OUR BAND got together in September 1993 when bassist Byron and I relocated to Green Bay from Kansas City.  Byron and I had met in KC at the art institute - Byron had grown up with Paul in Green Bay.  Byron and I had an earlier band that Paul had sat in on drums once with when we had played in Green Bay.  We loved his tough playing and good looks.  After a few other drummers hadn’t worked out in Kansas City, Byron and I decided to move up to Green Bay to play with Paul.We were quick to work up and record our first couple of songs (Common Cold and Weed Roses) for a self-released 7” soon after getting things together in Green Bay.  As soon as we got the box of pressed 7” records in the mail, we sent one to Bernie at Caulfield Records.  I think he left a message on our phone answering machine that said he liked it and would definitely be into helping us get it out there.  This was huge for us.  We loved Bernie’s band Sideshow and he had released a 7” for Germbox - a Kansas City band that had really blown us away.  We spent the winter of 93-94 writing the songs that would be our first album.

THE STUDIO was Whoopass Studio - in Lincoln.  After Byron and I captured Paul, we moved the band back to KC and made the trip up to Lincoln to record in the spring of 1994.  Once we had enough songs together, on the suggestion of Bernie at Caulfield, we arranged to record with Mike and A.J. Mogis at their home studio - I think we tracked for two days and mixed for one day?   I remember the house being a pretty nondescript suburban house - maybe 1970’s? I think Mike and A.J. lived there, but with all the recording stuff and  cables running everywhere, it seemed like anyone living there was kind of an afterthought. I remember the Mogis Brothers being cool and thoughtful as they invited us in and told us where to set up in the house.

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THE RECORDING was pretty much a “plug-in and play” situation as I remember - probably because we all knew we didn’t have a lot of time.  Mike and A.J. were very efficient but didn’t seem hurried. They knew exactly how to make our little three-piece band sound big.Giants Chair’s first album, Red And Clear, was released on October 10, 1995 by Caulfield Records and seems to be a memorable favorite in knowing circles as a good example of Midwest, indie, post-hardcore emo - but it’s just a rock-n-roll record that we had fun writing and recording.  And we had even more fun driving our van coast-to-coast playing those songs in the basements and bars, meeting and playing with so many great other bands and people.

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THE MASTER was originally put to DAT in-house by the Mogis Brothers and has held up really well, but when John at Spartan Records approached us about repressing the record for a 30th anniversary re-release, we thought maybe we’d listen and see if there was anything we could do to beef things up a bit after all these years.  So we asked Bernie to send us the original DAT.In 2015 we recorded our 3rd album, PREFABYLON (Spartan Records), with Duane Trower at Weights And Measures in KC and we had him bring up the album for a listen.  Of course, we didn’t want to mess with things too much - a lot of people, including us, love the album for what it is, but there are always little things you might want to tweak if given a chance.  Any slight criticism I’ve had of the album over the years probably has more to do with my ‘open-string’, ringing, sloppy at times, guitar playing - especially when there is up to three tracks of guitar layered - it’s easy for so much guitar to get kind of “washy”.  I’ve always been surprised and grateful that Mike & AJ were able to get as much definition out of my noise as they did but, these 30 years later, I think Duane was ultimately able to define and push the tones to bring out a bit of growl that wasn’t there before - and he may have sprinkled some of that Weights And Measures magic on the bass & drums, too.  Seems like it.Thanks to everyone everywhere back there!   We hope you like what you hear here.

Scott, Byron & Paul