The music scene in the late 80’s seemed to be over saturated with “hair bands” as the powers that be were signing up just about every band that they could to cash in on the popularity of the genre. Kix was a band that got lumped into that scene, even though they really weren’t a part of it. The band never reached the same level as some of their cohorts, even though they were just as good if not better than some who climbed higher. Their 1988 album Blow My Fuse broadened their audience along with its classic power ballad “Don’t Close Your Eyes”, but their next album didn’t reach the same level of acceptance by the masses. Grunge rock entered the scene in the 90’s and became the next big thing as the industry focused less on bands like Kix. Kix took a hiatus starting in 1995, but its members did not. The guys went their separate ways and new music projects were attempted, but fans were left wondering if their favorite rockers from Hagerstown, Maryland would ever give it another run. Well, fast forward to 2003 and the fans got their wish. The guys seemed to tap into something special when they started playing together again and that spark brings us to 2014 and Rock Your Face Off, the first new Kix album since 1995. That album debuted at #49 on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart, #1 on Amazon and #17 on the Billboard Rock Chart and the critics say rock and roll is dead? I got to sit down to talk with lead singer Steve Whiteman about that new album and much more. 
Steve Whiteman: Johnny Price please.
This is he.
Johnny, it’s Steve Whiteman. I was told to give you a call and dammit, I’m doing it!
Well, hell yeah! A rocker who’s punctual; you don’t get that every day! How you doing man?
I’m doing well; I’m sitting by the pool, having a beer and talking to you. What’s better than that?
Let’s talk about your record. It’s as if you found Marty McFly, jumped in the DeLorean and went back to 1988 with a load of steroids. It’s everything that I want from a great Kix record, but it doesn’t sound dated. It’s bigger and better.
You know, I’m hearing that a lot and we’re flattered by that. That was our goal and our direction from the get go; if we couldn’t do it like we did it before, then we weren’t going to do it. If it didn’t sound like Kix, then we weren’t going to put it out. We got together and did some pre-production and it was so liberating because, for the first time, everybody got to write together for the very first time. It was a free for all and we were very conscious of making it a Kix sounding record. We stuck to that and I think we pulled it off.
I think you guys may have tapped into something with the new approach to writing. Do you think that played a big part in the creative process and making this album sound so fresh?
I think so, and I also think that the ten year hiatus allowed us to be in different projects, and allowed us all to grow as writers. Initially in Kix, Donnie (Purnell), our original bass player, did most of the writing and he had an iron fist control of the band at that time. It was hard to get a song in with him in control because it was his way or the highway. I went out and started my band Funny Money and put out four albums worth of material. We all grew some wings and we all got more confident that we could write in our own way. When we came to do this record, I was writing for a new Funny Money record and I offered up twelve songs for consideration. Mark (Schenker), who is also in Funny Money, offered up about the same amount, Brian (Forsythe) had several songs and Ronnie (Younking) had a couple of ideas as well. I hate to keep using the same word, but it was so liberating and we all felt confident that we could write as a band as opposed to having one guy telling us what to do, when to do and how to do.
Was there a catalyst behind jumping in and doing a new Kix record? It’s been almost twenty years since Show Business came out in 1995, so this came as a shock to a lot of people.
We were doing these Kix reunion shows and we were doing a local show in Baltimore about three years ago when some guys from the Jersey area came down and offered to shoot a show for us. They shot it and went back to Jersey to put it all together and as they were, they started emailing us clips of what they had done. We saw it and knew that this damn thing was good and we had to put it out. That ended up being our CD/DVD Live in Baltimore release. It was shot in Baltimore, Maryland and it was on our previous label Frontiers. They kind of put the bug in our ear and they were pushing us to put out a new record. It was a slow process, but everyone started thinking about it and we all began to write for it. We definitely wanted to get Taylor Rhodes involved as well because of his previous involvement with the band. It took him a while to get on-board, but once we did and we had about thirty songs to choose from, we left it up to him to decide which ones he thought would be a great Kix song. He picked all of the candidates and then we all locked ourselves in a room for a week and started to work on them intensely until we came up with the twelve cuts that we have.
You mentioned that it took a while for Taylor to get on-board. Was that because of apprehension on his part or maybe a scheduling thing?
I think it was a little bit of both and I’m thinking that his relationship with Donnie had a little bit to do with it as well. His schedule was really busy and I don’t think he was exactly ready to jump into doing a band like us at this point. I don’t think he had necessarily out-grown it, but he had not missed it since he hadn’t been around it. We just had to talk him into it and once he got involved, the whole thing just started to move forward very quickly.
Long, grueling tours just don’t happen these days like they used to be back in the day. Do you guys have any tour plans to promote this new album?
I wouldn’t want to do a full blown tour anymore. We’ve been having a lot of success doing festivals and we kind of prefer doing it that way. It beats being packed in a van or bus and staying at Holiday Inns, and I like it that way. You know, we’re getting more bang for the buck because we fly out the day before; we do the festival and then fly home. We’re still working on some things and waiting to see how people respond to the album.
I’m sure that is much more appealing than the old days because I’m sure you guys have families now that you want to stay connected to.
Exactly and to be honest with you, we all still work day jobs too. We had to support ourselves when Kix got kicked out of the party, so some of us started other bands and some did other things because we had to have another means of support. That makes this kind of recognition from this new album even that much better when we decided to throw it out there and give the old fans some new music.
