Trading life on the road for life in the lab

By Patrick Flajole and Aitor Zabalegui

Sean Watts wasn't always a biology professor. In the '90s, he took the stage as the lead singer of his alternative band, Slackjaw.

Today, Watts' living room holds bookcases packed with literature, a wall hardly able to contain his burgeoning CD collection and a victoriously-large print of Barack Obama declaring "Yes we did."

Before committing himself more fully to his work in biology and becoming a professor at Santa Clara, Watts was involved with Slackjaw for several years.

The Santa Clara wanted to know a bit more about his experiences both on stage and as a professional artist and a professional music appreciator.

The Santa Clara: Tell us a bit more about your past life.

Sean Watts: We started in 1992 and our last show was in late '97, so you guys were like 11 or something. We were kind of a grungy-alternative group, but our bassist was Cuban.

It's kind of indescribable, poppy -- but with a weird hyperactive bass player.

We played on a semi-promotional label called Aware. Some of the other bands on the label that we played with were Guster, Better Than Ezra and Hootie and the Blowfish.

TSC: Wow, Hootie and the Blowfish, huh?

SW: All those guys were a bunch of dorks. Yeah, yeah, Sublime even wanted to open up for us at one point.

We were all at or around the same level of popularity at the time, it's just they stuck it out.

I mean you guys probably didn't even hear about Guster until just a couple years ago. They've been playing (shoddy) shows on the road, five or six nights a week for nine years before they actually started to make it.

TSC: So the wait for success just wasn't in the cards for you guys?

SW: When we were breaking up, right at the very end, we had this decision between riding our current wave, because music goes in cycles and at the time, this was the beginning of when ska was breaking onto the scene.

Pop music was coming out of a guitar-driven phase and we were right ensconced in that really hard guitar-driven music.

We were faced with this decision that would give us advertising and get us all over the place, but we'd be likely to have to ride it out.

TSC: Obviously your sound was not quite a fit at the time, but were there any other artistic differences you would attribute to the breakup?

SW: Not really. Dan, our bassist, was the creative driving force of the band. He had a knack for hooks and lyrics.

We were fully collaborative. We worked really well in the studio and on stage.

TSC: What was the problem then?

SW: When you're in a band it's like being married to five guys. It's like a five-year relationship where they want to get married and you don't see that happening.

Any conflicts that came up were boiled down to our differing levels of commitment.

There's no way to do anything but music when you're in a band. It's your life. When you're on tour, you're driving between shows.

TSC: With fame potentially on the horizon, you chose biology. There just wasn't space on the palate of Sean Watts to paint everything?

SW: Looking back on it, I miss playing because it was so much a facet of my life.

Art, music and biology were always the three things that have been a huge part of my life, and basically I gave up two of those for the one, and I don't regret the decision at all.

But you certainly do miss having a band.

Now I'm kind of stuck because there's no way I'd want to actually get in a band that really wants to do something and the only people who play good music are people who want to do something. It's a catch-22.

TSC: I see. That's very interesting. How have you kept music a part of your life since leaving the band?

SW: Having grown up with my dad and my brothers and sisters across multiple generations kind of instilled in me a constant search for new music, and I just kind of kept up. I'll pick up the guitar every now and then.

Contact Patrick Flajole at pflajole@scu.edu and Aitor Zabalegui at azabalegui@scu.edu or (408) 554-1918.