GREAT WHITE Guitarist Was 'Blown Away' By Singer MITCH MALLOY's Contributions To New Song

GREAT WHITE guitarist Mark Kendall has confirmed to Full In Bloom that the band has begun putting together new material with its latest addition, singer Mitch Malloy. "We're starting to write songs now," he said. "[Mitch] lives in Florida now — he moved from Nashville to Florida — so it's not like I can just go, 'Hey, come on over and let's work on songs.' I went in the studio — just a friend of mine's little studio down the street — and I wrote a couple of songs. I sent [Mitch] a song. Normally when I work with singers, I'm in the room with them and I might give them some melody ideas or just let them know what I'm hearing. But I just sent him music and he came back with a full song, and me and Michael [Lardie, rhythm guitar and keyboards] were blown away. We couldn't believe it. I go, 'Man, this is great to break the ice this way, because it will be less work for me.' And unless I hear something that I don't agree with, I'll pretty much go with it. Normally, I have ideas about melodies in my head, but I wanted to give him a chance and give him music and see what he comes with. So, that's working out real good. We're just kind of putting riffs together. We're gonna rehearse tonight and kind of go over a few things. We're kind of taking our time, just trying to come up with the best stuff we can. But we definitely wanna try to get something this year with Mitch on it."

Asked if it's too early to start thinking about making a full-length album with Malloy, Kendall said: "No, not at all. That's what we're kind of doing now. We're just writing songs. Michael and I have been coming up with a lot of things — kind of sending it back and forth, ideas and stuff. And today, we're gonna get into a room together, 'cause that's when the best stuff happens — when we're all playing together. In an actual recording, we've never sent each other our parts before. That's really kind of a first probably — that I've sent Mitch music. Normally, we get together. When we do it for real, we always get together, but we come up with ideas on our own. Like the last record [2017's 'Full Circle'], we only got together for 10 days before we went to [producer] Michael Wagener's [studio] in Nashville. But we all had a lot of ideas. So, the first four days, we were in this kitchen area just like showing each other ideas. We really didn't get a lot done — we just kind of picked the stuff we wanted to work on, and then went at it hardcore for six days. But we went up there with no lyrics finished. We just had ideas for choruses and stuff. It was pretty funny. Michael Wagener definitely was not used to that. [Laughs]"

Lardie recently told the K-97 radio station that GREAT WHITE was hoping to release a DVD of its August 2018 performance at the Kentucky State Fair along with "two or three new songs with Mitch singing."

Last July, GREAT WHITE announced that it was parting ways with vocalist Terry Ilous and was replacing him with Malloy.

Ilous, formerly of '80s L.A. hard rockers XYZ, joined GREAT WHITE in 2010 after stepping in for touring vocalist Jani Lane (WARRANT).

The Ilous-led GREAT WHITE released two albums, 2012's "Elation" and 2017's "Full Circle", before Terry was shown the door.

This version of GREAT WHITE is not to be confused with JACK RUSSELL'S GREAT WHITE, which features original GREAT WHITE singer Jack Russell alongside Robby Lochner (FIGHT) on guitar, Dan McNay on bass, Tony Montana on guitar and Dicki Fliszar on drums.