David Huff: I tried to get in touch with you, I guess I had the wrong number or something.

MelodicRock.com: Yeah, Mario kept saying, “I'll get him to call you”. For some reason something in me tweaked that like, well what number is he going to call?
I know it.

But I thought, oh he must have it under control because I've got my phone number on the website, but he had my old number, so…
That's what it was. Actually it was a fax number or something, so I faxed something.

Oh it's a fax number now is it?
Yeah.

Oh dear. It's not mine. <laughs>
Isn't it funny, man. Yeah, so I sent them a fax and then I called Mario and said, "Man I don't think it's the right number." And he said, "I think I got the wrong number, my mistake."

Not a problem. Great to finally catch up with you anyway.
Yeah man. So what part of Australia are you in?

I'm in Hobart, which is the capital of Tasmania.
Oh my gosh. I've been to Australia one time and loved it. I went through Sydney, Perth, I can't remember all the places...Brisbane, and...

Melbourne, maybe?
Melbourne, yeah, that's it.

That's a pretty good tour. Who were you there with, just yourself?
That was with a guy named Michael W. Smith.

Of course.
Probably 10 - 11 years ago.

He's pretty well known down here.
Yeah. It was fun. Michael's a really good friend of mine; we kind of grew up together. So, yeah, it's wild man. We stayed... we were there almost two weeks, and I loved it. It was very cool.

You didn't get down to the wild state?
No. Well they had certain things booked and all that kind of stuff and we didn't really have time to go and do our own thing, so that was a bummer.

Yeah, well you'll have to get back down here again.
Oh, big time, man, big time. Very cool people.

Yeah, we're kind of laid-back, I guess. Similar to where you are, the Southern sort of laid-back feel.
Exactly.
I told Mario...I mean do you know Mario & Serafino [Frontiers] pretty well?

Yes.
I told him...I mean, you know our history right?

Of course!
How we met and stuff. I kept telling Mario, Dann and I, we love...it's just Dann, and Mike and I in Giant officially. I said, "Man we love doing the music and stuff", but just when music changed so fast that we just kind of...I guess you could call us spoiled because we didn't want to go tour small clubs and stuff, especially when we were just getting into production and playing on a bunch of records.
But when Mario said, "Man we need to do another record", I said, "Well gosh man are there still fans out there?" I didn't know if there would be any fans out there, you know. I hear every once in a while somebody will say, "When are you going to do another Giant record," and I'm like, that's not really enough people to really warrant another record.

Have you seen my message board?
You know what? I just did a minute ago. It was very cool.

What do you think? Good response?
That's incredible. I wouldn't have believed that there were that many fans out there.

Oh yeah. I'm adding more daily, believe me.
Wow. That's incredible. Well I hope they like the stuff that we're putting together. Basically, this record is a bunch of stuff that was never released.
These are kind of like the hidden stuff.

Let's talk about it. What tracks have you got?
I'm still compiling it right now. There is some stuff that we're fixing in the studio. We're actually going back in to record some stuff. But right now we've got some songs that we wrote, like a song called "You Will Be Mine" that was never... they weren't put on the records, just because they probably didn't fit the theme of the record. There's a song called...I produce a lot of records too so I have like thousands of songs in my head at the same time. There's a song called "Don't Leave Me In Love" [Now featured on the Union 4 compilation] a song called "Over You". Those are the ones for sure and then we've got a couple of live things.

What are they?
We did some live stuff on a program called RockLine.

Oh, sure. Yeah.
We've got some of the stuff... I think on that one it was "I Can't Get Close Enough", "Shake Me Up", stuff from the first record. "It Takes Two". We did that with Bob Coburn. When our band first got together, Bob Coburn broke our record in LA. And so we used to do private parties for them, KLOS, because they were so kind to us. Mark and Brian, we still keep in touch with them. As a matter of fact, last year, they keep asking us as Giant to come out and play for their Christmas shows, which we did two, three, or four years in a row. They keep asking as to come out, but just because of our schedules...I was in Las Vegas at the time and I couldn't do it. At the time I was playing with Vince Gill and Amy Grant. They did a Christmas tour and I had already committed to them. We definitely would've done it, but they didn't want to do it without me so they didn't do it. But we still have these private shows with them and Rock Line was like...it was kind of a private show but obviously over the radio.

