With mega hits like “Once Bitten Twice Shy,” “Save Your Love,” and “Rock Me,” you couldn’t get through the 80s without hearing Great White on the radio. And don’t forget one of my personal favorites, “House Of Broken Love.” Ah, what a great song. Naturally, I was psyched to see Great White on the Bret Michaels Parti-Gras Tour lineup this year as I hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing them live yet. As one of my husband’s absolute favorite bands, you can imagine he was ready to see them again, as well. Recently, I got to chat with Great White’s Mark Kendall. Read on to learn the true origin of the band name, how Van Halen inspired their success and much more.
Great White Joins Bret Michaels’ Parti-Gras Tour
EPR: I saw you guys for the first time on the Bret Michaels Parti-Gras Tour at Carowinds a few weeks ago. How fun is it being on that lineup? Because, in my mind, it’s different than any other tour you see.
Mark Kendall: In what way?
EPR: I guess, Bret Michaels basically deejaying. He’s like, “Here’s my favorite song by this artist.” And I love where so many artists, that you don’t typically see together, are on the stage at the same time- kind of like a big jam session. I also saw the 2023 Parti-Gras Tour and it was one of my favorite concerts of the year. So, naturally, we were so excited to see it again in 2024. I was really glad that you guys were on the bill as well.
Mark Kendall: We love Bret Michaels. He’s not afraid to just make it like a party night. You know, maybe play a bunch of cover songs and just have a great night. Obviously, they all know him from Poison all these years, but, he likes to try different things. I think it’s really a neat thing, what he’s doing. So we’re honored to be a part of that even though we just played our Great White stuff. But yeah, he had Dee Snider up there and we’re good friends with Dee. We toured with Twisted Sister back in the day. So it was different. It was a lot of fun. It seemed like the crowd really enjoyed it. You know, he kind of brings a lot of people on stage, just making everybody a part of the show. So yeah, it was fun.
EPR: I saw LeAnn Rimes the night before, and her opening act, Johnnyswim, had said they got like a VIP tour of Carowinds and they got to ride the rides. Did you guys do anything like that?
Mark Kendall: Yeah. A couple guys in the band on the day of the show went on a bunch of rides. I didn’t go on them but the singer did and, I think, our bass player did. I think there was a roller coaster there if I remember correctly.
EPR: Yeah, there’s a lot of rides there and there’s a waterpark, or maybe two waterparks. It’s a lot of stuff to do. It has been crazy hot for touring this year…
Mark Kendall: It was really hot at Carolina. It’s been kind of hit and miss. We played a show up north that was like 110 degrees on stage. And then we played a show where we thought it was going to be hot and it wasn’t so bad. Then we played back to back shows and both of them were tolerable. We’ve been getting pretty lucky for the summer so far
EPR: On a more serious note, some days have been over 100 degrees. [It was over 100 degrees for the show at Carowinds] And, with all the lights of the stage, it has to occasionally get oppressively hot. What do you do to prevent dehydration and heat stroke?
Mark Kendall: I don’t think we’re on this stage long enough to get heat stroke but we always have something to drink. I can tell you this, I’ve been so hot on stage where, what I’ve learned from experience, when I got really super hot one time in Canada, my roadie came up with an ice towel and put it on my back and in the snap of a finger I was perfect. I learned that if you put a cold towel on the back of your neck, it just cools your whole body down almost instantaneously.
Editor’s Note: We got in line at 3 o’clock to see this show and ensure we got a good spot. Those towels that become cold when you wet them are life savers and you can get them on Amazon.
EPR: Yeah, that really does work.
Mark Kendall On Baseball Dreams & Great White’s Legacy
Mark Kendall: So you have been in the band since the beginning. And looking back over the entirety of your career, do you feel like everything turned out as it should have? If you could go back in time, would you change anything? Do you feel like you’ve reached where you want to be in life right now?
