PipemanRadio Interviews Whitecross About Fear No Evil

0:04 Hi, you have done to censure? Wow? Crazy young? Whycome of America. It's time for the Adventures of Pipe Man. I'll tell you for c why dot Com West Pompeas is number one Internet radio station. Here's your host, the pipe Man listens the Pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio and on LURK. Say to brought our next guest because not only do they have great music, great message, great attitude and from way back in the eighties as well as well, so it hits all the points as far as I'm concerned. So let's welcome to the show.

1:15 Rex from White Cross. How are you, hey, Dean, Thanks for having me on. Love it, oh man, it's definitely good to have you here. And as you just did, I was saying to you when you first came on and you were playing the guitar before we even started. I'm like, man, I just love that you brought your guitar to the interview because that's the way it should be. Yeah. Man, absolutely, it's a personal branding thing. I like to have it with me. It's like, I don't know if anybody really cares what I have to say so much, but people like to see the guitar player with his instrument. So you know, I figure, you know, let the music to the topic.

2:06 There you go. I love it. And you know what else I love by you shredding like that is there so many people out there that are probably watching, that's listening to this, that have no clue that a Christian type of music would have that kind of shredding. Dude, We've been playing this music. I've been doing this music since all the way back to nineteen seventy seven. Wow. So you know, so I realized that makes me old enough to be y'all's grandpa and all that except me. But I'm still here. And there's been a lot of a lot of fads have come and gone, a lot of different music styles. I can tell you a story in all back around ninety five, you know, I got dropped from my label. All you guys are playing that old, tired eighties metal sound and nobody cares about, nobody likes anymore. And I'm like, what, I spent my whole life, you know, trying to you know, trying to emulate Ady Van Hillen and all the great rock guitar players, and all of a sudden you're no good anymore, and then you know, and then then like ten more years go by, and so you know, I go back and I played blues and all that stuff in between. I go back to

3:37 my roots. And then, you know, all of a sudden, you know, in the early two thousands, somebody goes rex, where you've been, Man, we missed your style? Where you been? It's like, well, I don't know. All you industry people, you know, decided to go in a different direction. I'm the same I'm the same guy. I'm still here. I love that eighties rock, classic rocks, you know, I love that. I love that melodic rock sound. You know, I love all the great bands from that era. And just because we're a Christian band, so what that just means that we have positive messages messages and I've received so many emails and text and you know social media people just come on and they send us wonderful messages of how you know God has made a difference in their life and our music had had a role to play in that.

4:35 So you know, I'm all about just you know, playing great music and loving people and loving God. And that's what we are. That's right. And you know, I think people misunderstand music, especially heavy metal music, you know, and they think it's the exact opposite of the message you're sending, and it's so not true. As a matter of fact, I'll tell you a funny story. Okay, So must have been like, I don't know, eighty two eighty three, somewhere around there. I would say, a Slayer show and the opening band for Slayer you're a with Striper, right, it was at the Troubadour. And you know, the funny thing about that is is people like, what were they thinking playing those two bands together? You know, Tom Riah is a devout Christian. Okay, there's such a misconception of stuff that comes with metal that, you know, the whole thing of oh you can't be beat Christian and being a metal band, like some people may think, is kind of ridiculous because just music is music, you know, and is music. But you know, if you think about pop music, pop music tends to be about the typical everyday issues.

5:56 You know, a boy meets girl, boy wants girl, boy girl loves and boy. You know, you want what you can't have, you know, so it's all these love love songs, you know, one way or the other way, right, Yeah, that's the typical uh pop music scene and in the metal music because it's a more extreme form of music. Now, you know, White Cross has I've never really felt comfortable with being like a metal band. You know. We did this thing in El Salvador and there was you know, they said keep it. There's a bunch of gangs here that hate each other. Keep the music fast, hard and heavy, like oh, well more, We're more of a melodic band like Doc and what do we do, right, play your heaviest stuff. It's like, well, our heaviest stuff. We're more, to be honest, we're more along the lines of like that that striper kind of sound, right heavy.