Yeah.
It was in a private setting, you know. We invited all the people from the station down and played, so it was kind of fun. It was a party; it was great. So we've got some of those songs and we've got a couple of songs that we had written that...when we did Giant records we cut about 14 songs, 15 songs a record. But we had written a bunch of songs at the time back then that we never quite finished. We had done vocals and we had done stuff like that on them but we just never...whether it was the mixing or whether it was finishing the guitars or whatever. I mean, I've got stuff in my vault and I went to my brother's house, he had just moved, and I said, when we talked about doing this record, I said, "Man, I need to go through your tape vault to see what we have,” because I'm sure we have a ton of stuff that's just sitting around, and I went through, oh my gosh, I opened up his garage and he had like 2 or 3 boxes of tapes - none of them were marked.

No? <laughs>
So I spent hours listening to some stuff and I still have a bunch of DAT's and stuff to go through, but I mean, I found some cool stuff that I totally forgot about. Some of the stuff was mixed and recorded back when we did Giant. For whatever reason, whether the song didn't fit or whether we had one like it on the record or whatever, it just didn't make it on the record, not because they weren't good; they were cool songs.

OK. So how many tracks do you envision the album being?
We're going to put I think like 11 or 12 on there.

Great! Any brand new stuff?
Sort of, there's a couple songs that are obviously brand new; we're going in, like I say, we have to go in and we have to finish them, but we're kind of recording spontaneously. We're going to be fixing some stuff, because all of us own studios, so we're just transferring like hard drives around. I'm kind of overseeing the finalization of everything, but yeah, if we need parts done and stuff then we'll just kind of do them here and there. But for the most part, probably 85% of all the recording was already done on all these songs, and we just have to do a few add-ons and a few fixes and stuff like that. And some of them we're going to re-mix. Yeah, so there's a couple of new songs; one new song is called, "Can't Let Go". There's a song called, "Oh Yeah". I think that's it so far.

Ok.
And there's one other one I just found; I can't remember it. You know what, it was on a set of master tapes that I didn't have the...I think it's called, "The Sky's The Limit", I think that's it. That is it, that's right.

So three sort of tracks that you're going to record from scratch this year?
Not from scratch. I mean there's still some stuff on there that we had already started, but some of the ones, like there's some basic tracks that we just started that's just not finished. So we're not starting anything from ground zero, not yet. We haven't decided to do that just because we have so much stuff in our vault, you know, "Let's release some of that stuff, you know."
Kind of underground kind of thing.

So one plan is to have maybe 8 or 9 studio tracks and maybe 3 live tracks or something?
Yeah, exactly. Something like that, yeah. It just depends on how many songs, because I'm finding new ones every day. I wanted to put a couple of the live songs that we did from, I think it was the Marquis Club in London, there was a couple of songs we did...it was either there or...one of the shows in London we did, it was a kind of acoustic unplugged kind of thing.

Really?
It was very cool, yeah, we did it live; I might put some of those on there too.

You might have to have a studio side and a live side on a double CD.
Yeah, exactly. I mean nobody ever got to hear some of these things, you know what I mean, these things that we did.

I'd love to see a live side and a studio side.
Yeah, it might be kind of like a combination of both of them, you know.

OK. I should tell you....I had an MP3 on my site of the "Stay" done acoustically from the B-side of a Sony single.
Oh yeah!

Yeah, and that is seriously one of my most popular ever downloads.
Oh cool!

It was absolutely... my ISP rang me up and said, "What the hell have you done? It's going nuts, the traffic's going nuts." And I've done it 2 or 3 times because people keep requesting it.
Yeah everyone has, everyone's done that.

It was a great acoustic version; it was a really great unplugged sort of… really good.
Well thanks man.

So I think some unplugged tracks would be popular.
Yeah. It'd be a little different, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. But I'll tell you what, the feedback's been fantastic. The people are really pumped to see you guys back.
That's just like, seriously, very overwhelming. We obviously didn't think anything...it's not false humility either, I'm being serious, it's been 10 years and we don't know, it's almost like another lifetime. We're all caught up in our production. Dann and I produce records non-stop, and Mike does tons of studio work, so you know, we just kind of forget about it. I mean, it's not that we forget about the records, because we actually loved doing the records and we had a ball touring and stuff. But honestly, I told Serafino, I said, "Man, I'd be surprised if there are people out there that want a record." He kept coming to me and saying, "Man, you just don't know."

Yeah.
So we talked for about a year and a half; I don't know if you knew that or not. But I said, "Well it's going to be hard to commit to a record, you know, we just don't know if there's any interest out there - why do one, you know?" And the main thing, we definitely didn't want to go searching out a US major record deal from the States, like the typical ones that we've done, because that's something that we just don't want to do. Period. Mainly because of the fact, once you sign a record as a band, it's like everything else, you've gotta go tour to support it, and when you're doing...I produce 20 - 30 records a year, I'm just slammed.

