When Richmond, Virginia-born Hard Rock stalwarts Firehouse ‘unleashed’ their self-titled debut in 1990, few outside the industry could have anticipated the level of success they’d so soon achieve. Returning in 1992 with the oddly-underrated Hold Your Fire (and the corresponding hit single ‘When I Look Into Your Eyes’) and the equally overlooked 3, the group would become a perennial favorite on summer tour circuits. After the untimely passing of founding frontman C.J. Snare, the group chose (with Snare’s blessing) to soldier on, recruiting former American Idol contestant Nate Peck, recording the all-new track ‘Mighty Fine Lady’ to unanimous praise. Recently, guitarist Bill Leverty, always a man of many words and interesting stories, was kind enough to speak with us regarding, among other items, the future of his underrated solo career and the highs and sleep-deprived lows of touring.

Todd: Once C.J. had passed, was there any doubt the group could–or even truly should–‘move on’ without him?

Bill: “That was our first thought too, but absolutely. We want to keep the music alive, keep the songs going and this is what we do. It’s not only our careers, but our favorite thing to do is to make music, so we are compelled to do that. And (C.J.) he wanted us to go on. He never even wanted us to cancel shows when he was sick or after a surgery. …So, yeah, the idea was we’re going to keep going. I think of it as carrying on and fortunately, we have a guy named (American Idol Season 21 Golden Ticket recipient) Nate Peck who is a phenomenal singer who also has that vocal control, range and all that that C.J. had. And so we’re most definitely very lucky in that way.”

Todd: How did you initially become acquainted with Nate? Had you seen his performance from American Idol? It’s absolutely amazing you’ve been able to find someone who perfectly fit what the group had been looking for.

Bill: “(Guitarist) Robbie Lochner from (the band) Jack Russell’s Great White had already met Nate and knew that C.J. was going to be out with this third surgery. Robbie called me up and said ‘I know this guy who sounds a lot like C.J.. If you need him, you ought to have his number in your Rolodex.’ I looked into Nate on his Instagram and saw all these amazing performances that he had done singing some of the hardest songs of our genre and more. I was immediately compelled to call him. I asked him, I said ‘Look, C.J. is going to be out recovering from a surgery. He is due back in July. Would you be willing to come out and fill in for him?’ and he said ‘He’d love to.’ I was like ‘All right, do you know any of our songs?’ and he says ‘I only know “Love Of A lifetime. I don’t really know it, but I kind of know I have heard the song and I said ‘Well I will send you our set list, but we are headlining a show, so you’ve got ten days to learn it’. And we didn’t have any rehearsal or anything. We got to the venue for the New England Rock Fest and had an extended sound check where we could go through a couple of the trouble spots that he thought he might have. He really didn’t feel like he had it all down, but when we heard him sing, we were just all blown away and floored. That night, we recorded the show with some video and sent it to C.J. C.J. Said ‘Oh, man, that’s your guy. C.J. was totally cool like that and they became really good friends and talked almost daily. C.J. took on the role of mentor while Nate was filling in because C.J. wanted Nate to get the best out of his performances and also get the best of the gig for the the band, himself and the fans.”

Todd: What ultimately led to the group transitioning from (Last In Line, Lynch Mob) vocalist Andrew Freeman?

Bill: “Andrew is a great singer and a great artist, but he wasn’t able to do a couple of gigs, and that’s when Robbie told me about Nate. That’s what prompted us to give Nate a call. Nate really does have the tone that sounds like Firehouse …Live, when he does the other songs, he doesn’t try to sound like C.J.. He’s just singing the lyrics and singing the melodies that C.J. and I wrote together. He’s got a lot of the same kind of inflections in his voice and the same placement of notes in his register. …And he’s even got the same range, so it really is unbelievable.”

Todd: Overall, how have fans responded to Nate thus far? It’s difficult to describe, but his addition feels so right.

