| From Reign Radio.com Interviews What’s up Reign Rockers? This time around I’m talking to a guy whose band back in the day has at least 3 albums in my personal top 20. I’m talking about Rex Carroll former lead guitarist and songwriter for Whitecross. Since those days he’s been in a few other bands and now fronts the “Rex Carroll Band”. The new style is in that of a southern rock type style like my all time favorite secular band Lynyrd Skynyrd. Yes they are my favorite! Back to Rex, this conversation was a very good one and a long one. So long that I had to get Rex to hold while I changed tapes. This is gonna be my first two part interview and it’s a great one. The one thing that I found out about Rex, is that he’s human. So many times people like me who grew up on these bands think that our rock heros are super-duper spiritual. But they’re human just like us. So you know what to do....grab a Red Fusion, give the dog a jerky treat, crank the Reign to 100 and listen to Rex Carroll. BigHairBrewster [BHB]: Tell me how the Rex Carroll band got started? Rex Carroll [RC]: Well, are you perhaps familiar withe the Rex Carroll sessions? BHB: Yes RC: Ok, that was the solo album I did for StarSong, and it started off with good intentions and then it morphed off into a project that was not what I really wanted to do. It was well received critically, but it didn’t really sell anything and it didn’t connect to the Christian audience at all. It was a good learning experience I guess. So I kept the band together with that for some time, and tried to make a go of it, but over time the band didn’t work out. I kind of just took a look in the mirror and said "Now what was it that I wanted to do?" I wanted to have a three piece hard core power trio. Like what I’m doing now, along the lines of like Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, that sort of thing. As I’ve discovered with being in the band for the last four years, I have discovered that I’ve grown quite a bit as a vocalist. People when they hear the band, they say it sounds like a combination of Allman Brothers, Skynyrd, ZZ Top, and Stevie Ray Vaughn. So I could not be any happier with that kind of vibe. I’m really digging it. BHB: Cool, where are you located now? RC: Well, I live where I’ve always lived, I’m up here just north of Chicago. I’m still here and I’m an unsigned band so we’re playing locally in the area. We do some bike events, and we’re gonna do some demolition derbys and racing events this summer around Wisconsin so that’s all very exciting. BHB: So no national touring at this time? RC: No, not yet. It’s taken forever to get a new cd together...but you know when you’re working with no budget and no time available things get slowed down considerably. So I’m finally closing in on having that done. BHB: Ok, well who are the other guys in the band? RC: Local guys, that you’ve never heard of before. A very fine bass player Antonio Asavado and also Jeffery Mcormick. We’re what’s considered a border band, because we’re right there on that Illinois/Wisconsin border. BHB: Ok, so you guys are working on getting a new album out? RC: Yeah, I own a recording studio. I’ve had that going for seven or eight years, and it’s been slow but steady, but it’s growing and growing. So we’ve been working out of my house from the studio. We had to work through a situation through different musicians, and I had an unstable drummer situation for awhile. That slowed things down a little, and it’s never taken me this long to put an album together. I’ve literally been working on it for four years. It’s been kind of hard, so I’ve just felt a little relieved to see it finally come together. Now the only hurdle that I have is to get it signed or find alternative means of distribution and production. So that’s like my next hurdle. BHB: Does the internet work good for you? Or do you find that it’s not really a good tool? RC: The internet is.......it’s funny you say that, I had the pleasure of hooking up with Stryper on their tour they did this fall. BHB: Yeah, I saw their second show that they did here in Va, it was just incredible man. It was cool to have them back. RC: Yeah, I got to play with them in Chicago. I hooked up with Greg Hays who is their web site manager, and Greg expressed a desire to work with myself. So he has been showing me a lot of things that we can do. He’s like a power seller on ebay. He’s developing a very comprehensive plan for me. Creating websites for Whitecross music, King James, Rex Carroll Band and even my old FierceHeart, which was way back in like 1985. That was before Whitecross even. All the sites will be linked to each other. Greg knows how to sell things on the internet, he knows how to attract visitors to the site. He’s very good . He did a fantastic job with Strypers site. It basically tripled the traffic to their site. He knows how to manipulate search words and search engines to draw people to the site. He’s very smart in those kinds of applications. I’ve already seen what he can do...for example I have the last of the original Whitecross album the first album. Greg has created a package for that, it’s available on Whitecrossmusic.com He’s putting that together, and we’re getting what I consider to be outrageous amounts of money, you know like 35.00 or 40.00 a cd. People are just like, you know