MARK KENDALL On New GREAT WHITE Songs: ‘We Have Three Ready To Go, But We Have Seven On Tape’

In a new interview with Mind Behind The Music, the podcast hosted by John White, an American guitarist and composer from Albany, New York, GREAT WHITE guitarist Mark Kendall confirmed that the band is still working on new music with Brett Carlisle, who was officially named the band’s new vocalist in October 2022. Brett joined the group as the replacement for Andrew Freeman (ex-LAST IN LINE),who sang for GREAT WHITE for only five months. Asked if he and his GREAT WHITE bandmates have fully formed new songs ready to be released, Mark said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We have three ready to go, but we have seven on tape. That’s just me and him. The other guys have — [GREAT WHITE rhythm guitarist/keyboardist] Michael Lardie has a bunch of stuff. So when you put it all together, we probably have 16 or 17 songs, maybe. Not all finished, not all totally finished, but I have three ready to go that we played in soundcheck and stuff. Not everything carved in stone yet, but just the basic ideas.”

Regarding how the GREAT WHITE songs usually come together, Mark said: “I’ll show them the riff at soundcheck and they just launch in and just start catching on. And you can kind of tell if it’s gonna work or not just by the groove and stuff. I’m speaking through the music. I don’t even have to say, ‘Hey, check out this idea.’ I just start playing, and they all come in.”

On the topic of what it has been like to work with Carlisle, Kendall said: “He’s been in the band almost four years. He’s totally awesome, and it’s just a blessing to keep this thing going. Our fans are so damn loyal. It’s just incredible. Everywhere we go, there’s tons of fans in front of the stage, so we’re really having a good time.”

After White noted that Carlisle is younger than the other members of GREAT WHITE, which probably brings back some of that passion and the energy that they had when they first started, Kendall concurred. “Oh, yeah. Not to mention, he’s kind of an old soul in a way. It’s kind of a trip. It’s like he fits in — the way he looks and the way he sings, he fits in so good. I mean, even in photo shoots, it doesn’t look that weird or anything. It’s not like he’s standing with CROSBY, STILLS & NASH or something, or THE ROLLING STONES or something like that. So it’s kind of a trip in how well he fits for being such a young man. He just barely pushes 30. So, it’s awesome. And he sings the songs perfect… So, in that regard, it’s good for the band, ’cause they go see the show and they’re going, ‘This is what I heard on the radio all my life.’ So, it works in that regard. But we’re making new music in the studio, and he just sounds totally amazing on our new stuff, so we’re real excited to have him in the band… We finally have a singer, after all these years, that’s absolutely great. We’re not just settling. The dude’s badass, so that makes it really fun.”

Asked if he thinks GREAT WHITE‘s musical direction has changed as a result of Carlisle‘s addition to the band, Mark said: “Not at all. We just write the best songs we can, and the best ones make the record. That’s the way we’ve always been. Nothing has changed. He’s an ’80s rocker to his core, and all the little cover bands he’s been in playing our type stuff, so he’s all about it, man.”

On the topic of Brett‘s live performance, Mark said: “He has killer energy. He’s not scripted. In other words, in between the songs, he knows how to get the crowd going. He’s very natural with that. And he really digs the fans. Nothing overwhelms the guy. He’s just in the moment, and he’s respectful. He’s happy with his position in the band. Yeah, he has a lot of energy on stage, and he sings perfect every night. He loves all the ’80s stuff, and he’s really talented, man. Like, when I play him new stuff, he launches right in and starts… He hears it, you know? So he’s really good in that way. Live, he’s just all over the place on stage. He just rocks. [He’s] just a good guy to be around.”

This past March, Mark told the Thunder Underground podcast about the musical direction of the new GREAT WHITE music: “Well, there’s stuff that really rocks, and then kind of mid-tempo stuff, kind of in the FOREIGNER range on a couple things. And then a couple of other things are almost like if our first album [1984’s self-titled effort] and [1987’s] ‘Once Bitten’ had a kid. The energy of our first album, but just a new flavor to it. We’ve got a couple of ballads, but they’re more blues-type — real blues with killer hooks. We’ve got one song that’s really cool. But it’s not a sappy ballad, like a ‘Save Your Love’ type ballad. It’s more slow blues with a groove or whatever, but I guess you could consider it a ballad. It’s just the way the chord structures are. You’ll be able to hear a lot of different sides to this guy’s voice, which is kind of the idea. But we want it to rock. We wanna show a lot of energy too.”

Earlier in March, Carlisle spoke to Seb Di Gatto of The Metal Gods Meltdown about his songwriting chemistry with Kendall and Lardie. He said: “Me and Mark, we write really well together. I live in Alabama, he lives in California, so there’s a bunch of space between us, but he has sent me stuff and we’ve sent some things back and forth. We have finished three songs in, like, a matter of a few hours before, just writing. We clicked so well. And same with Michael. We work really well together. Me and Michael are better on harmonies. And we’ve had some really cool ideas as far as layers and feel kind of things. But Mark, he’ll come up with a riff and he’ll start scat singing over it and just kind of showing me what he’s thinking about it. And so I’ll take the syllables that he’s saying and then turn it into a couple of words and then turn it into a chorus or something like that. And I’m, like, ‘Okay, now I gotta make the rest of the song make sense. I’ve gotta make verses out of this, ’cause we have a chorus, we know what the song’s about, so I need to write a song around whatever it is now.’ And he just gets so stoked about it. It’s cool.”

Asked if fans can expect to get a new studio album from GREAT WHITE in 2026, Brett said: “We’ve recorded a couple of demos, but we haven’t been to the ‘studio studio’ to lay down tracks. We have some songs to do it, and yes, that is the plan, but I can’t say confidently any dates or when we will be doing it. But we have the stuff. And I think the hardest part of it is, because we all live so far apart and we play a lot of weekend shows, so we’re usually home three or four days at a time, and so it’s a lot to coordinate. But, yeah, we all wanna make it happen.”

Carlisle made his live debut with GREAT WHITE on September 24, 2022 at the Cannery Casino Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

According to Brett, he felt welcomed by his new bandmates and the GREAT WHITE fans from the get-go.

“After meeting [the GREAT WHITE guys], they’re all super-cool dudes,” he told Kevin McKay of the 99 Rock WKSM FM radio station. “In Vegas, we had a rehearsal the day before, and I already knew half the songs well enough to be able to do it. So I wanted to do the best that I could on ’em. But after we hung out, everybody was cool and stuff. I mean, it’s a big crowd. I love big crowds; they’re fun.”

Carlisle has been playing guitar and singing since the age of eight and counts bands like VAN HALEN, SKID ROW and METALLICA as his main influences.

In May 2022, GREAT WHITE announced that it had parted ways with Malloy and had replaced him with Freeman. Malloy had been in GREAT WHITE for nearly four years, having joined the group in 2018 following the departure of Terry Ilous.

Ilous, frontman of ’80s L.A. hard rockers XYZ, joined GREAT WHITE in 2010 after stepping in for touring vocalist Jani Lane (WARRANT).

The Ilous-led GREAT WHITE released two albums, 2012’s “Elation” and 2017’s “Full Circle”, before Terry was dismissed from the group.