Texas in general was always good to us. People were always fun and enthusiastic. What else can you ask for?

People like their rock and roll.

Yeah, definitely. I can’t wait to get out there. In fact I’m trying to get some dates going through Texas and Oklahoma in August with my new group. Maybe we’ll get out there again pretty soon. It would be nice.

You were with Great White for a number of years. What were some of your best memories of being in that band?

I don’t know. Probably simple little goofy stuff. Good times with the guys or with different bands. It’s really hard to nail down anything particular. Just like in anything there were good times and there were some rough times and not so fun times. Nothing in particular though stands out. I think I had a pretty good relationship with a few of the guys in the band and we had a lot of fun. We’d do things together and go out and paint the town red every once in a while. It was fun. It was all good.

I know that being in a band is like being in a family of sorts.

Yeah, for the most part. A dysfunctional family.

Oh, absolutely. They’re the best kind.

Totally. I hear you.

Do you ever talk to any of the guys?

No, not often. Audie is the one that I’ve had the most contact over the years. Audie and I have actually played shows together and he’s come out and helped me with different things. I talk with Michael once in a blue moon but yeah, that’s pretty much it. They’re doing their thing and I do my thing and that’s just how it’s kind of worked out.

So Jack didn’t ask you if you wanted to be back in the band when he decided to reunite with everybody?

There were some discussions. It was very brief though. I’ve been very busy with a company that I helped start here in Irvine, California. It just requires all of my time. I just can’t leave for extended periods at all. That’s what it was looking like at that point so I had to opt out. As much fun as it would have been, my responsibilities here with this company just outweighed that at the time. The company has been doing business for about five years now. We’ve done about six million CDs for emerging bands so I’ve got 35 employees. It’s a major undertaking so I’m a little distracted unfortunately but maybe someday in the future.

Yeah, it’s called DiskFaktory and you started it in 2002.

Yeah, 2002 or 2001. Right around there. I partnered with Guitar Center and Musician’s Friend and basically the company kind of exploded. As soon as we started conversing with those guys, we just ended up growing like crazy. The company actually made it onto Inc. magazine’s 500 fastest growing companies in 2005 so it’s been a really interesting ride, that’s for sure. It’s a different world from the rock and roll touring thing. It’s been fun. It’s been fun in its own way.

What led you to start a company?

I don’t know. I’ve always been a kind of entrepreneurial person and after I got out of Great White I started a couple of different companies. High tech type companies and I was involved with a couple of start ups and I like that. I like that kind of environment where it’s an entrepreneurial thing and you just get out there and hustle and try to make things happen and develop products or services. That’s just what I do I guess. That’s my makeup for the most part.

I think that’s absolutely awesome. I had seen something on the Internet where they were talking about different entrepreneurs who had been in the music industry and you were one of them and I think one of the chicks from the B-52s and I think a guy who used to be a drummer for Blink 182.

Oh, yeah. That guy has a clothing line which I get. This is a different kind of similar endeavor. That was cool. It’s weird to get recognized. Not like somebody seeing you on the street and recognizing you but to be recognized for a different kind of achievement. More of a business kind of achievement which is cool.

Were you surprised to be recognized by that magazine?

Yeah, I guess so. Basically one morning I was at the gym riding a bicycle and I had this magazine and I was reading this business magazine. It was Inc. magazine and I saw this thing about 500 fastest growing companies. I saw all these companies listed in there and I went “hell, my company should be in here.” We just submitted it and what happens is they actually go through quite an extensive auditing of your company to make sure that you’re for real and you’re not just a bunch of guys trying to get some PR out of it. They came and they audited us and they checked us out and that’s how you get in. That’s how we made it in.

That’s awesome.

Yeah, it’s pretty neat. It was neat. I’m really proud of it. Besides I always have had the gold records and platinum records and those are nice little trophies. I don’t mean to call them little to belittle them but they’re trophies for the most part. So I finally got another kind of trophy which I think stands up as an accomplishment. It felt really good to do that. I’m still very involved with music. I just flew in yesterday morning from a session I did up in northern California for a couple of days with another artist so I’m still busy. I still play and try to keep my chops up so that I stay relevant as much as possible.

I did an e-mail interview with you many, many moons ago right after you left Great White and in the interim you had done a release called Tombstone Shuffle. It was cool to see that it was still available for sale.