it’s like a collectors item. I never knew that. Like last year at Cornerstone, I’m trying to sell stuff and people are going "Well you might just want to mark that down to 5.00, cause nobody cares" BHB: Yeah Right. RC: Well it’s all perception...yeah nobody cares when you’re in this big huge tent, and there’s like thousands and thousands of other CDs. So it’s like the wrong place, so if you put it on ebay as a collectors item then you find that, there’s really a lot of interest in this and not everybody can make it out to Cornerstone. So it really is a very viable place to sell your stuff. But you just have to know how to do it and I don’t. If it were left up to me, the internet would not have worked for me. It is the primary means of communication, for example when we’re advertising our gig schedule, and just staying in touch with our fans and that sort of thing. It’s great for that. I think in the future, and I can envision ten years from now the cd itself will be a relic from the past. Everyone will just be walking around with their mp3 players, although it probably won’t be mp3 anymore, it’ll be a more pristine uncompressed digital audio file. No one will even bother with any kind of physical medium whatsoever. The whole future of media and distribution will be some kind of internet based setup. I think there will still be CDs available but, it will be for the old guys like me. That are just not hip to the new generation of mp3. BHB: It’s funny that you even went down that road, because I’m in the middle of a bidding war with a guy on ebay for your first cd(which I lost). There’s like 2 days left. RC: Alright, there you go. What’s your bid up to? BHB: Right now we’re at 18.00 RC: Ok, that’s actually on the low side. BHB: I know I’ve seen it for 60.00 and 70.00 on ebay. RC: Right, and that’s on the first cd. Now we tried putting out the second and third cd and it’s like ok well.....7.00 like the normal everyday price. I guess those two are apparently not collectors items. BHB: I think what it is, I know for myself I found "Hammer and Nail"(their second cd) in the bookstore for 6.99. Some sites on the web though it’s 40 or 50 dollars. The thing is with your first album and there’s a lot of people like me out there when it came out we only had it on tape. The cassette just fell apart because I played it like two million times. RC: I can’t tell you how much I hated cassette tapes. My jaw just hit the floor when I found out that people don’t care about vinyl records. They would rather have this horrible medium that would fall apart after you played it a few times. I hated cassette tapes from day one. I was so happy when the Cd came out. I was like ok this is like a stable medium that will last for fifty years. I think a lot of the issues as far as, well the cd doesn’t sound as good as the analog vinyl record.. When the cd first came out people didn’t know how to record and mix and master for that medium. Now they’ve pretty much learned and I think the cd is a wonderful medium for audio delivery and it’s only gonna get better. It’s a 16 bit resolution and I record everything in 24 bits, and a lot of processing is done in 32 bits, and some are done in 64 bits. I think the bit rate is gonna go up and it’s just gonna keep getting better. BHB: I think the reason with these records is........and it’s the same way with the Barren Cross records they’re like 70 or 80 dollars. It’s always like the first album. RC: My thing is like who’s making that money. BHB: Exactly RC: The pirates and the scavengers like your RadRockers who have never contributed anything worthwhile to society. You know they wait until something goes out of print, and they buy it from the record companies for pennies on the dollar, no royalty gets paid to the artist at all, and then the scavenger companies are out selling them for like 20,30, or 40 dollars. BHB: Yeah I’ve never bought from them just for that reason, because they’re too expensive. RC: The scavenger business stay in business year after year while the artist go out of business. You talk to the musician ten years later and the guy is like a car salesmen. Because he couldn’t afford to make a go of it in music. There’s something that’s messed up with that. God will have to answer that one. I don’t have the answer to that. BHB: Yeah, I’ll go to ebay, but there’s a certain amount that I won’t pay over. RC: I hope that some of those scavenger companies get a taste of their own medicine. There’s a few of them that could benefit from a little humility. BHB: Let me switch here for a second, When did you start leaning how to play guitar? RC: Well, I got my first guitar on my tenth birthday. So as the rest of my memory fails me rapidly that’s one thing I will remember is when I started playing guitar. At this point it’s coming up on thirty six years. BHB: Out of my curiosity, was Yngwie Malmsteen in any of your influences? RC: Oh totally. Yngwie is a fabulous guitar player. BHB: Yeah I can hear some of his stuff in your playing. RC: That’s phenomenal, I take that as a compliment. Ritchie Blackmore was my first major influence on the guitar. I saw him on televison at the California Jam. He turned to the camera and took his guitar and shoved it right into the camera. At fifteen years of age that had such a huge impact on me and I was like "I want to do that"!