6:46 We're more like a classic White Snake something like that. You know, we're not like heavy heavy metal, but we were considered metal at the time. But anyways, in metal metal music, metal is tends to run towards very spiritual and whether it's demonic or whether it's Christian, or whether it's a big people tend to talk about, you know, like people tend to get away from like the boy meets girl kind of stuff. We get we peel that layer back and and the metal music really gets down to like what are the brass texts issues, uh of you know, of eternity. You know, that's if you think about you know, anybody from Slayer to King Diamond to White Cross to Striper, you know, everybody is somewhere on that metallica you know, these these the big truths is what is really comes to the to the foreground in that style of music, right, And that's that seems to be like a big thing regardless of where any individual artists falls on the spectrum of you know, towards positive you know, God in light or or towards the satanic you know, on the other end of the scale, where the nihilism, you know, just total destruction of the soul kind of thing.

8:11 It's like everybody is somewhere on the spectrum and those are the issues that come out in the lyrics a lot. And and you know, so that so metal is great for being able to express all those kinds of thoughts as opposed to like the pop music. And pop music is great too, but you know pop music is Taylor Swift, and you know you're not going to get a lot of heavy subject that although you know all Taylor so apparently she's been writing some a lot of religiously themed lyrics lately from what I understand, but I wouldn't know because I don't listen to it. So and how about that, because like everybody thinks she's part of the illuminati, Well, I don't know, maybe she's I have no idea, you know, I've never met a lady and I don't know anything about her. So we did a show one time, you know, all this stuff. I don't know why I keep bringing up to South America, but we've just had some things down there.

9:07 We did a we did a concert, uh, and Madonna was in town and she played over at the Soccer Stadium and she had all the beautiful people and we played on the other side of town and we had all of the all the leftovers. So we both had a huge you know, like she had one hundred thousand people. We had close to one hundred thousand people at our concert. And uh, you know, so pee. So the national media got a hold of that, so they had us on the national media shows and they were like, uh, you know, the Heaven and Hell Night. It's like, well, this is you guys talking. This is not me. We're just here to play our music and it's purely coincidence that Madonna happens to be in town right the same night. So so whatever anybody else does, man, we're just here doing our own. I mean, I like the music of I like the classic White Snake. I love the Van Helen, you know, I love that whole, the Rat and the Doc and I love all that eighties kind of stuff with the classy guitar styles, you know, that's in the melodic stuff. And I love all the great singers Luke Braham and Paul Rodgers and David Coverdale and Ronnie Dio.

10:30 You know, I love all those guys. Well, you know what I call it musicianship, I think, yeah, it's something that isn't necessarily a requirement in twenty twenty four. Well, I mean, you know, I remember Bobby Doll from Poison saying, hey, man, I didn't get into this to be a musician. I got in it because I won't to be famous. Yeah, Like, you know, people join a rock band because it's a great way to meet chicks. You know. Uh that's people have all different motivations. I never was in any of that. I just wanted to be a musician and I love the guitar. Yeah. Well, and that I can tell by the fact of you having the guitar with you during the interview. It's like it's like one of your appendages. You know.

11:18 What I always say to my students is you know, you maybe you don't have a singing voice, but everybody has a voice. And you know, whatever I have to say to the world, I can, I can tell you through my guitar, you know. I mean, I can tell you. I can tell you things emotionally through the music that are that are just very difficult to try to put into words, and so a lot of times it's just a lot easier to let the music do the talking. Yeah, you're so right. And the last interview I just did we it actually touched on that where you know, the music itself, not the lyrics, but the music is itself, is what invokes emotion, and you know it is speaking to you mm hm. And this is why people get so this is I I. You know, in cars, people are going to argue all day long, well my forward each year Chevy for lunch, Oh yeah, my chovy each your forward for lunch, and guitar players get really bent out of shape. Oh I got my Marshall, m no, I got my boogie amp, you know, my lest Paul beats your fender and people get really you know, guitar players go back and forth on their gear, and people are so passionate about their music. Rush is the greatest band that ever lived. No Rush sucks, you know, Getty's too high in his vocals.