Wow!
Yeah, you can't...I don't want to give that up, you know?

Yeah, for sure.
Plus, I've got commitments. If we did that it would be kind of like, I need two of me <laughs>. So that was our reasoning. Then I met Serafino through a friend of mine named Kevin who got us in touch with each other, and Serafino and Mario, when I was in Chicago, they flew to Chicago and we had lunch in Chicago, and I was like, "Man, these guys are crazy." I mean there's got to be something; they must really like Giant, so I formed a real good friendship with them and we just kind of honed away for about a year and a half on the phone and finally came up with...I said, "Man, I've got all these songs...it's going to be hard to do a record on the schedule starting from scratch right now with all of our commitments...I said, "But man, I've got a ton of songs in our vault, I mean, just in mine." I said, "Why don't we go take some of these masters out and re-do some of these things," and I said I just want to do it to see if there's any interest out there anyway. And then I said, "Well if there's interest out there, with some stuff that we've already done then...it's kind of like a barometer...if there's interest there, then that might push us to do like a, start from scratch, a real full-on new record.

Serafino (Frontiers) and David Huff

Well that's what I was going to ask you actually. If this goes well, you can envision doing a full new studio album?
Yeah, definitely. And like I said, we love dealing with Serafino and Mario, and that's what I told him. I said, If this is got response, if you can convince me and Dann that this is got any kind of response, then we'll do a record. We'll do a live one, I mean like a real one.

That would be fantastic. Have you or can you get Dann to have a look at this message board?
Yeah. I'll definitely do that. Our kids are on spring break right now from school and I think he's in Florida as well. I think he's still down there because I tried to call him the other day to let him know I was going to do this interview and he hasn't called back yet, so I think he's out of town.

Yeah, Dann should know me because I've done an interview with him and I keep in touch via his partner Mike.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Through his assistant or whatever. In fact, the first time I heard of from Serafino, this was on, I actually e-mailed Mike who talked to Dann and said… came back with, “We don't know what you're talking about.” <laughs>
You know what's funny is we didn't tell anybody what was going on until it was done. I didn't go around talking to anybody. I got asked from a few people here in the States, but I said, “You know, we're thinking about it, but who knows.” Because it wasn't done or signed or anything and everyone felt the same way. Dann was not definitely going to tell anybody because then his phone would've probably rang off the hook. As a matter of fact, when the first thing happened, Mark and Brian from KLOS called and they want to know…they want us out there…they want to know what's going on. Because Mark and Brian, they used to play our record every morning. Brian was a real good friend of mine when I lived in LA and he used to call me at my house weekly and they're on at like 5 in the morning. He used to call me every other week and ask me our opinion about different bands and play some of our songs. They were so cool to us.

Very good. Awesome. Let's see if we can get it going again!
That's very cool of you man. That's a very impressive tribute man, we appreciate that.

Oh it's my pleasure. I love you guys. Since I got Last of the Runaways in an import store in Melbourne on a trip, I've been a fan since day one. I love those records.
Well like I said, we had a ball doing the records. You know, Dann and I are really close brothers, we're very close, we try to find projects every once in a blue moon, but a couple of years will go by before we can actually work on something together. We're together all the time with our family and kids and, you know, we love doing this kind of stuff. We love playing this music. We definitely miss playing it live.

Yeah. Let's talk about that. What are the chances of you doing a couple of live gigs - not a tour - just a few one off gigs or something?
You know what, that's exactly what I had talked to Serafino and Mario about.
The only thing that we could do would be to put together like a 2 week little stint in Europe or whatever and/or if we ever want to go to Japan, Australia, whatever, we could do the similar kind of thing and put as many shows in that 10 days or 2 week period...10 days would probably be the best. Somewhere in that kind of situation, but we're definitely up for it. What they're doing right now with Mario is kind of fishing together and trying to see if he's going to pull some stuff together for festivals all at kind of the same time, you know. But yeah, we'd definitely do it. Probably the hardest guy to see if he wants to do it is Dann.

Yeah, I thought so.
But he said he'd be glad to do it. He goes, "Man, I'd love to do it," and, you know, everything's just got to kind of work itself out. But I have a feeling that we could, we'll work some of that stuff out.

Did the guys tell you about their annual festival, that they do their own, the Now and Then Gods of AOR in the UK?
Yeah. When is that again?

It's the first week of November generally.
Yeah, in November.

