The Watchmen

The Watchmen – lead singer Daniel Greaves, guitarist Joey Serlin , bassist Ken Tizzard, drummer Sammy Kohn – inhabit a unique slice of turf in the rock stratosphere reserved for those all-too-few bands whose intellect has not been overpowered by their muscle. It’s a place where brains and brawn coexist in a perennial tug-of-war, where slashing guitars and thundering rhythm push cerebral messages way past the first 25 rows, way past the next video countdown, way past the final curtain call.

Because the songs of Serlin and Greaves are such effortlessly thoughtful glimpses into the dark side vs. light side, left hemisphere vs. right hemisphere struggles of the human psyche, The Watchmen’s loyal hordes of fans have learned, over the course of three albums, to accept them at face value. If it were humanistically carved on stone tablets, their mission statement would be a simple one – to blow away the predictable facade of life experiences: love, loss, healing, hope.

Anyway, Greaves advised one journalist, when faced with the challenge of discussing the band’s fourth album, their U.S. debut SILENT RADAR, “I maintain I have no answers as to what the songs are about.” In fact, from the yearning insistence of the first single, “Stereo,” and the chilly homecoming of “Any Day Now” (“I’m feeling like a one-legged man, always made to take a stand”), to the bluesy wake-up call of “Rooster” and the baroque suspense haunting the title tune, “Silent Radar,” there is an overwhelming realization that these songs are really shadow mirrors into the listener’s soul.

If the songs on SILENT RADAR live and breathe in a more natural-feeling (or more relaxed) plane than previous Watchmen albums, it’s because the pressure cooker associated with recording was lifted from their shoulders this time around. Where earlier efforts frequently found them creating songs under deadline in the studio (albeit with frequently amazing results), this time they were able to take advantage of a two-year hiatus between albums. They had the “luxury” of demoing their songs first, listening to them, and preparing for the sessions in a way they’d never done before.

Moreover, they joined for the first time with young producer Adam Kasper (credits: R.E.M., Soundgarden) at Stone Gossard’s Studio Litho in the bohemian, post-industrial section of downtown Seattle. They quickly came to appreciate the isolation of being a continent away from where they’d always recorded before, with a producer more concerned with emotion than perfection. Attitude and groove prevailed, and a live feeling pervaded the sessions. In this comfortable setting, the music and the lyrics crystallized into songs that went to deeper, darker places than The Watchmen could ever have anticipated before the recording process began.

“More often than not,” Greaves offers, “the inspiration for a song is different than the meaning it ends up taking on.” The daytripper trouble-maker introduced in “Do It” is the black sheep cousin to the sentimental narrator of “He’s Gone” and the abandoned lover of “Say Something.” The watery dreamscape of “On My Way” offers no protection for the hopeless wanderer, “Top Of the World.” There is more, of course, “I’m Waiting,” “Come Around,” (“There ain’t nobody listenin’, the walls are closin’ in”) and “Brighter Hell,” all paradoxical raves that bust the envelope of traditional pop songwriting.

he music of The Watchmen flows intuitively because of relationships between band members who go back to childhood together. Greaves and Kohn (who are cousins) and Serlin were all born in 1970 and come from the same neighborhood in Winnipeg, where they met the first day of kindergarten. Segue to age 13, Serlin’s memoirs reveal, as “I was flipping through the TV channels with my older brother when we came across ‘The Kids Are Alright’ by The Who and my life changed forever. The sight and sound of Pete Townshend windmilling a gigantic E chord replaced my dreams of becoming a pro hockey player with that of becoming a rock star.”

Kohn, who considers himself the band’s musicologist, always trying to expand his knowledge of rock and pop from the ’50s onward, admits to “a lifelong obsession with music. My earliest memories involve me as a young brat dressing up like Peter Criss of Kiss, lip-synching in front of my supportive parents. Leafing through their record collection, the Beatles, Gordon Lightfoot, Billy Joel and the soundtrack from Hair made their mark on me early on.” He acquired his first drum kit around the same time that Joey got his first guitar and Danny got his first keyboard.

