Kix's Steve Whiteman

By Jay Oakley

I'm here with Kix front man/lead vocalist Steve Whiteman, how are you doing?

I'm great. A little damp but great. 

First off, congratulations are in order for your new record deal with Loud & Proud and your upcoming record.

Yes.

What can you tell us about the new record?

Well it took about a year and a half to get together and get all of us with in the same room and to come up with enough material that we felt would please all the previous Kix fans so it was a little late in putting it together. We had to track down Taylor Rhodes, we were really adamant, he was a co-writer on Kix songs before, had done some co-producing on our previous albums. We wanted someone to kind of keep us on that direction of that Kix sound, that Kix energy and he did a great job. So sent him about forty songs and said to go through them and if you could get them down to fifteen, then we all got together with the band and worked on those fifteen songs and really put them together and tightened them up and thought yea this is a pretty goodrecord.

I can imagine it definitely taking you a second to get everyone together because contrary to what most people might think not everybody's local, doesn't Brian live out west?

Brian lives out west in Los Angeles. We all still do our other projects, I still do my project Funny Money, Brian has Rhino Bucket. He just got back from Europe just in time to get on the rock cruise and Ronnie does his Blues Vultures project so yea we're scattered all over the place. With this Kix thing, just continues to grow and we're finding ourselves getting together more and more, so for whatever reason people want to hear it again.

It's been a while since the release of Show Business and people might not be familiar with the fact that Kix was actually shelved for a little while and it was a show at Rocklahoma that really got it started again. Actually now that I think about it, wasn't the weather similar to this?

It was kinda like this yeah. We actually took a ten year break, we got to the point where after about 1995 we just knew that this whole genre of music had just been totally flushed away and there was a new party in town and we definitely weren't invited anymore. So we thought to make a living and support our family's we had to get out. So I started another band, started doing some vocal teaching and everybody went off doing there own thing. I've written about four or five CDs with Funny Money, Brian's written all this music with Rhino Bucket, he puts out a record about every other week, and Ronnie's been doing Blues Vultures so we've been writing as artists just not collectively together so when it was time to get together to see what we could come up with it wasn't as hard as we thought it would because we had a lot of material, it was finding the right material.

Do you write songs overall, not necessarily for Funny Money or Kix.

Yeah, just writing. Obviously I didn't have a whole lot of songs on Kix albums because Donnie Purnell was the main writer and he pretty much had a strong hold on it. It was his way or the highway pretty much and I guess I didn't write songs to his liking. It wasn't to say I couldn't write I just couldn't write for him.

M3 itself has taken off just in general but especially since it's taken on a two-day format. Friday's become your day, it's taken on the name of Kix-Off. How does it feel being the guys that get M3 started?

I give a lot of credit to the fans around here. I'm loving whose on this bill tonight Winger, Lita, Extreme and us. Now they're all headliners, it's not like we're better or did anything better than them, it's the people that demand that we close the show. Last year we didn't close the show and these people were pissed.

Right, last year was W.A.S.P.

Yeah, they requested to go on last, in a firm kind of way. We didn't care, we said yea go ahead we don't care but the fans hated it. So the fans really demand that we close the show on Friday night because they've been with us for thirty-five years. They're really proud of us and they've been supporting us so we're lucky enough to be able to do it.

When it comes to everything that you've accomplished in the music business, what brings you the most joy and pleasure?

Getting on that stage and doing what I do. All the rest of it I hate. I hate traveling, I hate sitting around, I hate photo-shoots, I hate all that shit. I hate people sucking up to me and treating me different or special, I hate that shit. But, I love getting up on stage, that's what I do, that's where I get off and what makes it all worth while.

Have you been doing things with Funny Money recently?

Funny Money still plays and we just played last weekend. We just do local stuff yea know, we mix it up and I through some Kix stuff in there because that's what brings the people in and then I shove the Funny Money shit down their throat and I say buy a CD or fuck you. [Laughs]

Well all your fans and I want to thank you for everything you've given us and we appreciate everything you've done and I want to thank you for taking some time to talk with me.

It's a pleasure.