes me angry when the only way people know about your band is from a Coca Cola commercial, but so be it. If that's the way the generation of now gets their Rock N' Roll, then I'm crying. I'm very upset. That's not the way I want my Rock N' Roll. i want my Rock N' Roll to be so good that a peer of mine comes up and says "I was somewhere and someone was playing this or I heard this online or I as searching new bands on CDBaby or someone sent me a link, but you gotta check out these guys!" You know what I mean? From the underground, man, from the flames. You want to feel the heat from the flames and not from someone blowing smoke up your ass. That's what I mean by Shadows Fall. They want to bring you close to the fire. They want you to feel what they are feeling and I think that's important. I think there's not enough of that attitude. At the end of the day, as long as people are hungry for it, I'm happy. As long as there is a Heavy Metal contingency and it's popular and people are still having fun enjoying the vibe of Hard Rock and Metal, I'm happy because there is nothing else like it. I love it so much. I've been doing this for what feels like my whole life. I'm not a young man anymore. I look and act like a young man, but I'm not a young man anymore and it's so important that it comes from the right place and that new bands and younger musicians are doing it for the right reasons and not wearing a costume just to sell Coca Cola for somebody. It's not about getting chicks and getting laid and the party. It's about the energy. It's about being a part of something that other motherfuckers dont have any idea of. It's about your heart bleeding black for something real that attached itself to you at a young age. That's a real Metal fan to me, and I'm glad to see that it can still be born that way.
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For more information on Broken Teeth, check out Broken Teeth on Myspace and BrokenTeeth.com