There And Back Again : Clint Roth and Big Jaw

by EA Poorman

Can you remember that first record that blew your socks off? You know which one I’m talking about. It was the first time you heard an album, or just a song, that stopped you dead in your tracks and made you, by unforeseen force, sit and listen. That record that changed you, man. “Thriller was the first record that I remember being enthralled with”, says Clint Roth, the man behind the rock ‘n roll machine known as Big Jaw.  “The next record that had such a big impact on me was years later when I was about 12 and I found AC/DC’s Back In Black in my sister’s cassette collection. I don’t know where that came from. I don’t ever remember her listening to it. I had never even heard of AC/DC up to that point. I think listening to that tape at that time had just about as much effect on me as any piece of music could have on anybody. That record completely changed how I felt about music.”

Clint Roth, in his own way, is making the kind of music that will someday fall into the hands of some kid living between “nowhere special” and “nothing doing” and will change that kid’s perspective on life and open his eyes to the world of rock ‘n roll. Roth is the mastermind behind the modern-rock-alternative titan known as Big Jaw. As Big Jaw, Roth makes music that lies somewhere in that realm of heavy rock where Queens of the Stone Age like to dabble and cover Zeppelin riffs in street grit and glitter. Where Stone Temple Pilots and Sly and the Family Stone get together and trade riffs and shots of Maker’s Mark. Roth’s own take on the heavy groove and even heavier riff is a magical one. But none of this musical goodness was instantaneous. Like everyone, Clint Roth had to start somewhere. “I am from the Fort Wayne area”, says Roth as we talk about his formative years near Fort Wayne. “I grew up in Leo and lived there until I went away for school in Florida.  After school I moved back to Fort Wayne for a few months, then headed out to California. The plan was to move to L.A. and try to intern at a recording studio or a label. While I was at school in Florida I made a friend who was moving to San Francisco after graduation and he and his fiancee invited me to visit them for a few weeks so, they being the only people I knew in California, I took them up on that.  I stayed with them for about three weeks and while I was there I made phone calls to every recording studio I could find about interning in San Francisco but had no luck. So, I got a number of a friend of a friend in Pasadena who was willing to let me stay at her place so I decided it was time to pack up and head south. I told my friend I would be leaving at the end of the week and the very next day I went out to my car to go buy some LA maps (this was way before smart phones and GPS) and found that my car had been stolen. The cop that came to write the report told me to write it off and forget about it because it was more than likely parts in Mexico by then. So, I lived in San Francisco for two years.”

But, with just a chance encounter the former Hoosier saw his life begin to change. “One of my Dad’s friends was very good friends with Kelly Harris’s (Von Iva) parents and without knowing me, she took me in”, said Roth. “She let me stay on her couch. She fed me. She introduced me to her friends. She was great. One night she took me to a warehouse party and on the way we stopped to buy booze and I bought a bottle of Maker’s Mark. On the way into the party she stopped to say hi to one of her friends and she introduced me. It was producer/engineer Billy Anderson and I recognized his name from the credits of a Mr. Bungle CD I had been listening to and reading the liner notes of just the day before. I asked if this was him and he said it was. I told him about not having any success getting any recording studios to talk to me and I asked if he had any advice. He told me if I shared my bottle of Maker’s with him he’d tell me whatever I wanted to know. I never made it inside that party (as far as I can remember) but we sat outside and drank whiskey and talked. He gave me a phone number for Toast Studios and the managers name and told me to call and tell them that Billy Anderson said to hire me. I called the first chance I got and got an interview and that turned out to be an amazing experience. I learned just about everything I know about recording there assisting for Jacquire King (who went on to produce Kings of Leon and a million other things), Jason Carmer (who produced Third Eye Blind, Kimya Dawson ,Explosions In The Sky and million other things), Chris Haynes (Grammy nominated mixer and also the guy who mastered my EP and mixed “Calling Out”). By the time I went to LA two years later (after they found my car in Napa) I was 23 and already up the ranks as a first engineer on a few major label projects. Rising up the ladder in LA where you can expect to answer phones for a few years before you get your big break to be an assistant and possibly never rise above that unless your lucky, I hit the jackpot by having my car stolen and being stranded in SF where there was considerably less competition but still some big projects being done.  Possibly one of the most fortuitous car thefts of all time.”