(emphasis mine). I already had leanings in that direction, and that cemented it for me. I never looked back, and when I listen to Yngwie Malmsteen, I go well he’s like the son of Ritchie Blackmoore. They’re like the same totally, except Yngwie is the next generation. It’s funny because they both have like the sam attitude. Unfortunately over the years I have suffered from the same kind of bad attitude. Same type of moody unapproachable vibe. I ‘ve really tried hard to overcome that. Hopefully with the Lords help I am making progress in that. It hasn’t always been easy for me in that department. BHB: I think that’s human nature though too, isn’t it? RC: Well some people are just gregarious and outgoing and there’s a few people that I admire in the music business. I go man I wish I could be more like that person cause they’re the type of people everyone wants to be around. But you are what you are. BHB: Yeah. Ok well how did Whitecross come together, I mean the original band? RC: Well you want the short answer or the complete answer? BHB: Uh either one. RC: Well when I was in college I had a Christian rock band. It was a great band, the only thing not great about it was the name of the band. The official name was "The Band called Light". We opened up for Resurrection Band, and people mangled the name up. It was like "and now the band Light", or "please welcome Light". But the heart was there and we had a lot of fun. That showed me the possibility of "Hey you can play Christian rock", That was as far back as 1978. When my school days were done I had the desire to continue with that, but opportunity did not come up until I had actually determined it. I was like ok, I wanna do some kind of Christian rock band, and I’ll start playing guitar and going to coffee houses, and start picking up people as I find them. Right around that time is when Scott Wenzel(Whitecross, former lead singer) came into my teaching studio for guitar lessons. He was a singer/guitarist in a band. He really didn’t have a lead guitar player so he was trying to improve his guitar skills. From that point we just kind of sorted out..."Well you sing and I’ll play guitar". That was the nucleus of it, and Scotty already had some guys he was playing with, and they already had a name Whitecross. So I just started hanging out with them, and it was good.. We had Bible study for an hour, then we’d go down and make noise in the basement. Then we had to come to a cross roads of "Ok, let’s stop playing these copy tunes", you know. "I don’t want to play these Petra songs and Rez Band songs anymore". I wanted to work on my own music. I had to fight with Scotty especially on that, because he had a different philosophy on that. He was like "Well we can’t get any gigs, if we play our own music, people don’t want to hear that". That almost split us up right there. I said "Well I feel very strongly that I have a calling to pursue this at a higher level". "If you feel very strongly that you want to pursue a cover band, then God Bless you and we’ll go our separate ways". So over the weekend Scotty changed his mind, and from that point we recruited Mark Hedl to play the drums, and John Sproule was the original bass player who stayed. That was the original lineup, and I had a four track recorder, it was a fantastic little machine in it’s time. I got maximum use out of that thing. We recorded all of our songs on to that, and then I did the best that I could sending demo tapes around and got rejected everywhere. There was a guy who lived in town named Caesar Kalinowski. BHB: The first producer right? RC: Yeah, Caesar used to manage the Harley shop in Waukegan Illinois. He knew my wife, and I had met Caesar sometime before, and then sometime when I went off doing the Whitecross thing, Caesar had turned his life back to the Lord and gotten out of the Harley shop. I had no knowledge of this but he had taken a job as a road rep fro Refuge records. I was sitting at home one day and I was talking to my bass player and he was like "Oh yeah so and so told me that they heard we were getting signed to Refuge records what’s that all about". I was like "Huh, what are you talking about"? It was like a rumor and what had happened was, Caesar had gotten a hold of one of our tapes. I was like "How did that happen"? So before there was file sharing we had what was called tape trading. So it was like "Oh don’t you know everybody is trading your tape and it’s a hot item". I remember my face went white, because I was like "No, this is not for public consumption"(both laughing) I was a total control freak, especially at the time, and I’m happy to say I’m less of a control freak today. But only in the important things. So I found out that Caesar had gotten the tape and brought it to Refuge and they fell in love with it over there. Actually one guy in particular named Gavin. Gavin said to Ray Nenah who ran the record label,"This is gonna be a big seller". So Ray said "You’re off your rocker, but if you want to do this go ahead". So that’s how it happened, and there was like a little lesson in there too, because it was like God saying "Ok Rex give it your best shot, let’s see what you’ve got kid, and is that it?" "Ok now step back and see what I’m gonna do." So one thing lead to another and we were able to record the album locally in the