Bill: “It’s been great. They’ve been so overwhelmingly positive and have really embraced him. Everyone has been so cool about Nate. And, in return, Nate is the kind of guy that is so respectful of C.J. and of the fans, and I think the fans pick up on that. …And I can tell you that hour and a half when we’re onstage, he most certainly does. But the other twenty-two-and-a-half hours we spend off stage, which is sometimes more important, he just feels right as well. I mean the guy is only twenty-four years old now and when he first started with this, he was twenty-three. He’s one of these guys that has me scratching my head going ‘How did you become so…’ because he’s an old soul. I’m like ‘How did you become so intelligent and so forward-thinking at such a young age?’. I mean when I was his age, I could be crazy and stupid, but when he’s in the dressing room, he is one of the bros.”

Todd: Once Nate was officially onboard, how long was it before you said ‘We need to record some new music‘?

Bill: “We had been wanting to record for twenty years, but we just never kind of got around to it or never really had a song that really inspired us to go through with it. But I guess it was maybe three months ago where Nate said ‘Hey man, why don’t you send me a guitar riff’, and so I said ‘All right’. So I worked on something and I might have gone back and listened to some other riffs I had in the can here that I recorded and I came up with something that I thought we could re-produce live and make it sound full with one guitar. I sent that riff over to him and it just took off. It got legs and he sang something and sent it back to me. Then I played something else and sent it back to him and he sang something on top of that. We bounced things back and forth and next thing you know, we had a song. It was pretty quick, but I think Nate was the guy who really got that whole thing started by saying ‘Hey! Let’s do something new. Can you send me riff?’. …And then started working on it diligently.”

Todd: Was there ever a point where recording an all-new record was a legitimate option? You have the audience.

Bill: “We only do one song at a time. We’re not going to try to write another nine new songs. I feel like when you do that, some of the songs lose their energy and their potential, so doing one song at a time is the best way for us, I think. And in this day and age, that way, we put all our attention and all of our energy into the next song and we approach it like it’s the last song we might ever have a chance to do. We want to make sure it’s as good as we can make it. I think that’s our approach. Once we get ten, maybe we’ll press some up and put them on a CD as an album or collection. But I think the way that we are doing it with one song at a time is probably the best way for us. Plus, only two of us live in the same state (Virginia), but the other two guys, one is in Michigan and one is in Ohio, so it’s not like we all live in the same place, either. It makes it so much harder for us to do it. …I don’t think I ever want to work for a label again unless they really, really want us, ya know? And they’ve got to give us the time to be able to put out the music when we’re ready, not when they demand that it be ready.”

Todd: In hindsight, how do you look back upon the group’s major label era? Obviously, the group had a great deal of success while signed to Epic Records (notably the previously-mentioned Firehouse and Hold Your Fire).

Bill: “I have nothing bad really to say about Epic Records. I think they did a great job in launching our career. And we did our homework. By the time we got our record deal, we had that first album written and we had already recorded those songs a couple of times already. And we all kind of lived in the same area. (Drummer) Michael (Foster), I lived in a band house, C.J. lived a block away and (original bassist) Perry (Richardson) lived in Myrtle Beach an was driving back and forth. So we had that unification geographically where we were all able to work together a lot. Then, when we went out on the road, we were all on a tour bus together, and once we started touring in November of 1990, we were on tour all winter long, all spring, and then when the summer hit, we were out with Warrant for four months. During the whole time we were out on the road, I had a four-track recorder with me, so I was always working on writing songs and if anybody had any ideas, we could lay them down on my four-track so we would remember them. And we finished a lot of songs out on the road. …When it was time to record the second album, we were ready because we had been together for so long doing our homework. We took off six months to write the third record. C.J. was living up in the Tampa/Clearwater area and I lived in Sarasota, so he’d drive down to my studio and we’d record. He’d get down there in the morning and we’d work all day and then he’d drive back at night. We’d talk about ideas on the phone and then he’d come back down and work some more. That’s how we did the third record (i.e., 3, issued in 1995), which was also Epic. What happened with Epic, and it really wasn’t just Epic, it was just the industry in general, was that when it was time for our fourth record, they weren’t really ready to kick in for it. There wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm in working a band of our genre because they had Pearl Jam and they had a couple of other bands that were alternative that they could work at radio and MTV. With bands like us, they were hit with a real challenge, so they didn’t give us a normal budget to record that fourth album. I told them I could deliver it for a huge reduction and I talked him into letting me produce our fourth record Good Acoustics (1996). It went gold in five or six countries over in Asia, so they kept us on the label for that and for the touring success that we had over in Southeast Asia. They didn’t put any money in promoting it in the States, but I understand why. They were trying to run a business and there wasn’t any business for our band or bands of our ilk in the States. So we still toured a little bit over here on that and then we asked to be released from the label and they obliged. That’s how it all worked out. We shook hands and parted company. …In fact, I’m still friendly to this day with Michael Caplan, the A&R guy who signed us.”

