White Cadillac establishes itself as hard rock/metal force to be reckoned with By Mark Stevens

“The greatest band alive. Ever.” That’s how B.J. Lisko ends an interview about White Cadillac. He laughs after he says it. Of course he doesn’t mean it. Then again … “Nobody makes a racket like we do on stage,” he said earlier in the interview. “It sounds arrogant, but I think we’re in a class by ourselves when it comes to that. But you should be confident about your band. “If you’re not confident, why bother? That’s kind of what rock ‘n’ roll is all about, you know?” If that is what rock ‘n’ roll is all about – and maybe it should be capitalized, Rock ‘N’ Roll, a proper noun necessitating proper attitude and approach – then White Cadillac is all about rock ‘n’ roll, and vice versa. The three-piece is comprised of veterans of the Youngstown-area rock scene: Guitarist-vocalist Adam May, drummer Fred Whitacre Jr. and bassist Lisko. They come to the band from all sorts of different projects and influences, from Whitacre’s death-metal roots going back more than a decade in Kitchen Knife Conspiracy to Lisko’s work in the Motorhead-meets-Elvis outfit Hellvis and his ongoing punk-metal-arena rock semi-obsession Turbo Lovers to May’s groovy, dancey, rocking Groove Conductor. But rather than causing drama, the range of influences and experiences make White Cadillac what it is. “None of us come to the band with a song that sounds like our other projects,” May wrote in an email. “Fred never comes to practice with a death metal idea, but during certain parts of a song, you can hear him do a little fill or a kick drum pattern that you might hear on a Cannibal Corpse record – only he throws it in under a blues riff.” And even though White Cadillac is heavy and very metal most of the time, the group’s members all also love pop music – that blends in with all the metal to produce catchy, hook-driven rock that catches your ear, even when it’s shaking your core. “We all listen to a lot of different music. The common ground falls first in metal and second in pop music,” Lisko said. “Fred likes Elton John, Adam likes Prince. I like Huey Lewis. That comes through in the music. Our songs have a lot of hooks – everything’s gotta have a hook. In certain respects, it has that mainstream, accessible feel.” The confidence that the band members have – “I’m never worried about White Cadillac going on stage and not being on,” Lisko says – comes through in the three-piece being able to perform and produce such a loud, heavy sound without having to worry about whether or not all three members are up to the task. “Being in a three-piece used to scare me,” May wrote. “B.J. and I tried this about 10 years ago in another project, and it worked fairly well, but we just weren’t confident enough in our abilities yet. These days, however, the freedom that comes with being in a three-piece is amazing.” That freedom and all those wide-ranging influences have helped produce a sound that’s hard to find in Youngstown. Impossible, even, Lisko tells it. “Nobody really sounds like us,” he said. “There are bands that are definitely heavy, but as far as the sound that we have, you can’t really pigeon-hole us. If you like heavy metal, if you like hard rock, if you like any aspect of what we’ve done in the past, you’ll like some aspect of White Cadillac.” The band’s first album, “Casualty of the City,” covers the full range of groove-inspired, heavy, hook-driven metal. But the band members can’t wait to get back in the studio. “I know it’s totally predictable and cliché for a band to say they’re reinventing themselves,” May wrote, “but this (upcoming) album sounds nothing like Casualty of the City but still sounds everything like White Cadillac. The first album, we kinda stuck closer to our roots and played it close to the hip. This time we’re trying all kinds of new things. We’re pushing the envelope as much as we can.” Until the weather goes to hell and the band can drag itself away from the stage and into the studio, they’re set to keep rocking away at local gigs, including the annual Halloween bash at The Royal Oaks on Oct. 29 with Red Hot Rebellion from Dayton and Pittsburgh’s Trash Magnet. And if you like metal or catchy rock and anything heavy but never really got into Hellvis or Kitchen Knife Conspiracy, don’t think you can’t enjoy the show. White Cadillac certainly thinks you will. “White Cadillac in Youngstown, it’s weird,” Lisko says. “We don’t really fit with the hipsters, we don’t fit with the cover-band crowd, either. But people definitely like it. We sort of make no apologies for how we play and what we play and what people expect of us from our other bands. “It’s kind of nice to have a new set of people who follow it and like it who aren’t the same people you see all the time, who aren’t just the scenesters. It’s cool.”