It’s so funny you ask me that. Somebody asked me the other day about it. They asked me if they could have one and I said I don’t have one. The only way you can get it I guess is on Amazon.com or Ebay.

Or CDBaby I think.

If somebody is selling it on CDBaby I’m going to be upset.

I think it was CDBaby. I could be wrong.

Either or, it’s out there. The reason why it’s funny is because I had a CD box of my own stuff. My little box of my musical accomplishments. My little archive. Everything I had done with other bands. Other studio work I’ve done. Everything I’d done with Great White. All the hard to find imports that I knew that I was on. Live stuff. Singles. My own release Tombstone Shuffle. The Japanese release. The European release. My latest stuff with Anna’s Brother. I had it all in this one box, right? And of course somebody out of either my car or my office lifted that one box. Stole my entire music career that I had this whole archive of. It just disappeared. It is gone and the only two copies I had of that record were in that box. Yeah, it’s pretty funny. The only place to get it is to go on Ebay. I actually have to go on Ebay and buy it myself now if I want one. It’s pretty funny. That’s Murphy’s Law I guess. I don’t know.

I think somebody needs their ass kicked.

Me too. There was some cool stuff in there. It’s just something. It’s just a material thing. It’s just memories but all the memories are in my head so it’s all good.

Yeah, I’ve got some really cool shit. You guys did that Live In London show that I’ve got.

I had that.

There’s the Live In New York show that I have.

I had that.

There was something that you guys released. The Blues EP. I have that. I have all sorts of wild shit. You guys were my favorite band.

Those are some good ones. Those were the ones that I had that I knew were pretty rare. You can’t find those. There’s the Live At The Marquee.

I have that one too.

That’s a good one too. That was a good night. That was a really good night. The band was on. We were on point that night. It was pretty good.

I’ve also got two different versions of Recovery: Live. I think there’s another version floating out there now.

I don’t know if I’m on any of the Recovery: Live stuff. There’s one CD that was put out recently that was kind of a mishmash of some outtakes that we had done. We do “Love Removal Machine” or something. That record, I’ve seen a couple of reviews. We didn’t get very good reviews on it. It was fun. It was nice to hear it because it took me back to those days when we were doing those sessions. I don’t know why we did those. We learned a bunch of songs just to have some different stuff to play and to get ourselves into the right mood for recording the next record. It was a neat little record, too. I have one of those I bought. I think I bought one off the Internet. What are you going to do?

I hope whoever stole that shit reads this article and feels very, very fucking guilty.

They should.

They should because that’s not good. You have this new band called Anna’s Brother which I guess used to be called Revision 6. Why the name change?

Besides the fact that after a while all these bands started popping up with numbers in their names, that was kind of a drag. What made us totally make the change was a friend of mine had a video producer hear the songs that we did for Anna’s Brother and he loved the band. He loved the music and said “look, I want to shoot a video.” I was like “well yeah, that’s great but who’s going to pay for it?” He said “don’t worry about that. I just want to make a video for this music.” I said okay, so they proceeded to do an unbelievable video shoot. I don’t know if you’ve seen those videos on our MySpace page but they’re shot in HD widescreen. They’re absolutely gorgeous. We did one song called “Used To Be” and then another song called “Sadie” with actually just animation. They just went all the way with it. We had a big video premier at The Whiskey and these guys were like “great, we’ve done these videos for you but your band name sucks.” They said they thought they had earned the right to force us to change our name to something better. My email handle has always been Anna’s Brother because I have a sister named Anna and they said they liked Anna’s Brother. I said okay so we changed it right there and that was it. That’s the story.

I was on your MySpace and you’ve got four songs on there. My favorite one is “Shoot For Tuesday”. I love that song.

Yeah, we’re really lucky. Actually that’s where I just was up north in that same studio working with that producer, Sylvia Massey.

That lady is quite a powerhouse in that field.

Yeah, she’s awesome. I really like her a lot. I went up there to play guitar on some tracks that she’s doing for this young artist. I tell you, we’re lucky to work with those folks. They’re really cool and hopefully we’ll be able to finish the rest of the record with them pretty soon. That’s what I’m hoping.

I definitely hope so because I love those four songs and I’d like to get something solid like a CD into my hot little hands for a review. I really love that song “Shoot For Tuesday” and I also like “Never Say Never”. It’s just a good rocking song.

Yeah, well hopefully we’ll get to Texas too and we’ll get to play live for everybody out there.

