Brett's name has been coming up a lot lately as a potential singer, so I've been going back and listening to some Fuel and some of his other work, and now I'm 100% convinced he's the guy for the job.
For one thing, I've finally gotten to listening to the latest Fuel album, Puppet Strings, where Scallions wrote all the vocals (as opposed to early Fuel albums where Carl Bell wrote much of the melodies and lyrics) and it's clear Scallions would be a MASSIVE step up in the writing department from Chester. Still not Scott, but a damn step up for sure.
A couple songs off the album:
https://youtu.be/5SoPab7abY8https://youtu.be/dNPcxXd9yZ4Then there's his recent covers of STP songs:
Big Empty (acoustic solo):
https://youtu.be/F-Auymiqd08Vasoline (Fuel full band):
https://youtu.be/jzRHbBCs8dEHe's clearly got the range to sing at least the first 3 albums, but he doesn't try at all to sound like Scott. I'm worried some of the rangier stuff like Atlanta or Wonderful might be out of his wheelhouse, but as Robert said in a recent interview the concern should be more about making new music than covering the back-catalog.
Then there's his resume outside of Fuel. He's played in 1-2-3 Go!, a supergroup coverband with Mike McCready of Pearl Jam and Stefan Lessard of Dave Matthews band, at Sundance Festivals. And of course, he toured for a few years with Ray Manzerek and Robbie Krieger in Riders on the Storm.
1-2-3 Go! - Time (Pink Floyd Cover):
https://youtu.be/mnfsv7JbllYRiders on the Storm:
https://youtu.be/ndplsFUNPRAHe's and experienced rock singer from a fairly big rock band, his commitments to Fuel don't appear to be so huge they could eclipse STP (at this point, he basically is Fuel), he's a good writer, he was considered good enough to tour with the surviving members of the Doors, and was confident enough to actually take the position, he's obviously a fan of STP, he can play guitar (better than Chester) so songs like Adhesive that require two guitars are open, and he's far from being a 'Weiland clone.'
My only question is why are the boys doing online auditions when this guy is out there? Did they offer the job and he turned it down? Did they audition him, but want to exhaust all options before hiring him? Did the thought never even occur to them?