Mark Kendall: Everything’s not roses or whatever. But I’ve definitely lived my teenager dream. I mean, this is what I wanted to do. When I quit playing baseball at 18 years old, I told myself, because I’d already been playing guitar since I was nine years old, that I’m going full time music. I realize I cannot be a professional baseball player. I’m not good enough. I took my lumps in that department. There’s too many great players. I don’t hit as many home runs, I don’t run as fast. Their girlfriends are cuter. So, I just went for the full time music. It was more of a deal where it was, like, smaller goals. So I wasn’t reaching for the stars or anything. I was just like, I want to play Hollywood. So things started happening like that.
It’s almost more fun to talk about the difficult years as an up and comer and what a grind it was. Then after our stars lined up and records, making albums and touring, and radio and MTV and all that. That’s great, too. But it’s also fun to work really hard to get to that place. We’ve had really great moments to share with our friends that we grew up with and our parents. You make your parents proud. The most fun is to share it with everybody. Isn’t this cool? And keep grounded and appreciate everything, be grateful. And then we’ve had things not go so well. It’s never so bad. I think what keeps us motivated, is to keep being creative, and continue to try to do better next time. That keeps us vibrating at a frequency that we think we should be at. So, it’s been a blessed life in music for me. I’ve been able to play my guitar for 40 years in front of people. So not everybody can say that. And actually have them enjoy the music and sing along.
So I’ve always felt like…it’s almost like the songs are way bigger than I’ll ever be. So I really think the most important thing in a band is trying to make music that people can relate to and that you love. You love it first, and then you pray others will like it. That’s pretty much it. And a lot of our songs have been a soundtrack for a lot of people’s lives, you know. And we grew up with our fans, which really is special to us. Our fans are special and we’re fans ourselves. So we relate to our fans. There’s certain songs that we made that created memories for them as maybe a high schooler, or the first relationship you’re in this song came out, because we have songs that do that to us. There are certain songs where I know exactly where I was and what I was doing and that when I hear [them] on the radio, [they] bring me back to a certain place. So when people come out and watch our show, it’s different generations, too, they’re kind of reliving the memories they have and just enjoy the night.
So more of an answer to your question, I could never have dreamed that it would go this long and then we would have songs that would stand the test of time and all that. So everything was just a joy and I just tried to not take myself too serious. I still get excited when I’m driving to the store and one of our songs comes on the radio. I get goosebumps still when that happens.
EPR: That’s cool that you still have that same joy and excitement. And I’m sure you’ve played like, all over the world. But do you have a bucket list tour destination that you haven’t been to?
Mark Kendall: Yeah, we have toured most of the world but not really South America or Australia. So it would be nice to do something over there. South America, it just hasn’t happened. I don’t really know why. But we play many, many, many, many countries and Japan. Pretty much no stone has been left unturned. [We’ve played with] bands all over the world. In Europe, the only thing I think that’s different is a lot of times we’ll play on these festivals where the bands aren’t in the same genre of music. Like when you go to a concert here the bands are all like playing similar music. Over there we played a show with Black Sabbath and Bob Dylan on the same bill. They’re not afraid to really mix it up. And everybody enjoys the whole concert. It doesn’t matter, even Slayer was on that bill. So you got like total death metal, then you got this total icon like Bob Dylan and then Black Sabbath plays. It sounds crazy, but it works. So we’ve got to look at a lot of things like that, that are really enjoyable. The experience of just traveling alone, even if you strip away all the music and band is kind of a blessing in itself. You get to see the world. I wish we could see it more because we’re usually pretty busy with the routine.
A Little Inspiration From Van Halen
EPR: I read in an interview that you saw Van Halen playing a junkyard one time. What’s the weirdest place you guys have ever played?
Mark Kendall: We’ve done shows like that. When we were up and comers is when we really played a lot of people’s backyards, pretty much anywhere where we could put people in front of us we would play. We weren’t ones to deny anywhere.
EPR: Well, you never know what’s going be your big, come up moment, you know?
Mark Kendall: We were kind of inspired by Van Halen’s work ethic, because they were playing…we were both local bands that were coming up, where we lived, and we saw how much they played. And so we really wanted to do that too. We wanted to play as much as possible, just to give ourselves a chance to, you know, maybe one day somebody would be in the crowd that could help us. So we kind of went down that road and did get lucky one night that there was somebody in the crowd. That’s when we were able to start recording.