Todd: What are your current touring plans? Your website indicates the group will be rather busy. Am I correct in assuming the dates in question with primarily be fly-outs? I can’t begin to fathom how everyone endures all that.

Bill: “We’re going all over the country and hopefully, we’ll get some more. …I think we’ll have a very busy summer. …They’re all fly-outs for us. We do all fly-in dates, unless there happens to be a gig near your house, you’re flying. The travel really does beat us up. What lifts us back up is getting on that stage and playing those songs and having the audience react positively. We can be dead tired, which we often are, but then you get up there and you start playing, you feel like a million bucks because the audience lifts you up. …When we do a one-off, we can go in the night before, so you can usually get some sleep, but you’re still going to be a little beaten up from that travel. Then we play the show and we fly home the next day. If we have two shows in a row, we would have played on the Friday night, then Saturday morning, we’re usually catching a six am flight so we can get to the next place in time to set up and everything. So you’re up at three o’clock in the morning or whatever and then you’re playing that night and then you’re flying home on Sunday. If we get three in a row, which we sometimes do, and occasionally, we get four in a row, it’s a lot of days in a row without getting good sleep. Your body definitely takes a beating, and you got to take your vitamins. Something makes it so that we survive this stuff, but I often look back and go ‘Wow, I don’t know how we made it through this three in a row or this four in a row with the travel schedule we’ve had with no sleep’, but somehow, the human body rises to our occasion when needed.”

Todd: What length set list will the group be using? Am I correct in understanding there is now a tribute for C.J.?

Bill: “We do a new section in our show where we honor him and dedicate a song to him. We’re going to try to put in our latest song “Mighty Fine Lady”, into the set. A lot of our set is kind of already written because we’d get in a lot of trouble if we walked out of there without doing “Don’t Treat Me Bad” or “Love Of A Lifetime” and. If we are headlining, we do “All She Wrote”, “Shake And Tumble” and “When I Look Into Your Eyes”, so a lot of those songs we’re going to do every night. If we have a longer than a opening act set, if we have a headlining set, there are a couple of spots in there where we can juggle in and out a couple of alternate songs, and then we can do a couple of little jams and a couple of solo sections and stuff to make things a little different each and every night. It’s real fun to have a little improv that we can do every night to make every show a little different.”

Todd: Will there be a second Flood The Engine release? It felt like Flood The Engine (2013) had its momentum.

Bill: “I love that album and I loved making that album. You never know. (Vocalist) Jimmy (Kunes, ex-Cactus and British Blues icons Savoy Brown) and I talk all the time and (bassist) Keith (Horne, ex-Perter Frampton, Waylon Jennings) and I talk all the time and (drummer) Andre (LaBelle, ex-Chris Holmes, Richie Kotzen, Vinnie Vincent) and I talk all the time, too. Andre lives here in Virginia, Keith is down in Florida and Jimmy is in New York, but you never know. Right now, I need to really focus on trying to create some more new Firehouse material because with the reaction to this song has made us all excited to put out another brand new Firehouse song. And each one of them takes a lot of time and a lot of thought, so if there’s enough time and downtime from Firehouse to do another side project, I’d be totally open to working with all of those guys again. I love them all.”

Select Discography
Full Circle (2011)
Prime Time (2003)
O2 (2000)
Bring ‘Em Out Live (1999)
The Best Of Firehouse (1998)
Category 5 (1998)
Good Acoustics (1996)
3 (1995)
Hold Your Fire (1992)
Rock On The Road (Video) (1991)
Firehouse (1990)

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