(T-Mak World) T-Mak World spoke with Great White guitarist Mark Kendall ahead of their show at Toronto's The Rockpile on Monday August 20th. In the excerpt that follows, Mark discusses the band's new album:T-Mak: Let's start with the new album named Elation. Congratulations on Great White's 12th studio album. This is the first album the band has made with your new singer Terry Ilous. How was the experience of making this album overall?
Kendall – Really positive experience. At first Terry was just filling in for a couple of years for Jack (Russell), and when Jack couldn't come back, Terry was the obvious choice. He's just a positive guy, great to be around, and he vibrates at a frequency that is a little higher than the norm. He pumps you full of energy when you're around him. In the studio we wrote a couple of songs for the record company, I had a riff and Michael (Lardie) had a song, and we went in real quick so the company can hear what we sounded with a new singer. They gave it a go ahead and we started writing some songs. We went into the studio and Terry has this great energy and we are excited about these new things we are coming up with. It eclipsed what we had prepared apart from 2 songs and we ended up writing 10 new songs in the studio – something we never did in the past. We went with the moment and let ourselves be free and recording ideas that were so fresh and new. It was really exciting to work that way. The entire band was present for the entire recording session which never happened in the past, everyone wanted to be there and it was a total group effort. We are happy with the album.
T-Mak: You co-produced the album, describe to us what that entails?
Kendall: You know, I just wanted to get involved. The last album I co-produced was Once Bitten and I had removed myself from the production so I could have been a guitar player. But this time I wanted to get involved because I do a lot of side projects, I produce other bands which is my hobby outside of Great White. I just wanted to get involved for an extra pair of ears for Michael. He welcomed and and said hey we haven't done this for a very long time and we are a good team". I had Michael to bounce ideas off of and he would bounce ideas of me. Its kind of a trip when you are producing your own band. If he's doing something I stand over him and say why don't you try this or that, and he would do the same for me. For the vocals for example, Terry had never had anyone produce his vocals – they just let him sing – he has a library of chops, he is like Paul Rodgers and I wanted those to be used for more of a surprise dynamic element to where it wasn't overdone. So we got really involved with that and Terry said he loved the working process and it elevated him to a new level. Normally we write a song, rehears for days and we go in , this time we really just let ourselves be free and you can hear the energy in the record. For the most part the feedback has been "wow you can really hear the energy in that record" Check out the rest of the interview here.
