Back to the Rhythm

Back to the Rhythm, released in the United States by Shrapnel Records on 17 July 2007, is the tenth studio album on Great White's own discography and the band's first in eight years, the previous one being Can't Get There from Here in 1999. Singer Jack Russell, lead guitarist Mark Kendall, guitarist and keyboard player Michael Lardie and drummer Audie Desbrow, with Sean McNabb on bass, came back together in January 2007 to play a benefit concert, and went on from there into the studio, where they spent the following months writing and recording. The year also marked the band's 25th anniversary, and the album was presented as part of the celebration. Lardie produced, engineered and mixed the record, and every member had a say in the final mix. He described the new songs as fresh and unmistakably Great White, but shaped by the way the band sounds on stage, and said that he and Kendall were enjoying their Rolling Stones roots, playing off each other in the manner of that band's two guitarists. According to the booklet, Russell wrote every song with Kendall, Lardie or both, and Jack Blades is a co-writer of four of them: the title track, "Here Goes My Head Again", "Play On" and "Neighborhood". The album opens with the title track and closes with "Just Yesterday", and the American sleeve dedicates it to those who lost their lives and those who were injured in West Warwick, Rhode Island, on the night of 20 February 2003. Frontiers Records released it in Europe on 31 August 2007 as a digipak, with the bonus track "30 Days in the Hole" in place of "Cold World" as track 11, and King Records issued the Japanese edition on 26 September 2007 with a Japan-only bonus track, "Caledonia", in the same slot. The band played across the United States that summer, and its 25th-anniversary world tour took in fourteen concerts in Europe. When the tour was over McNabb opted out, and the band went back into the studio with Scott Snyder on bass to make Rising.