studio. It was good timing because we were able to get into Cornerstone Festival in 87". We were like recording this album between Jan- Mar of 87" Then of course there were a couple of months delay where they manufacture it and put the cover together and all that. So it came out about a month before Cornerstone that year, and then we played, and we got a luck break. One of the bands had cancelled on the side stage and they bumped us up to that stage. I think that one gig was like throwing a shot of gasoline on our fire. It was like being in the right place at the right time. Things took off very quickly from there. BHB: When you were touring do you have any certain tours that stick out in your mind that you enjoyed more than others? RC: As a matter of fact I have a little ongoing project that’s going on right now. I’m going through virtually every single date that we ever played. It’s gonna be posted on the web. BHB: Cool RC: It’s just as a part of history of the band. There were certain tours like......ok the Stryper tour that happened just this fall. That’s what people think of as a tour. It has a beginning and an ending. In our case there was no beginning or ending, it was like we were on the road pretty much all the time. So people would be like well when’s your next tour?, and it was like "Well we’re not really on tour we’re just playing all the time". We would go out and play three days on the weekend, and then come home for three days. Then we would go out for two weeks, and then come home for a week. It was just crazy like that all the time. That went on pretty much continuously from the fall of 87" until the middle of 93". It felt so good when we were on those long trips to just have a day off. I would just literally collapse in the hotel room all day long. Doing laundry was such an unbelievably good feeling(laughing) of just being able to it. You know sitting in my room I’d have a little practice amp, and jambox and just work on music. Then I’d just watch televison and just veg. There are a lot of memories, and I have like an all time best gig list that’s in my head. I also have an all time worst gig list as well(laughing). The Steve Taylor tour that we did was really great. That was my first time out with an extended gig, you know night after night. Traveling over seas was really exciting. There was one show that is in my top 10 best gigs, that we played in Stuggart. It was this really evil looking rock and roll club, that had a skull and crossbones over the door, and the skull had like fangs coming down from it. It was really a nasty looking place. So it was like right on dude, looks like there will be some rock and roll tonight. I remember Scotty was flipping his gord about (sarcastically) "Who booked this gig" " I can’t play in here" and "I can’t preach in here". So I was like well wait a minute "You wanted to do evangelism right"? Well here we are. They had billed us as "White Metal from USA". I started looking on the wall and who’s played there, and it was like oh Gary Moore, Thin Lizzy! So it was like this little prestigious club. We have a place like that around here, it’s like a 2000 seat club, for anyone on their way up or down. For example like a few weeks ago they had like Warrant and Great White and they packed the place out. So it was kind of a similar place like that in Stuggart. I was like "Well you know guys it’s really quite an honor to play in this room". It was about an 800 seat club, and there was about 12 or 1300 people showed up. It was just jammed back to the wall, and I remember just looking out over the crowd and seeing the only exit way was in the back by the front. So it was like well if there’s a fire in here tonight I’m toast. I’m sure we violated every fire code on the books(laughing). It was loud and the PA was just killer, the energy level was just like sky high through the roof. The rock and roll was just fantastic, and then at the end we had worked it out with Scotty, where he had to do the full alter call, he had to preach exactly the same way that he did at any other show or else we weren’t gonna play. So he did, and it took about an hour to go through translators and at the end there was an alter call and 400 people stood up to receive Christ. BHB: That’s really cool, I was gonna ask you in that same vein with doing those kind of shows you had go see some miracles like that while you were out on the road. RC: Well, I did not grow up in any kind of Assemblies of God, or Pentecostal, or any kind of swinging from the chandeliers type churches. BHB:(laughing) Right RC: I grew up in a conservative Wesleyan and Presbyterian, Methodist type of upbringing. So it was all kind of new to me, you know the whole experience of people speaking in tongues and the different styles of worship. So I was not the type of guy who would be like (speaking in preacher voice) "Expect a miracle" you know the Benny Hinn type experience. So for me, anytime it was like "Rex could you please pray with this person"? "He won’t pray with anybody else but he’ll pray with you". So I’m like "Ok I’ll do it". So I was able to pray with people for salvation, but I just always considered that to be for anyone who is in this Christian faith, it’s more of just a normal experience that you should have as a routine basis. Whether you’re in a Christian rock