When do you think the record will be done?

Well, it’s one of those things. It’s a chick in the egg. We’ve got to make sure we have a place to sell it so that’s been one of the hardest things. I’d imagine we’d get back up in the studio around October and hopefully finish it up before the end of the year. That’s my goal right now but we’ve got about six more tunes to round out the record and then see where it takes us. It’s going to be good. It really is. We put a lot of heart and soul into it. It’s a little bit different. I purposely started the band without any ties to Great White. I didn’t use my name.

I noticed that.

I tried to make it really just a pure thing so it just would be its own thing. Not because I’m embarrassed or anything. Just because I wanted it to be a pure endeavor and it’s gone pretty good. Everybody seems to like the stuff a lot so we just feel really lucky. Hopefully we’ll get to finish it off and make it a real record.

I know what you mean. I’ve seen that so many times in the past like for example when Bruce Kulick left KISS and he started his band Union. People started bitching and complaining about how Union doesn’t sound like KISS. It wasn’t supposed to sound like KISS. It was supposed to sound like something completely different.

There you go.

Obviously you don’t want to run into the same issue of people bitching about Anna’s Brother not sounding like Great White. Well, it’s not supposed to. Great White is Great White and you can’t replicate that in any shape, form, or fashion. Anna’s Brother is going to be Anna’s Brother.

Thank you. Yeah, that’s what we’re going for. That genre of music and the whole Rocklahoma crowd is so specific. It doesn’t lend itself to experimentation. My sister Anna had a studio in Huntington Beach and I used to go down there and play with these different bands. Alternative bands, Christian bands, alt-rock, grunge almost kind of bands, everything. The neat thing I liked about it was that they were always open to using different sounding instruments or just anything different. That’s just the one thing I really wanted to get away from. From having to have this template that you had to have in that genre of music. What we’re trying to do is just make it the way it is and that’s why I didn’t want to say anything about what I’d done in the past. I didn’t want anybody to have like what you just said any preconceived notion of “well, how come it doesn’t sound like this? How come there’s not a guitar solo? Where’s the guitar solo?” Stuff like that. I just wanted it to be what it is and take it for what it is.

I haven’t had the opportunity to get my little paws on that but how does this differ from that?

A lot. I think when I did Tombstone Shuffle, I was in a still very blues, hard rock head space. I had never gotten to play guitar on a professional recording. I shouldn’t say that. I had done sessions and stuff but I’d been playing bass in Great White forever and I’d been playing guitar since I was eight years old. I can play and I wanted to make sure that when I made that record that people were going to hear it and go “damn, that guy can play.” That’s where my head was at. It’s pretty guitar heavy so that’s the difference. But that kind of music lends itself to that. To guitar solos. It’s just kind of over the top guitar stuff so that’s what it is. If anything I got a lot of comments and even in the European press they would review the record and say “wow, this guy sounds like a mixture between Sebastian and Jack Russell.” I’d listen back and go “wow, you know maybe there is a little bit of that in my voice.” I listened to Jack forever and he’s a great singer. Some of that must have rubbed off and it definitely shows up in that record for sure. Once you hear it you’ll go “oh, okay. I get it.” Anna’s Brother is a totally different thing. It’s more about the tunes. It’s more about the song quality.

I thought it was cool that you’re in the lead vocalist position now.

I like it. I like it because I can say what I want. When you’re playing your instrument only in a group, you don’t get to have a say. Not so much to not have a say but your views on things just get to come across really. I at least get to put my views on things out there through lyrics and stuff. That is way important to me.

You’ve been doing gigs around California and you’re hoping to spread it out a little bit now.

Yeah, I’m at the point where I can do it so it would be nice. We’ll get out and play around but we’ve never really gone out and played for several weeks at a time. That may be in our future. I really would like to get out again into places I know that the band’s going to do well. I think definitely in the Great Lakes area, Texas, and the South we would do great business. I’ve got friends that are out there doing it on an indie level and having a great time and making a lot of friends and doing pretty good business. I think I might jump in.

I definitely can’t wait to see you guys.

We’re really good.

I bet you are. Any other thoughts or comments?

Thanks to everybody who’s already been to the site and wrote nice things or have been to the shows. To those who haven’t, by all means send them to the websites and they can hear the stuff and sign in and be our buddy. We’ll just keep everybody in the loop when we’re going to get out and play.

And no spammers.