“I came from a very musical family,” notes Danny, who started studying piano when he was very young. “Music for me was never a decision to be made or a direction to be taken, it was always just the natural place for me to go. I didn’t realize at the time how integral the piano would be to my music life but it was the best training I could’ve had, it taught me almost everything I know now. The rest I learned from the road – how to exist and survive and create and sing.” He started joining the other two at basement jam sessions everyday, “butchering as many songs as we could figure out,” says Joey, “generally not getting very far beyond the opening riffs and driving our mothers insane.”

They formed their first band at age 16, covering songs by such artists as Squeeze, XTC and the Police, and working with a succession of bass players. They booked as many shows as they could handle throughout high school and, with the addition of bass player Pete Loewen, soon became the number one indie band in Winnipeg. By now they were The Watchmen, in recognition of Alan Moore’s classic 1980 graphic novel of the same name. In 1988, forced to choose between university and the band, they hit the mini-van trail to Toronto where they shared beds, slept on floors, and toughed it out onstage until landing a management deal and an indie recording contract.

The Watchmen’s independently-recorded debut album, McLarenFurnaceRoom (1992), named for their dungeon rehearsal space in Winnipeg’s McLaren Hotel, was produced by Chris Wardman (credits: Randy Bachman, rusty). Distributed by MCA and boosted by the singles “Cracked” and “Run and Hide,” the album was certified gold in Canada and took The Watchmen to the national level.

Prior to recording their next album, bassist Loewen departed the lineup and was replaced by Toronto-based Ken Tizzard. A native-born Newfoundlander, as a teenager he couldn’t understand why his electric bass didn’t sound like the screaming guitars on the Ozzy Osbourne records he was listening to. When he was finally set straight, he headed right for the masters: Stanley Clarke, Jaco Pastorius, and eventually Tony Levin. His broad musical preferences for hardcore, jazz and classical – everything from Bach and Bob Dylan to Stiff Little Fingers and the Dead Kennedys – made him the perfect choice to join The Watchmen for the recording of their second album.

In The Trees (1994, also on MCA), a relentless rock album produced by Mr. Colson (credits: Smashing Pumpkins, Paw, L7) and featuring the hit singles “Boneyard Tree” and “All Uncovered,” surpassed platinum sales. By the third album, Brand New Day (1996, now moved to Universal), again produced by Mr. Colson, The Watchmen had ventured into new territory with the use of piano, brass, and strings. Nevertheless, “Incarnate” and “Shut Up” paved the way on the singles charts, and the album went gold. In the wake of the corporate changes that shook their record company the following year, The Watchmen moved to EMI Music Canada, who issued SILENT RADAR and its first single, “Stereo,” in March 1998. SILENT RADAR quickly earned the group another gold album, and is now approaching platinum.

SILENT RADAR includes CD-Active capability on “Stereo,” enabling the user to unlock “private” web pages on The Watchmen’s website (located at www.thewatchmen.com) via the CD-ROM drive and the Internet. T.A.G.’s CD-Active technology, developed by Digital Renaissance, revolutionizes the concept of enriching a CD because the additional information is ever changing. The CD-activated website has the ability to provide fans with new content on a regular basis, unlike enhanced CDs where the content is fixed. This marks the first time that any band has used this technology on their CD. For The Watchmen, who enlisted former Sandman graphic artist Dave McKean to design, photograph and illustrate the SILENT RADAR CD packaging – and who are totally down with everything hi-tech, computer, science fiction/fantasy, comic book and Magic card related – it’s all part of the big picture.

Having already logged more than two thousand live shows in the decade they’ve been together, The Watchmen are road-proven world travelers who are well-known on Europe’s spring and summer festival tour circuit. They have also made three wild and wooly trips to Australia, where “Stereo” was issued in May 1999 (with immediate radio and retail acceptance) and they opened a series of large-club dates with the Screaming Jets. The Watchmen have done it all with one basic philosophy, says Serlin, “to connect with the listener and the audience and,” as Kohn adds, “to move people on an emotional level. I think we have achieved that with SILENT RADAR.”