How cool is it that you’re getting that recognition from multiple generations?
I think that if kids are exposed to anything that’s good, it’ll stay with them. I think our music has stood the test of time, even though Donnie was the main songwriter we obviously had input with our sound and feel and the things that made Kix sound like Kix; that’s why this Kix album sounds like Kix because it is Kix.
It’s been 19 years since you cut a studio album. How different was the recording process?
It was much easier because our bass player Mark, the latest addition to the Kix group, has a studio built into his house and he was essential in helping me with Funny Money and getting material out. It made perfect sense for Kix to start the process at his house and that’s pretty much where we recorded all the vocals, guitars and bass; we did real drums at a studio in Virginia called Cue Recording Studios. The album still has the feel of being in a giant, expensive studio, but it wasn’t that at all. Again, back in the day, that’s what record labels did to suck you dry so that you couldn’t get yourself out of debt. It’s so refreshing to not spend a shit ton of money, in fact we hardly spent any money compared to what we did in the past.
Back in the day, an album’s success was gauged on album sales, but that’s become a thing of the past now. How do you guys measure a new album’s success these days?
That’s a great question and I wish I had an answer for you because this is all new to me too. I know that bands like Ratt, that sold millions of records back in the day and then put a new album out in this era, consider an album that sells 50,000 to 60,000 today a success. There’s just so many outlets out there these days to get free music by illegal downloading. I honestly don’t know how that gauge is these days, but I’m about to find out.
I always thought that you guys had all the elements back in the day to go to that next level that bands like Ratt, Poison and Cinderella were at, but you never did. What do you think it was that kept you from that? Was it the label or management or something else?
It was definitely the label because Atlantic Records definitely didn’t know what the hell to do with us. Until the fourth album and through our relentless effort to tour, get the word out on us and play in front of an audience, we were on our own dime. I mean, they just didn’t have a clue as to what we were all about and after Midnight Dynamite, which at that point we considered just another flop record because they did shit to promote it. We were just determined because we were proud of that record and we wanted to go out and hit people who had never seen us or heard us before. We could play from Boston to Miami and make a shit ton of money because those were the rooms we had conquered and had a massive fan base. We started doing that and banking all the money, and then go out and play Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit and play all of those areas. We’d come home back home, make more money and go back out again to hit more markets and make it to the West coast. By the time a year and a half to two years had gone by, we were relentless and on a crusade to get our name out there. By the time we were ready to start on our fourth album, Midnight Dynamite was approaching gold and that was only because of our hard work and nothing that Atlantic did. We were setting ourselves up for a big record with the material that we had for Blow My Fuse and the relentless work of us going out there and never saying die.
For those who have been under a rock, Blow My Fuse was then released in 1988 and it became your biggest album as it went platinum and produced the #11 hit “Don’t Close Your Eyes.” Now, we saved the really tough questions for last, so I hope you’re ready. Have you ever bought anything off of an infomercial?
Hell no, I’ve never watched one long enough to be tempted to buy something (laughs)
Kix – Love Me With Your Top Down
[embedplusvideo height=”350″ width=”600″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1CgHgPN” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/IXgpUeojq3I?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=IXgpUeojq3I&width=600&height=350&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=¬es=” id=”ep4230″ /]
If you could go back and give the younger version of yourself any advice, would you and what would you tell him?
That’s a good one; I’d say, “Keep it in your pants.”
If you go back and do anything differently, would you? Other than keeping it in your pants?
I’ve been asked this before and you already touched on it when you asked why we didn’t get to that next level. I guess in hindsight, we would have gone to other bands that had done it and see what they were doing that was getting them the attention that they got. Other than that, I’m proud of all the work that we did, what we achieved and the fans that we accumulated over the years. I’m even more proud of the fact that we’re back out now, middle aged and doing it better than ever. I’m not really the kind to look back and go what if because I’d rather live in the now. I can’t do anything about the past, I don’t worry about the future because I don’t know what it will bring, but I’d rather just live in the now.
What do you think is missing in the music industry today?
There are so many outlets out there to get your music that I think one thing is that there’s no real gauge as to how many people are getting your music. It used to be that Billboard Magazine was what people looked at too see how your record was doing.
The difference in first week sales these days are a far cry from what they were back in the day. Some bands land in the Top Ten these days with first week sales that were some bands daily sales back then.
Yeah, there are so many different outlets now like iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby and people buying from the record label and I don’t even know how they count all of them. I mean, we’ll probably sell as many at our shows as they will sell on the internet. How do they count all of those?
Dude, I’m on the consumer end of that and it baffles me as well. Any closing words for all of the readers out there?
In 2003, we started doing this again to do some locals shows. A local promoter came to us and offered us a shit load of money and we couldn’t turn that down. Then, a couple more offers started to come in and we thought that maybe we could do six or eight shows a year in our little area, make some money and have fun. It just kept evolving and growing with more shows and offers and then we got a call from Bigg Time Entertainment in LA. He told us that he could get us on festivals if we gave him the opportunity. When we did Rocklahoma in 2008 in front of 20,000 roaring people, it opened our eyes and made us realize that we had some legs left. We decided to jump on it and get as much out of it as we could. It continues to evolve and it’s all because of the fans that have welcomed us back and are supporting us.
