Brett Carlisle’s smartphone ran out of juice. He was walking down Broadway Street in Nashville with his girlfriend and his mom, pointing out to Mom a honk-tonk or two he’d played shows at before.
Luckily, he had his backpack with him. Carlisle, a 25-year-old Birmingham-based rock singer, had one of those little portable chargers in his backpack. He got the charger out and plugged his phone in.
Moments later, the phone had charged up just enough to power-on again when a call came through.
He could see on the caller ID that the call was from Michael Lardie, the multi-instrumentalist and backing vocalist from Great White, the bluesy Los Angeles hard-rock band whose signature hit is their fantastic 1989 cover of Ian Hunter’s glam classic “Once Bitten, Twice Shy.”
Brett Carlisle sings onstage with hard-rock band Great White. (Courtesy Nita Reddick)
Carlisle had recently done a couple recent fill-in gigs with Great White as their singer. Those two shows took place in Las Vegas and New York. After videoclips surfaced online, fans were raving on social media about how good the band sounded with Carlisle at the mic.
Now, Lardie, founding guitarist Mark Kendall, longtime drummer Audie Desbrow and bassist Scott Snyder were gathered around Lardie’s phone set to speakerphone.
They told Carlisle they liked how the shows went. Then they asked him if he’d want to do it some more.
“And I’m like, ‘If you think that I’m doing the songs justice, and if you like what I’m doing then sure, I’ll be your dude,’” Carlisle recalls of his response. Yes, Carlisle is now Great White’s new dude, um, frontman.
He’s understandably stoked. “I grew up a fan and really liking their stuff, so I think it’s cool to be a part of,” says Carlisle, checking in for this interview via video chat. He speaks in a sweet, easy drawl. “We’ve only had two shows. And the response from both the shows have been really, really good.”
Brett Carlisle sings onstage with hard-rock band Great White. (Courtesy Nita Reddick)
The very first song Carlisle ever sang with Great White onstage was “Desert Moon,” a hard-driving rock hit from 1991 LP “Hooked,” one of the band’s best studio albums. That took place at Las Vegas’ Cannery Casino Hotel on Sept. 24.
He had experience singing the band’s material. All or Nothing, the Birmingham heavy-rock group Carlisle founded as a teenager, had covered three songs -- minor-key ballad “Save Your Love,” soulful epic “Rock Me” and high-velocity “Lady Red Light” – off Great White’s 1987 breakthrough album “Once Bitten.”
Last year, All or Nothing happened to be playing the basement club-sized venue at New York state’s Turning Stone Casino the same night Great White was headlining the casino’s main venue. After Great White’s show was over, bassist Scott Snyder and drummer Audie Desbrow came down to the club venue and caught the end of All or Nothing’s set.
Carlisle’s manager has longtime connections to the Great White camp. This year when the band was looking for a fill-in, Carlisle’s name was brought up and they reached out. Upon request, Carlisle laid down some vocals on digital recordings of Great White songs and his manager submitted them to the band.
Great White also auditioned other singers. The members of Great White liked what they heard on Carlisle’s audition tape, so they sent him a setlist to learn.
“We had a rehearsal the day before in Las Vegas,” says Carlisle, describing the run-up to his debut. “Met the guys and everybody was super cool. And it just kind of clicked. It was definitely short notice because of the whole fill-in situation, and so I had to cram a bunch of lyrics. But it was cool, and I think it went well.”
Brett Carlisle sings onstage with hard-rock band Great White. (Courtesy Nita Reddick)
At 25, Carlisle is more than two Millie Bobby Browns younger than Kendall, Lardie and Desbrow. He was born the year after Great White released their eighth studio album.
With his lean frame, fresh face and gushing blond curls, Carlisle can evoke a young Robert Plant. But this isn’t some rock-band equivalent of a trophy wife. Carlisle sings with impressive range and nuanced feel, both requisites for vintage Great White.
“I just want to learn from them,” Carlisle says of his new bandmates “It’s just really cool to be included in what I’ve grown up listening to, like looking at the CDs and everything. And then now people are coming up after the shows asking me to sign like original Great White cassettes and stuff. And I’m sitting here feeling like I’m not worthy. Because I didn’t record that. But I’m like, I just sang with them, so, sure, if you want me to.”
Carlisle’s favorite songs to sing with Great White include “Stick It,” off the band’s raw 1984 self-titled debut album, and “Rock Me.”
There are successful precedents of a talented, much younger young singer energizing a classic band. Adam Lambert and Queen. And 34-year-old Erik Gronwall is killing it right with Skid Row.
Just as long as the singer can summon the tone, melody and energy of a band’s signature sound – and get along with everybody – that’s all that matters.
From what guitarist Mark Kendall said of Carlisle during a recent interview, things are off to a hot start. “He just nailed our songs,” Kendall told Tulsa Music Stream, as transcribed by rock-news website Blabbermouth. “People loved him at the gig itself, not just the press. He really loves the idea of being in the band, and he really throws down on stage. I was really surprised about that. And he asked a lot of questions. He’s just a good guy.”
