Coming to Algonquin Founders' Days, Jack Russell talks Great White nightclub tragedy

It's been 12 years since Jack Russell fled The Station nightclub in Rhode Island as his band's pyrotechnics enflamed the building.

He fronted a different Great White back then, hard rockers who’d gained fame with songs such as “Once Bitten, Twice Shy.” That band’s guitarist Ty Longley died, along with 99 other people as billowing smoke and flames engulfed the club within five minutes.

“It’s really hard, and I don’t speak of it usually,” Russell said of the tragedy. “I just say, ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’ It’s been 12 years, and I don’t believe it’s gotten any easier for people. It hasn’t gotten any easier for me. It seems like yesterday. …

“I look at a sunrise and think, ‘100 people will not see that.’ ”

On tour with a new band called Jack Russell’s Great White and scheduled to perform July 25 as part of Algonquin Founders’ Days, Russell spoke by phone in between concerts, spending his off days on a boat, fishing for Mako sharks.

[ Algonquin Founders' Days schedule of events ]

He said he spent four years putting together the Great White band he’ll bring to Algonquin – made up of Chris Tristram, Tony Montana, Robby Lochner and Dicki Fliszar – and they put on “a [expletive] of a rock show.”

“You’re going to recognize more songs than you even realize we wrote,” he said.

“I have what I consider the perfect rock band,” he said. “These guys are amazing. … The original stuff we’re writing is second to none. I’m in a better place at 54 right now. I feel 25. We aim to keep going and going. This is what we’ve been looking for all our lives.”

The band has released the single “Hard Habit” from a yet-to-be released album, which includes Russell’s favorite song, “Blame It On The Night,” a song he said he wrote about his wife, Heather Ann Kramer, about her childhood.

“Her father abused and molested her and all that kind of stuff. It’s horrifying. I can’t understand how that kind of stuff can happen,” he said. “I felt I had to write a song about that because my wife goes through that stuff daily.”

The rest of the album he describes as “more like the Great White of old than anything else,” as his former band has since “lost its edge,” he said.

He said his only regret is he didn’t leave the band sooner.

“I’m in a great place right now. I wouldn’t trade anything to be anywhere else,” he said.

A string of trouble followed Russell after the fire – addictions resulting in rehabilitation, medical issues and conflicts with band members as different configurations of the band took to the stage.

The Great White started by Russell in 1977, as he tells it, made it until 2011, “and it was a pretty kickin’ band.” Band members eventually ended up in court, with Russell earning the right to use the name Jack Russell’s Great White, while a Russell-free Great White remains.

“I just got a little bit tired of the people and their ways and you know, things changed,” he said. “You spend 30-some years with somebody, some things start to bother you, and then they really start to bother you, and pretty soon, you want to kill the person because he clicks his teeth.”

Just after the fire, the original Great White – with Russell at the helm – performed two years worth of benefit tours to raise money for a Station Family Fund formed to help the victims and the families of the deceased.

The benefit tour gave the band reason to go out and play, Russell said.

“Without that, I don’t know if I could have ever set foot on a stage again,” he said.

Still, Russell was vilified by some who believed he didn’t really apologize or step up to take the blame. The owners of the club and Great White’s former road manger, who set off the fireworks in the club, were charged with involuntary manslaughter. The road manager was sentenced to 10 years, while the club owners received 15- and 10-year sentences.

“For me, it’s like, look, I don’t believe the fire was my fault, and that’s going to really piss somebody off, but there’s nothing I did in the course of a day that could have stopped that from happening,” Russell said. “I’m really sorry it happened. I feel horrible. I feel survivor’s guilt because people came to see me sing and got killed.

“I am sorry. I am truly sorry. People never heard me say that. … People were killed and injured. I live with this every single day. I lost a lot of friends, a lot of my close friends. If I’m not sorry, who is. … You can play the blame game all you want. The fact of the matter is it happened. I feel terrible for my part in it.

“I wish we never had done that show.”