Hey, this is Jack Russell from Great White.

Hey Jack, how’s it going?

It’s going okay. How you doing man?

Good. You’re in Michigan today?

Uh yeah we are actually.

How’s the road been treating you?

Um. It’s been great man. You know as well as can be expected. I mean obviously it’s difficult. But, you know the response has been overwhelming. The fans have been fantastic. You can’t ask for anything more. We’ve raised a lot of money and helped these people out.

Talk a little about the Station Family Fund and how you came to be a part of it.

Well, we originally were trying to find a foundation that would accept our money and distribute it to the victims for immediate needs. The problem we ran into was, all these foundations were willing to accept our money but they wanted to take like a 50% administration fee and then with the rest of the money wanted to set up a scholarship fund, and I’m saying, well that’s not going to help the people that need care right now. That need mortgages paid or have hospital bills and things like that. They said well, we can’t help you, that’s not how we have our funds set up. We’re not able to give money like that. We can only give to non-profit organizations. So I said well basically what you’re telling me is that you guys just kind of funnel money back and forth to each other and nobody gets help. So we put out a press release in the Providence Journal and some of the fans responded. Some of the survivors and they had set up a foundation – the Station Family Fund – which was set up in a way as such as they can get the money right to the victims that needed it right there at the time, it wasn’t like you had to go through a big bureaucracy. It was like immediate care, just what we wanted so, we talked to them and we decided to hook up together and get us a benefit tour. So all the proceeds go to them and they give the money to whoever needs it. So far nobody’s been turned down. They’re helping everybody out. Everyone.

This isn’t the first time you guys have committed yourself to a cause. I remember about 10 years ago in Denver you guys did “guns for guitars” before a show.

Yeah we were doing the anti-gun thing. It was actually really cool. I got a call from Jim Brady at the time. That was really neat – the former Secretary of State – the guy from the Reagan thing, you know.

Have you ever seen yourselves as a group who go above and beyond expectations to help causes like “guns for guitars” and the Station Family Fund?

You know. I don’t know, maybe. It never seems like it. It’s just something comes up like that it just seems like, you know, there’s a good reason to do something. I figure if god has given us this talent to do what we do, if we can use the media attention to help people … I think it’s all about intent. If our intentions were to all of us try to (get the whole band together) and have another 1989, it’s not gonna happen regardless. The intention here is not to increase the awareness of Great White, it’s all about the Station Family Fund. And if I gotta take pot-shots from people in the press and from families and people saying we’re doing this for the wrong reasons, then that’s fine. I mean to me it’s all about the greater good. Not everybody’s gonna understand why you’re doing something. For me this is all about helping people out. You know, people that were there for 20 years for us. Following our careers and we watched these people grow up. And they grew up with us. Now’s our opportunity to help ‘em out and help their families and I just think this is the right thing to do.

A friend of mine was talking about you guys recently and mentioned that Great White never tried to be anything they weren’t. While your peers were scrambling to redefine themselves during the 90s, you guys stuck to your roots and released, in his opinion, your best album in “Sail Away.” Is that how you see the band? Never pretending to be something you’re not.

Well you know. We never tried to really change and go with the trend. We had our day and we knew when it was over and we knew we didn’t want to try to be the next Nirvana or something and cut our hair and wear Pendleton’s and sheared our shoes and act all angry. That just wasn’t us. We said look, we’re just gonna keep playing our music and the fans that like it will buy it and the ones that don’t won’t. And that happens to every band. Eventually you’re day’s gonna be over, you can’t go on forever. Eventually the Stones are gonna be like we can’t do this anymore. (laughs) Maybe. (laughs) just maybe. But, that’s one in a million. Great White had a lot of good years and a lot of that was because of the fact that we stuck to who we were and we didn’t have to go out there and fake it. You know, we didn’t have to act a certain way. We just went out there and played music we love to play and that’s what we’re still doing. We’re playing music that we love to play.

The band’s identity has taken a lynching since February. Do you think the words “Great White” will forever be associated with the tragedy?

Well undoubtedly that’s something people aren’t going to forget. We’re not trying to erase that from people’s memories. If anything it’s like almost you wanna bring this kind of thing to the forefront and say look what can happen. We need to kind of take a look at some of these public places you know. This is my hope, that some laws and legislations will come down and make places more safe for people. For employees as well as guests. All you can do is hope that some good will come out of a horrible, horrible negative. That’s what we’re hoping. That’s what we’re trying. Right now, at this point, I’m looking down a long, long, long dark tunnel and there’s a little pinpoint of light at the end of it and that’s the Station Family Fund. This is the one thing that keeps me moving everyday. Getting out of bed and saying okay, instead of sitting there and just crying in my beer. It was a horrible event for everybody that was there and I don’t think anybody who was there wasn’t tremendously affected by it.

How difficult was it for you to play that first show after the fact?