Back when Carlisle was a child, his family would have the local classic rock station playing on a radio while they did yard work. That’s his earliest memory of Great White’s music, hearing “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” then. In his early teens, on his own Carlisle found “House of Broken Love,” a simmering single from Great White’s 1989 LP double-platinum LP “…And Twice Shy.”
“I was like, whoa, this this is a lot different than the song on the radio,” Carlisle recalls. “So I just went deeper into their stuff and ended up really liking their slow songs because I really liked Jack’s voice and his delivery on him.”
Carlisle, who resides near Gardendale, a Birmingham suburb, got his first guitar at age 8 for Christmas. His dad listened to a lot of Van Halen and Carlisle told him he wanted to learn how to make sounds like that, meaning Eddie Van Halen’s genius fretwork.
Around that same time, Carlisle heard the music of New Jersey rockers Skid Row, and he was blown away by the band’s vocalist, the unfairly gifted Sebastian Bach. “It was just high and loud and awesome,” Carlisle says, recalling why he connected with Bach’s singing style.
Carlisle, who was already making progress on guitar, announced he now wanted to be a singer. His dad was skeptical. “He was like, ‘Most frontmen, they have a look or a personality about them but they’re not that great of singers. When you can cover somebody like Sebastian Bach, I’ll call you a singer.’”
A very young Carlisle responded by recording himself singing Skid Row’s great power-ballad “I Remember You” on his phone’s voice memo app. He sent the clip to his dad, which won him over immediately. Since Carlisle got the Great White gig, his proud dad’s been besieged with congrats on Facebook.
Carlisle attended Oak Grove High School in Bessemer, another Birmingham suburb. He got his start as a frontman by singing with high school friends at Birmingham area bars, like the Green Lantern and The Mill, between other band’s sets. Soon he and his own band, which became All or Nothing, became a local draw. They covered Skid Row songs like “18 and Life” as well as tunes by Rage Against the Machine and Metallica.
Flash forward to this year, and All or Nothing has a new solid six-song EP titled “AON.” The track “Benjamin Franklin” conveys the Sunset-Strip-for-the-TikTok-age heat Carlisle and the band bring. AON’s lineup also boasts guitarist Jacob Mann, drummer Skylar McCain and bassist Ian Smith.
On December 9, All or Nothing will play a hometown show at WorkPlay with Dokken guitar hero George Lynch and XYZ, the L.A.-via-France band known for 1989 single “Inside Out” and whose frontman Terry Illous sang for Great White at one point. Lynch, AON and Illous have collaborated on a track called “Dead or Alive.” And Carlisle has previously belted Dokken songs, including “Kiss of Death” and “Lightning Strikes,” onstage with Lynch.
Since Great White parted ways with original frontman Jack Russell around 2008, the band has gone through several singers. Carlisle replaces previous singer Andrew Freeman, also of Dio spinoff band Last In Line, who replaced Mitch Malloy, a vocalist best known for reportedly once auditioning for Van Halen. Around 2010, former Warrant frontman Jani Lane toured as Great White’s singer. Unfortunately in 2011 Lane was found dead in a Los Angeles area Comfort Inn with an empty bottle of vodka beside him.
Meanwhile, Russell formed and performs with his own version of the band, called Jack Russell’s Great White. In a wide-ranging 2021 AL.com interview, Kendall told me, “I don’t have any ill will towards Jack Russell or anything. He has his battles. And I do wish him well. I haven’t spoken to him for a few years, but it’s not I’m not it’s not like I’m avoiding him or anything. We just both have our own lives.”
Like many bands with a long history, Great White has endured some tragedy, not the least of which was the deadly fire at a 2003 Rhode Island gig. But the band has played on, lived and learned (Kendall has been sober for many years now) and fans love Great White’s unique tasteful mix of gutsy rock and ethereal acoustic music. So more power to them.
Brett Carlisle sings onstage with hard-rock band Great White. (Courtesy Nita Reddick)
Carlisle says after covering Great White songs in his own band, it’s thrilling to be onstage now with Kendall shredding to his left. “One thing that I really like about them,” Carlisle says, “is they play such close attention to the music and the tones of everything. Like sticking really true to the album.”
And that’s what Carlisle aims to do for Great White too, he says. “I just want to do the songs justice, because that’s what people expect to hear. They want to go to the shows and hear the songs the way they remember them, the way they know them. It’s not about me and how many high notes I can hit or anything like that. I just want to give the people, and the band, what they want.”
Carlisle’s next show with Great White is Nov.18 at the MidFlorida Event Center in Port St. Lucie. More info at officialgreatwhite.net. Carlisle says band’s sets are usually 90 minutes or an hour, depending on if it’s a headlining gig, festival slot, etc. Asked if there might be an Alabama show in Great White’s future, he laughs and says, “I’ll see what I can do.”
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