band or you work at Reign Radio station, or at Dominics food store. It doesn’t make any difference you should just be living your life kind of the same way. I had an amazing phone call that happened about a year ago. I got a call from a guy in New York, and he picks up the phone, and explains how he had to go through different things to get my phone number. The bottom line was, he was in one of the World Trade Towers on 9/11 as it was coming down, and he was one of the survivors. He spent like two hours just telling me his whole experience of that day. I was just sitting there listening with my jaw on the floor, and the reason he had called me, was because he had his office on floor 95 or thereabouts. He actually had one of my FierceHeart albums which there were only about 15,000 of those sold. But he had one, and it was like a prized possession to him. He lost everything, he had some guitars, and his business and everything up there. He was wondering if I could help him out. So I did send him that cd, and a bunch of other stuff and was just able to pray with him over the phone. I talked about the Lord with him, and I think he was raised in sort of a nominal Jewish upbringing. He was just like the normal non-religious type person. He was more of just a practical person, but he did realize that God must have spared him for a purpose. So because of that musical connection I was able to talk to him about the Lord and pray for him and with him. We’ve stayed in contact and those kind of experiences for me, are like really neat things. The one on one encounters. But with the large crowds, there’s like memories of you know the band Is running great and on all cylinders and that’s great but, the one on one experiences is something that you cannot plan. They just happen when they do. I guess if you’re available to the Lord, then he will use you in different situations. BHB: Yeah dude, I think it’s the same way with what I do. I do this voluntarily, and I’ve been doing it for a little over a year or so. I had to take a break for personal reasons, but I have gotten so many emails from people whether they’re from England or wherever about the reviews or interviews that I’ve done in the past. It’s turned out to be a ministry for me that the Lord has opened up for me. It started off with me just doing something that I thought would be cool to do, and talk to some people that I grew up listening too, and tell them what kind of influence they were on me, and it’s turned out to be like a ministry. It’s cool how God works. RC: Yeah, very much so. One thing that I have learned over time is, when you make that record and you put it out there, and 15 or 20 years later you’re still hearing about it that’s cool. There’s a couple in my church, right now that I met. They were telling me how they met, and they met on their way to a Whitecross concert(both laughing). They were like "Oh you like Whitecross" "Oh me too" and so they hit it off, and got married. So through circumstance, they didn’t know that I was here or nothing like that, but they ended up at my church. So it’s cool, I look over at them all the time, and it’s like you never know how things are gonna turn out. That music is just such a powerful means of communication. On a musical note, I always try to convey that to my students more than anything else. It’s like, you can learn all these guitar licks and all these songs etc. But with all the top students I’m always trying to get beyond that. I try and say, what music is trying to convey is, it’s like parts of your heart that cannot be expressed in words and you’re trying to convey some kind of emotional quality, with your audience, you’re trying to move them. But I’m my own worst critic too. I’m very anal about everything I do. Which is another reason why it’s taken me four years to get this record together. I’ve had no deadline, no producer standing over me, nobody with the budget reigns going "It’s gotta be done by Friday or we’re gonna run out of budget". So I f you don’t have any of those constraints, I just start kind of picking away at it, and keep uncovering layers, and going this part could be a little bit better. To some extent that’s not healthy. It’s kind of the Eric Johnson type thing. You know he takes like five years in between albums because he’s so obsessive about every detail. Sometimes it’s better to get that spontinaity of that first take. But it is what it is. BHB: What do you think about some of the bands on todays scene? Do you listen to anything that’s out there? RC: Some of it. To be honest with you I’m not in touch with the Christian music anymore. Most of what I hear comes from the secular side. I know the quality of the Christian music though has gone way up. We have the Fish, our local radio station. They’re very geared though toward a very certain pop type music. Every radio station has like a sound to it, you’ve got like your hard core alternative station, metal station and country station, and dance music. The fish is like ok this is Christian music. I feel very uncomfortable with the way the Christian media is. Collectively there’s sort of this unconscious thing that comes across where Christian media as in print, radio, and all of it together puts across this image of this is the way we expect the Christian family to look. These are the clothes