It was really emotional. There was a lot of people there and that made it a lot easier. They had donated so much money and the firemen were there. It was just a very, very positive environment. And it made it a lot easier. Once you go through that first song it was like okay, cool we’re doing the right thing here. You hate to hurt people’s feelings, you know, some families that don’t understand or gonna be upset. I don’t want to do that and I don’t want to hurt there feelings, but you know what you gotta think of the greater good. You gotta say to yourself why would anybody … just because one person, two people or three people don’t want our help, why would they want to stand in the way of us giving help to other kids that need it or other families that need it? I mean, there’s 56 children here that have lost one or both parents. Why would anybody want to stop us from helping them? You don’t want our help, okay that’s fine, but don’t stop us from helping somebody else. That’s just not right as far as I’m not concerned. People asked us for our help. If one fan asked me to go out and do a tour for them I would do it. Why would I turn down hundreds, let alone just one? There’s so many people that have emailed us saying thank you very much, and thanks for your help, we appreciate it and we could really use the money. How can we turn them down?

Have the crowds been generally supportive?

Oh absolutely. Amazingly so. Our crowds. These are working class people. Most of them aren’t a bunch of doctors and lawyers. There are no billionaires in the audience, you don’t see Donald Trump and Liz Tyler hanging out in the front row you know. These are just working class people and they’re giving the shirts off their backs. God bless them you know. I’m just so proud these guys are our fans. They’re just wonderful people.

I read the Rolling Stone coverage of the tragedy and thought it was completely unprofessional and harsh …

Well, that’s Rolling Stone (laughs)

Have you found that the media is causing more problems than good for your cause?

No. You know what, actually not. For the most part the media’s been pretty cool. There’s of course been a few papers that have gone out of their way to find the dark side and that’s journalism. You expect that. Not everybody’s gonna see things from the same angle as another person. Some people want to be controversial and some people are only happy when reporting the dark side of things. That’s sensationalism. For me it’s safer to sit home and do nothing, but it’s not right. These are our fans, they were there for us for 20 years and I’ll be damned if I’m not gonna get out there and help them right now when they need it. What kind of person would that make me? I couldn’t live with myself. Anybody ever needs our help, we’re there to help them. I don’t care if we weren’t even there that night, we were playing somewhere else and this happened to some other band we’d be doing the same thing we’re doing right now, I guarantee it, cause these are they’re fans too. I’m surprised that more bands haven’t come together and tried to help out. Cause they’re bands out there, I’m not gonna mention any names, that could do one show and give 10% of their t-shirt money and make more money than we’ve made the last two months. But, I don’t know, I guess they figured they weren’t there so it’s not their problem.

Have you given any thought about the future of the band? Are you going to keep touring after this cycle is done and do you have plans on recording new material, or is the future up in the air at this point?

I’ll just see what happens. Right now, I’m just trying to help these people out as much as we can. That’s my main focus right now, I can’t think beyond that at this point.

Tell me something good that has happened to you this year.

You know what, I’ve really come to realize in light of this whole thing, how fortunate I am to have the talent I was given and how blessed I am to be alive and how grateful and how blessed we are to be working with the Station Family Fund. They’re a great group of people and it’s given me a whole new lease on what I do for a living. It’s turned going to work into like, wow this is not about me, me, me, it’s about something a lot bigger than that. It’s not about Jack Russell and Great White, it’s about helping out some people. It’s given me a, I don’t know, a new vitality, you could say. A whole new reason to get up and do this. Cause for a while there, I mean, this business makes you really cynical you know. You’ve been in it for so long. Everybody always wants something from you. You try to get down to the bottom of what that something is, you know, you’re always looking at people and thinking what does that guy want, what’s the real reason, you know what I mean? This has really restored my faith in humanity and people in general. You start to see, in this business, the dark side of people. This tragedy has brought out a lot of good will in so many people and so much compassion, it’s just blowin’ me away, it really is, it’s just overwhelming. I’m just so overwhelmed by the generosity of our fans. I can’t … I know I’m repeating myself when I say that but I still can’t believe it. It just blows me away.

When you look back on your career, what’s the greatest moment for you?

There’s been so many highs. I think my proudest moment was when my father has seen me at (??) Meadows, with like 60,000 people. He was backstage with this Great White shirt on, just pumped up and just so proud, you know. That’s probably the best moment of my career. The Grammy’s and the platinum records, compared to this tour and what we’re doing right now is all just stuff that collects dust on my walls right now. I think this is the most important thing Great White’s ever done or ever will do.

How do you want to be remembered?

As a band that really cared about its fans. People that loved to play music and tried to do the right thing by their friends.

Well, Jack thanks for talking to me.

You’re welcome. I appreciate it. One thing I do want to say to you. This isn’t a rock and roll tragedy this is an American tragedy. And if people don’t agree with what we’re doing or don’t agree with Great White or don’t like their music or like Willie Nelson, okay who cares? My plea to the American public is please help these people out, they need it. They’re just like you, they’re fellow Americans that live in a small community. A very meager income. And if you can help out at all – Stationfamilyfund.org. Go to that and help ‘em out you know, they’d really appreciate it. That’s one thing I want to make sure you get in there if you could.