Where Did The Name “Great White” Actually Come From?
EPR: I’ve read a couple of different scenarios about how you guys came up with the name Great White. Would you like to share what is actually correct?
Mark Kendall: Jack Russell, the singer, used to call me, “Great White,” when I would play a solo within a song live. It had a lot to do with, I had a white guitar, I wore this white jumpsuit. And I’m like, one of the whitest people you’ve ever seen. So, it was just, not really a nickname that people would call me just walking down the street, but just on those moments on stage, he used to say that. When the guy was at this show in Hollywood, that thought we had potential, he gave us his card, and we went down to the record company the following day and he said that he thought there was potential, he liked a couple of the songs, he felt like we needed to work on some more songs, but he despised our name. He didn’t like our name, we were called Dante Fox, which wasn’t a name that we loved. But we kind of just surrendered to trying to think of a name at one point, right? And we were sick of thinking of names. I didn’t want to look in the encyclopedia anymore. I didn’t want to look at billboards to try to think of it. Let’s just go with this Dante Fox, okay. Nobody ever totally loved it, we just settled on it. But he despised it. We go, “Oh no. We got to think of a name again. Oh, here we go again.” And he goes, “No, I got your name: ‘Great White.'” And, at first, we didn’t like it. We didn’t think of the shark image or any kind of stuff like that. We just didn’t like the name. But we just thought that these are some of the sacrifices you have to make with the big boys.
We learned later that the night that he saw us play, he went out in front of the club in between bands, I guess he was waiting for his car or whatever, and there was a lot of people outside, smoking and whatnot. And he said that I drove by in a car, I was in the backseat of a car. I stuck my head out the window and screamed something to the crowd. That night he saw us play, Jack didn’t call me, “Great White,” so he’d never heard that. The way he heard it was when I drove by in this car, when I stuck my head out the window…I don’t know what I said. I screamed something. The kid next to him pointed to the car and said, “There goes ‘Great White.'” And when he heard that, for some reason he just said, “That’s their name. I’m getting rid of that other name they have, and we’re going to call them ‘Great White.'” So that’s how the name came about.
Mark Kendall On Finding Brett Carlisle
EPR: That’s a great name origination story. Your current lead singer, how and where did you find him?
Mark Kendall: What happened was, we had a singer, but he was more committed to his own band. They were called, “Last In Line.” And so, when they would get busy, we were supposed to get a fill in singer. We didn’t want to do that. We wanted a full time singer. So we auditioned three singers. And the one that paid the most attention to the tape – because we just took the vocals off of the live tape and had them sing some of our big songs and send it back to us. And there was only one guy that was like, seemed like he was paying attention and trying to do it good. So that was Brett Carlisle. We had him come to Vegas, and we had one rehearsal. And I was still a little bit nervous. But, you know, he sounded okay. So I felt like we could get through this. And he just totally killed it. I mean, he was so good that it became world news. After that, we asked him to do another show. And after he killed it again, we asked him, “What do you think about joining the band?” So that is how that happened. He was just filling in, kind of, and there was no thought of anything permanent.
And the very first show that he played, I used in ear headphones and his voice wasn’t that loud in my headphones. So I didn’t know he did that good. I mean, I figured he’s doing good because the crowd was reacting. But I didn’t know how good he did until after the show. People were coming up to me, saying how great he was. Well I still hadn’t heard it. But when I went home, there was a bunch of cell phone videos of this show. And when I saw that video, I’m going, “Holy God. He’s singing perfect! I can’t believe how good this guy is!” So that’s kind of how it happened, not really by design on our part. A friend of the band told us about this guy. So so we auditioned him and he won the audition. And now he’s been with the band two years.
Thanks to all the fans, the most loyal fans in the world. We’re going to continue to try to make the best music we can. And just thanks for supporting the band and loving the music. We’re totally grateful for everything.