we want you to wear, this is the way we want you to cut your hair, this is the way your house needs to look like, and this is what we expect you doing at your church, etc, etc. You know the church collectively does not really have any desire to support like classic rock Christian artist. You know take Mark Farner for example. He sold like a hundred million albums with Grand Funk Railroad, and as long as he goes out and plays live as Grand Funk everywhere is jammed and people come out of the woodwork to see him. But if he goes out as Mark Farner the Christian solo artist.....and I think his Christian solo album did like 25,000 copies and then it died. See nobody cares about that, especially the church, and I don’t get it. BHB: Yeah I had to deal with stuff like that a long time ago, when I was in the bible belt section of Virginia. I was in an Assemblies of God church and the youth pastor was always giving me and my friend a hard time, because we had long hair , and earrings, and listened to Christian metal. So I confronted him one time on it, and said "You know you always tell me it’s wrong to listen to Motley Crue, or Ratt, or whoever, but when I put on Stryper or whoever it’s the same thing. I never got a real answer other then, "Well do we need Christian prostitutes"? So I was like whatever man. RC: I had a roommate in college that was studying......he ended up becoming a pastor. So, I told you I had that Christian rock band? BHB: Right RC: Which was like totally harmless, even compared to Whitecross. We were very neat looking appearance wise, our music was a lot more mellow and laid back. I mean we covered Nancy Honeytee. But even back then, the guy I was rooming with was like, "Well if someone is lost and they’re in a pit, what do you do?""Do you climb down and push them out, or do you stand on the top and pull them out". "You don’t climb down in the pit with them". So he was kind of equating, playing this music with crawling into the pit. I was like whatever, and you let it go. That’s where I’m at right now, I’ve just kind of drifted away from the scene. But there’s this group called Mercy Me? BHB: Yeah RC: They’re quite good. Someone said you know when I hear about new Christian music, is when someone from the praise team is talking about a new group. This group Mercy Me are good. BHB: They’re an excellent band. I got to see them live. RC: We covered "Word of God Speak", and I kept waiting because at first it sounded like a Bon Jovi power ballad(both laughing) just waiting to happen. I was waiting for the band and the ripping guitar solo to come in but it never did(laughing). But I really like the song, and I like the guys voice. The lyrics are very nice, so it was like ok that’s cool. I would have liked it better if they had rocked it out, so there you go. There’s secular groups that I like the sound of them, but I don’t like most of it. Everybody likes Creed. BHB: Yeah, everybody except me(laughing) I’m not a Creed fan at all. RC: I like the songs and guys singing voice and the melodies, and it’s almost borderline pop music. BHB: The guitar player Mark Tremonti is fabulous.....he’s just in the wrong band.(laughing) RC: I don’t know if you’re in the number one band in the world, it’s not a bad place. BHB: I know...they just really bother me. Scott Stapp to me is like Eddie Vedder part two, and I was never into Pearl Jam. RC: Yeah I always hated Peral Jam........I do not like Pearl Jam, not with green eggs and ham, I will not listen to them Sam I am(both laughing) so remove the Pearl Jam. They were one of those bands that kicked out Whitecross. So it was like a personal thing as well. That was another reason I didn’t like them. I did not understand why did people like this, when the music was not even played that well. BHB: Yeah it was all slop. RC: You know total garage band, but truth be told that’s basically what Whitecross was. So if I’m living in a glass house I can’t throw stones. BHB: Yeah, but a lot of music like yours back then, at least from my view a lot of it did start getting stale. There were too many copycat bands, and they all turned out the same way. RC: Yeah, that’s kind of the thing, and that’s where the whole alternative scene has gone. You know by the ways side as well. BHB: Yeah, thank God. RC: I really don’t think anyone cares about Pearl Jam anymore. BHB: No they’re done. When their albums come out they don’t sell nearly what they used to sell. RC: Yeah, people are pretty much over that. You know I’ve gone through different phases since Whitecross, where everything I touched went to gold, and then throughout those middle 90's years, man I couldn’t get anyone to return a phone call. All of a sudden though in the last two or three years, it’s ok to accept my kind of music again. BHB: The 90's for me stunk, I called those the "Dark Ages of Music". It was horrible. RC: Yeah, it was the Dark Ages of my life personally. The irony of that for me was like Rex Carroll, yeah he was that metal guitar slinger dude from Whitecross right? That’s the label that people have formulated. Through those 90's, it was like Rex Carroll, no were not interested in that, that’s tired 80's metal. The fact is that during those years I put out all kinds of different sounding projects. I did my solo album for Star Song, that people expected to be like a Steve