12:52 Whatever. You know, people, people are going to defend their own favorite music. You know. It's it's it's a death match, you know because and I think the reason is because add to your point that it emotionally it grabs you. And this is why there's room for a wide spectrum of is because every you know, as many emotions as as there are people, there's a band that there's a song out there that that song just it says exactly the way that I feel. So people latch onto a song and then they or or sound, you know, like a you know, somebody latches onto the power or the intensity of a metal song. It's like, man, I just love the way this band does this sound, whatever it is that connects to you. And and then people just you know, then that band becomes a part of the soundtrack of your life. Yeah, that's so true. And so I'm going to argue to the death about well Sammy or Dave Sammy, No, you know, but it's just it's just it's what appeals to you. Yeah, one hundred percent. And that's so true.

14:13 And I personally think Fear No Evil is going to appeal to everybody. And one of the things I love about this album is that isn't it the first time ever that you have had one hundred percent complete creative control from beginning to end? Dude, I canna tell you, man, there's some you know, I remember standing in the studio listening to the mix, going Wow, this sounds awesome. And then and then I get the CD and I go, what happened to the CD? Sucks? You know, it doesn't suck, but like, this sounds like half of what I heard in the studio.

14:56 It's like, well, the mastering, Oh I didn't know about the mastering. You know, the engineer, can you know? So so I the whole reason I started producing is because, man, all along the way, we've had producers who are getting paid by the record company. They're not working for you, They're working for the record company, you know, So who is going to advocate for the artists? It's like, well, and eventually a long way in my personal experience, and there are great producers out there. I aspire to be a great producer. By all you have to do to be a good producer is just listen to the artist, advocate for the artists, and try to help them achieve their vision of their stuff.

15:45 Agreed. And you know, and I've made every mistake in the book that you can make in recording. And I've done enough recordings that this record is Fear and No Evil is far and away the best record I've ever done, far non just it's it's wonderful. And what I love about that is because I think it's because it's completely you, and I think that's where it should be. I think the artist should determine the art and the business people determine the business and keep that separate. Yes, you know, thank you, and so on that note, let's tell everybody where they can connect to you guys on socials, on the web and go check out Fear No Evil and everything else you have to offer. Well, you know, so you know, being in the Grandpa crowd at the Dad Rock crowd. So we're on Facebook a lot. I think we have TikTok. I'm not sure if we're using it. I know, I have a social media guy who's connecting me to Instagram and we've been talking about TikTok and trying to get into some of the younger, hipper, more up to date platforms. But so we have a white Cross page on Facebook and we have a fan page. There are

17:17 white Cross Warriors. We also have a website, white crossband dot com. When we were young, it was white Cross dot com, but we were young and dumb and didn't know what we were doing and we failed to pay the hosting fee and we lost it. That was That was like twenty years ago probably, But so now we are white crossband dot com. Our record is available on Darkstar Records and they have a website Darkstar Records dot com to spell it out that we had sounds and yeah, and we're also on Amazon, we're on iTunes, we're on the streaming services. We're on Spotify.

18:00 So it'd be nice. In the old days, you know, they had brick and mortar record stores, I know, right, you go to Music Go Round and you could get a copy of the album. You know, it was easy, and you didn't even know what the music was. You just looked at the album cover like that and you know something about the album because it looked cool. So many people have said that they loved our album cover design and it's like, we do have a great graphic artist and this is who did our cover picture there and he also designs our our T shirts and our merch and stuff. So I'm very happy about that. But so the music is classic White Snakes, Scorpions Van Halen, that era, unashamed, very loud, very proud. Crank it in your stereo, turn it up to ten and you know, kick out the jams. There it is, it does jam. So I suggest everybody check it out. And I want to give some final words that I believe are actually your words on what the future plans are for the band. So I want everybody to know that your message is continue to love God, love people, love the band, love the gigs, love to shred until they lay you down in the ground in a guitar shaped casket. Amen, you heard it there. Thanks brother

19:36 for giving us such great music and great message, and thanks for being on the Adventures of pipe Man. Thank you so much. Deene love it. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipemin. I'm w for Cui radio,