FIREHOUSE has just released a new single called “Mighty Fine Lady”. The song marks the band’s first release with FIREHOUSE‘s new lead vocalist Nate Peck, 2023 “American Idol” golden ticket recipient from Season 21, who officially joined the group last May. He replaced late FIREHOUSE frontman C.J. Snare, who died on April 5, 2024 at the age of 64 following a lengthy battle with cancer.
In a new interview with The Hair Metal Guru, FIREHOUSE guitarist Bill Leverty reflected on Snare‘s illness and Peck‘s eventual addition to the band. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “It was about two and a half years before [his death that] C.J. was fine. Then he had some stomach pain. And we were playing at a gig in Milwaukee. And he walks over to me, kind of like when I’m starting the intro to ‘Love Of A Lifetime’ or something, and he’s just, like, ‘Man, I’ve never felt this bad.’ And I’m going, ‘You wanna stop and take a break?’ And he said, ‘No, I’ll get through it.’ Because he had the ‘show must go on’ vibe. Man, that guy was tough. So we finished the show and, and I’m, like, ‘Man, maybe go get that looked at. And he said, ‘Yeah, it’ll probably go away.’ We didn’t know what it was. And then it didn’t get any better. We had a little time off. So he went to the doctor — actually, he went to the emergency room. And they said, ‘Yeah, you’ve got an obstruction, a bowel obstruction, so we’ve gotta remove that.’ So [after] surgically removing it, he was back two weeks later singing. You’d never know that he had a scar from having that taken out — and he had gotten some really bad news with it, lab results and stuff like that. And he’s, like, ‘Look, I wanna keep this private. I don’t wanna talk about it.’ Let’s not mention this. But it was very bad news. And biopsy lab results were not good at all. So that was his first surgery to have it removed. He had another major surgery that was a 12-hour procedure, and he was back singing in six weeks. And you would never know it. He had a scar [about 10 inches] long… And you would never know it with this guy. That’s how tough he was. And then, that was about two years that he was doing great, and then he started getting sick again. And so he went in for a third surgery. And that’s about the time when Robby Lochner [JACK RUSSELL’S GREAT WHITE] said, ‘Yeah, I know you guys have a lot of shows on the books and you might need a substitute. And you’ve gotta check this guy out.’ And I’d never heard of him. And I don’t watch ‘American Idol’. I shouldn’t. I should now because… But I checked out Nate‘s Instagram and he’s got all these songs that he sings from the greatest singers of all time, in my opinion. And he just knocks ’em outta the park. And he’s just singing live. He got a camera here, and he’s just singing into his microphone, and it’s just awesome. And so I called him and I said, ‘Hey, I’m Bill from FIREHOUSE. We’ve got a couple of shows coming up. Would you be interested in filling in for C.J.? C.J. should be back around July.’ And he said, ‘Oh, I would love to.’ I sent him the song list. I said, ‘Do you know any of our songs?’ He says, ‘No. I’ve heard ‘Love Of A Lifetime’ before, but I don’t know any of the songs.’ So I’m, like, ‘Well, I’ll send you the songs. And we’ll be talking on the phone. And you can get ready by kind of practicing or whatnot.'”
Bill continued: “We didn’t have any rehearsals with the guy. We had a long soundcheck that day of the New England Rock Fest, which was his first gig, and he just crushed it. I mean, he was really nervous, but he just nailed it. And I sent some video over to C.J., and I was talking to [C.J.] on the phone. He was, like, ‘Man, that guy’s good.’ He goes, ‘Bill, that’s your guy.’ And I was, like, ‘Wow.’ So the plan was for C.J. to come back in July. C.J. was feeling rough. He had lost a lot of weight. He was really weak. And we were, like, ‘Look, man, when you’re ready, come on out. We’ll have Nate there too. And then you can get out, sing the first song or two, say ‘Hey’, introduce Nate and you guys sing a couple songs together. You go take a break, come back out, do an encore or whatever, and whatever you feel will do.’ But unfortunately, C.J. had a sudden cardiac arrest. And I talked to him the day before. He said, ‘Things are looking good, man. I’m, I’m gaining weight. Things are looking up,’ is what he said. I said, ‘Great.’ And the next day he passed… I remember I got the phone call. We were in Texas, and we were connecting. And I said, ‘Everybody, come on over here,’ ’cause I had just gotten a phone call, and I told everybody that C.J. passed away last night. And we were just sitting in that airport going… We were not at all expecting that, ready for that. It was brutal. It really was.”
According to Leverty, Snare gave FIREHOUSE his blessing to continue with Peck as the frontman. “The thing about him is he never wanted us to cancel a show,” Bill said. “Even after he got sick, he didn’t want us to cancel a show. Especially once we got Nate. Once we got Nate, he’s, like, ‘Okay, that guy can sound like FIREHOUSE. So, that’s your guy.’
Asked if C.J. and Nate ever had a chance to speak to each other, Bill said: “Oh, yeah. All the time. They talked almost daily. C.J. gave him a lot of advice. And one of the things that he would tell Nate is that you’re running a marathon, not a sprint. So keep that in mind. Don’t come out and blow your voice out in the first song, ’cause you’ve gotta control yourself, hold it back a little bit, and take care of yourself. And Nate‘s followed his advice really well.”