Vai, instrumental album. I didn’t do that at all. I did like a roots rock album. Then I did another project on a different label....that’s gonna get sued, because they owe me back royalties and basically walked away from their contract. That’s gonna happen shortly. But it was an alternative project, and I won’t even mention the name of it, and that was like the lowest point in my professional life. The guy actually talked me into this position of, "Well Rex, here’s the deal, you’re good and a veteran artist, but if people see your name on it, they’re gonna run away from it". So we’re gonna put out this album, but we’re not gonna put your name on it anywhere." I allowed myself to be talked into that position, and man I’m still kicking myself for ever allowing anyone to take my name away from me. That was definitely a total low point. The irony is that, that’s the guy who walked away from his obligations and ripped off me an my partner and we’re gonna go after him. You know because it’s like deception and deceit. Once that gets resolved, then his name can come out in print. I realize that I don’t have anything to gain or to fear, or to lose with any of the people in the business anymore. So it kind of changed my tone a little bit, because I was always sort of walking this line of I will not speak the truth, you know lest anyone should speak anything about another Christian. At this point I’m in a different position in thinking, and it’s like you know what? It’s probably just better to speak the truth without being vindictive or malicious about it. Just to say things the way they actually are. You know, let the chips fall where they may. It doesn’t help me because, in my desire to do that I got walked over by the business anyway. Now I feel like there’s a little surge back, and I’m like you know I’m gonna get back in the game pretty soon. I’ve done all kinds of praise and worship projects, but when I do them I’ve always be careful to just do the music and not worry about a record deal or using it as a springboard for making money. It’s just something that I do unto the Lord, and if it comes out on an album at some point down the road that’s fantastic. So I have all these projects that I did, that are like the farthest thing that I did from the 80's metal guitar scene. Then ironically within like the last couple of years it’s been like "Rex Carroll of Whitecross!" "Where have you been, we missed you dude"(both laughing). So it’s like they label you, and it doesn’t matter what you do you can’t shake that label. You’re stuck with it forever..... BHB: Well I think part of it is, you know most of the people my age that I talk to and I’m 33...but most of them I talk to you know it’s the same thing. The ninetys sucked, and that generation had to go through it’s stage and let that music pass, and now it’s more acceptable again for our music because you have stations like Classic VH-1 that shows the eighties metal, and VH-1 did the Behind the Music specials and.... RC: MTV they don’t even play music anymore do they? BHB: No, they’re mainly game shows and reality shows and whatever. RC: I don’t know why they call it music television anymore, it has nothing to do with music. BHB: Yeah they’re pretty bad, basically the only thing I’ll ever watch is like Classic VH-1. But you know I hear a lot of the eighties metal a lot on some of the radio stations now, so it’s like it’s become acceptable again. RC: Well as far as like the new sound, you know the new groups that are out there? I really don’t like groups like Disturbed, or some of the you know "sick bands". Ironically though one of the bands that I do like a lot though is Godsmack. I like everything about them except their name. BHB: Yeah I like those guys too. RC: When I heard it I was like...hey here’s a new kind of rock sound that I understand. It’s like guitar, drum, bass, and lead singer and they’re doing the exact same thing that I was doing with Whitecross on a music level. You know just that "riff rock" music. BHB: Right, and they’re selling millions. RC: The song structures are the same way I used to write my songs, they’re just doing it in the modern style. That was like the first group between them and Creed, that I could find some common ground with. I do sound libraries on the side, and I get a lot of stuff on ESPN, and Fox Sports Net, and a lot of NFL pre game stuff that uses my guitar sound tracks. All that sound track stuff I write is in that modern drop tuning kind of a sound. If there are any Lead Vocalist out there that want to get in touch with me, I’d basically like to build the next incarnation of Whitecross. I’m gonna go after that in a big way. BHB: That brings me to another question. Do you ever see any of the guys from the band anymore? RC: Well we did get together last year you know? Not everybody knows that, but like a year and half or two years ago I had an idea of putting together a history band. You know we would do Whitecross, King James, some of my new stuff and it would be fun. I actually had a band together with a singer and we had a couple of rehearsals, and then out of the blue we had the opportunity to get the original band back together. So I said, I’ve got to do that. So we ended up doing that and we played at Cornerstone and a couple of other things. We actually only did four dates