Regarding how “Mighty Fine Lady” came about, Bill said: “Well, Nate started it. He was, like, ‘Send me a riff.’ And I was, like, ‘Well, okay.’ So I’m down here [in my studio], and I dug up a riff or I came up with a riff that would be, I think, something cool that we could maybe do live and maybe turn into a song. And I sent it to him, and he sang on his little iPhone rig, and sent it back to me in a voice memo with the verse, what is the verse now. And I was, like, ‘Man, that is so good and sounds so cool. Let me write some music that would be more fitting for a verse, because what you got is a melody and the lyrics are perfect.’ So I sent him back something that was more like a verse. ‘Cause he sang over the intro riff, and that intro riff on that song, that’s the only time you hear that riff, which is kind of what started the song. The only time you hear it in that song is just right the intro. So I sent him back that verse, and he sang on that, and he’s, like, ‘Oh, yeah. I like that a lot better.’ And I said, ‘Okay. Now what you’re singing about here is the hot chick. So we’ve gotta come up with something kind of a little classy to make it the hook or what the topic is about.’ And we bounced a bunch of stuff back and forth and we came up with ‘Mighty Fine Lady’. And we got a chorus together. And so then after the chorus, you kind of have a song, but you’ve gotta get little pieces to get from the verse to the chorus and little pieces to get from the chorus back to the second verse, and then a solo, and then a little bridge maybe, which we wrote. And he just came up with all these creative ideas and all these great melodies. So then I was, like, ‘Well, the song’s written,’ and [drummer] Michael [Foster] lives an hour away, so he’s coming over here playing drums as it’s being done. He’s putting in his cool stuff, that intro and everything. And so then, we’re, like, ‘Well, Nate, let’s fly you here to Virginia to record it.’ And I had him scheduled — he was gonna fly in on a Friday night. We were gonna record Saturday. He was gonna fly out Sunday. And Friday night we went to dinner and we’re just hanging out. And I’m, like, ‘All right, well, let’s go back. You wanna just sing it through to get the rough idea together?’ And he sang it through, and it was perfect. So I’m, like, ‘Let’s not mess with that.’ The next day we went through it with kind of a fine-tooth comb and couldn’t really find anything to nitpick about. We tried some other options on stuff and kind of fiddled with it a little bit. But it was done that first night, that first take he did. And the guy’s just got all these really cool ideas and everything, and the natural way that he sings without even trying just has that bright tone that C.J. was kind of known for. And Nate‘s got it. To me, it’s magic. And we’re super fortunate to work with him.”
Asked if there are plans for FIREHOUSE to write and record more new music, Bill said: “We would love to. And we’re going to. We’ll figure out what the next one is, and we’ll crank it out. We won’t let it out until it’s done. It might take a little bit. But in the meantime, that’s where you can get ‘Mighty Fine Lady’ is at firehousemusic.com. We don’t have it on any of the streaming stuff as of right now. It’ll eventually be up there. But, right now, if you support the band directly, there aren’t a bunch of middlemen in there. And it’s way better for us.”
According to Leverty, completing “Mighty Fine Lady” “was a lot of work. But it was labor of love in putting it together,” he said. “A lot of hours mixing it. I think I spent more time mixing it than I did recording everybody else put together, just because I’m not a mix engineer, but I want it to compete with our old stuff, I want it to compete with our third record too, which was mixed by Chris Lord-Alge, the greatest mix engineer out there — one of the greatest. And you want it to compete with the stuff that’s out there now and to sound not too far removed, but we also want it to sound like our classic kind of vibe. So there was a lot of experimentation and a lot of work to get it to sound the way it sounds, and we’re real happy with the way it turned out.”
Peck performed an outstanding audition for “American Idol” judges Luke Bryan, Katy Perry and Lionel Richie. Richie praised Nate‘s performance, saying: “That was brilliant… The best rock singer EVER that we’ve had. You’ve got it!” Perry looked to the sky and said: “Actually, he’s SO good!” High praises from all three judges got him unanimous consent to move onto the next level of the competition. Peck ultimately decided to leave the show to pursue his career in music his own way: playing live music in Nashville’s booming rock scene and guest singing with national artists like JACK RUSSELL’S GREAT WHITE.
Peck has been singing with FIREHOUSE since October of 2023.
Snare died was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer in 2020 and took a hiatus from the band in 2023 to undergo abdominal surgery. However, his daughter is reported to have stated the official cause of death was cardiac arrest, according to TMZ.
In a statement on FIREHOUSE‘s social media, Snare‘s bandmates said he died “unexpectedly” despite his long illness.
They shared their “great sorrow” at losing their “brother… the rock and roll warrior.
“We are all in complete shock with CJ‘s untimely passing,” they wrote.
“CJ was was arguably one of the best vocal talents of a generation, touring the world with FIREHOUSE non stop the past 34 years.
“Our heartfelt condolences go out to the entire Snare family, Katherine Little, friends, and all our beloved fans all over the world.”
FIREHOUSE hasn’t released a studio album since 2011’s “Full Circle”, which featured re-recorded versions of some of the band’s older songs. The group’s last collection of new material, “Prime Time”, came out in 2003.
FIREHOUSE reached stardom during the early ’90s with hits like “Reach For The Sky”, “Don’t Treat Me Bad” and “All She Wrote”, as well as its signature power ballads “I Live My Life For You”, “Love Of A Lifetime” and “When I Look Into Your Eyes”.
At the 1992 American Music Awards, FIREHOUSE won the award for “Favorite Heavy Metal/Hard Rock New Artist”. They were chosen over NIRVANA and ALICE IN CHAINS.
Formed nearly four decades ago, FIREHOUSE‘s classic lineup consisted of Snare, Leverty, Foster and bassist Perry Richardson. Richardson left in 2000 and was replaced by Allen McKenzie in 2003.
Image credit: Melvin Zoopers
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