over the summer. I had high hopes for that at the time, but unfortunately we got down in North Carolina and we didn’t get paid by the promoter, a Christian promoter. So they were like, you know we’re still learning and growing in faith, and I was like man I’m tired of leaning these same lessons over and over. So we got shorted, and Scotty flew off the handle and had a complete nuclear meltdown backstage. It was pretty ugly and most of it was pointed in my direction. Actually 100% of it was pointed in my direction. We always had a stressful relationship. I’m certainly not the same person I was fifteen years ago. I’m glad that we played together, but that definitely showed me that it was a closed door. There’s no relationship there, or vibe or chemistry and there’s no love lost between us. Scotty is the nicest guy you’ll ever meet to anyone else in the world but me. BHB: Well dude I’m sorry to hear that. RC: Yeah. It’s just the way the cookie crumbles. It’s too bad, but we’re just a total dysfunctional family unit there. Kind of like Ozzy and Geezer Butler(both laughing). Or Ozzy and Tony Iommi.... BHB: Yeah like Keith and Mick... RC: Yeah but they’re still playing in a band together... BHB: Well I don’t know for how much longer though.... RC:(both laughing) Keith’s been dead for like 15 years now...it’s just his corpse walking around BHB: Yeah(laughing) RC: So anyway my intention at this point is to find a vocalist and to carry on. BHB: Do you have any good Spinal Tap stories? RC: Too many bro, way too many. BHB: Any good ones you can share? RC: Let me put it to you this way, because this was a topic of discussion in the band the other night. I have total respect and admiration for Stryper who are able to tour and tour correctly. You know with a bus, and a crew and everything. The bottom line is that Whitecross was a popular band, and we did sell some albums and popular enough where people wanted to see us play. So were we able to tour, but we were not popular enough that we were able to tour properly. We went out and made a living off of every single five hundred dollar date that was out there. Typically you’d start out the door with your thirty five hundred dollar anchor date, four months before you tour. So you’re like great we got this anchor date, so let’s book some dates around that and we’d fill in all the five hundred dollar dates. Then three weeks before you go out the door the thirty five hundred dollar date drops out. So then you’re left with all the five hundred dollar dates. So you play those and then come home. It was physically wearing on us. Your day starts when the show is over. Then you drive through the night in your van to get to the next show. Then you play the show, and at the end of the show you’re breaking eight hundred pound amp racks, because the crew that was supposed to be there was not there. Your knees are gone, your hands are shot, and you’re just bone tired. Then the whole time in the back of your mind, you know when it’s done you’ve got to drive through the night to get to the next one. After five years of that, everyone was just pretty much ready for a brake. I reached the point where I was like, ok the band is topped out we’re not growing at all, and there came a turning point where we kind of jumped the shark you know what I mean? It was like the shelf life is on the wane, so I knew that it was time to move on, and with some regrets....but the Spinal Tap thing was pretty much everyday. So I have respect like I said for bands like Stryper when they roll through and it’s like oh wouldn’t that be nice to have a real tour bus and a bonafide tour manager. You know the band is gonna get paid and not get shorted. So it’s like wow wouldn’t that be nice someday. BHB: Ok, well on an ending note, do you have anything to say to your fans? RC: Man..they’re has been so much positive vibe from the fans, and I know that there’s a whole lot of people out there that have been honest to goodness supporters through the years. It’s really neat to know that they’re all out there. So I’m trying to get our website together with the help of Greg Hays my web manager. We’re trying to organize the sites so that we can get back in touch with everybody, and consolidate into an organized fan basing. So in the future I can definitely say that you can expect The Rex Carroll Band to be coming out. It’s a whole different slice of the pie, with the classic rock vibe, like I said if you like the Skynyrd, ZZ Top, Stevie Ray Vaughn type of vibe. If you like that style you can check that out at RexCarrollBand.net For everyone else, I would highly encourage you to go to Whitecrossmusic.com That’s just getting up and running right now as we speak. We will keep you informed of new things as they are developing, and I have a lot of hope for the things coming down the pipe here. BHB: Cool. Well thanks man I really appreciate you taking the time to do this for me. RC: Thank You. End of Interview. As always guys and gals let me know what you think gb@reignradio.com My next interview is going to be with Phil Scholling from Philadelphia. Remember them? So until next time remember....Spandex is a privilege....not a right! Tell someone you love them and keep your nose in the WORD! ***THIS IS THE WHOLE INTERVIEW, NO SECOND PART IS NEEDED****** Copyright 1999-2007 ReignRadio.com |