And by God I'll tell you what, I've had about 20 - 30 e-mails, this is separate from the message board, 20 or 30 e-mails saying, "What are the chances of them doing The Gods, because we'll go?" This is even guys in Australia saying, "We'll fly to Europe if they do The Gods."
Wow.

And that includes me, I'll be there! <laughs>
Well that's I think the last thing I talked to Mario about was about that scenario, that situation, I said, "If it's something like in the Fall", I said, "There's no way we could get ready before the Fall," because of my and Dann's commitments to record production. I don't think we're gonna be able to make it this time.

Yeah. Well if you could, the response would be huge. This is serious - people as far as here in Australia have said they would fly to Europe to see you.
Wow, well they definitely mentioned their festival and stuff, and, of course, we'd be honored to do it. I think I'm going to go over in July to do some press stuff - I think.

Oh, Ok. That's cool.
Sometime in June or July. I think I'm planning on doing that kind of stuff.

Is that when we might see this record surface?
Well, I think, we're shooting for it. There hasn't been any official date yet, but I think we're shooting for sometime probably by the end of Summer. We're like on it right now.

So a July/August sort of thing?
Yeah, probably more like August.

OK.
Because I've been for like the last week I've been compiling photos of when we recorded the record and some stuff on the road and stuff. Kind of like a nostalgic kind of, you know...we're trying to put together a really cool booklet of stuff that we did, personal photos and all that kind of stuff, and then we'll probably put some new photos in too.

Wonderful, wonderful.
Yeah, I'm compiling all that stuff right now. I'm almost done with all the photos, kind of getting all that stuff together.

Awesome. I would love to have a sift through your vaults, I can tell you that.
Oh my gosh <laughs>. Pretty funny man, I'll probably take a photo of all these tapes and stuff man, it's just pandemonium, that I had to go through personally in between sessions and stuff, recording sessions, listening to all these DATs, you know...OK, so this is on this master tape and trying to find where tapes are - pretty funny. But it's been cool man, it's been cool. It brings back a lot of great memories for me. We all had phenomenal memories in that band and everybody is just totally...Dann and Mike and all the guys who actually played with us when we actually toured, a couple of the sidemen, they're very excited to do the same thing.

I'm really pleased to hear that, because I know Dann was always somewhat reluctant. Even when I interviewed him he was very reluctant, and I asked him, "What about unreleased songs?" and he goes, "No there's only 4 or 5 tracks that are laying around." Where somebody else had told me like there's 10 or a full album's worth. I'm going, "Why be so secretive Dann?" I wonder why. And he didn't want to give anyone the air of opportunity.
It's not really secretive; I just think he's probably...

Is he pretty much of a perfectionist?
Oh yeah. Definitely that. But it's also been so long. I mean, he forgot a couple songs that I played him, and when I find stuff off these tapes I go, "Dann check this song out," and he's like, "Oh my gosh, I forgot about that." You know, you do so many songs he definitely forgot...I forgot about songs and I'm pretty organized, you know, about where songs are and stuff and man, I found some stuff on tapes that I totally forgot about. So yeah, there's some pretty cool stuff out there. And like I said, if there's enough interest generated, obviously Dann and I still write a ton and we've actually played on different records together at the same time, and it's been actually pretty cool. We've backed up a couple people in the States here, actually in Tennessee, backed a couple of people up just as gestures of our friendship to them. Not as Giant, but 3 of us and a couple of other players. There's definitely a special chemistry there.

Fantastic. Because you all hang out there in Nashville don't you?
Yeah, we live...I mean, we all live right on the outskirts of Nashville. We all live right around like 20 minutes outside of Nashville, but we work in Nashville all the time. We run into each other all the time in Nashville in studios and stuff.

I have a very good buddy who I lived in LA with for 4 months in '92 / '93 sort of time, a very good buddy of mine who I lived with there is actually in Knoxville.
Oh yeah.

Yeah, he swears I've got to get out there and see the country.
It's pretty cool man, it's a different place. It's a nice place to live, there's a ton of music going on here, a ton.

I'd love to get down there and see it. I've been to the coasts, but I haven't been down South.
Well if you ever do, this is my studio number so you are definitely welcome; you definitely have to let me know.

Thanks David.
I'll have to have you out to the pad for a barbeque or whatever.

Oh barbeque, you're speaking Australian lingo now.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Hey that's what we do when we haven't seen each other for a long time, like Dann and I, we barbeque in summer weather, it's just beginning to be summer here in a month or so, and that's what we do.

Fantastic. Do you speak, or hear of, or see Alan Pasqua these days?
Haven't seen him or spoken to him for years.

He kind of just disappeared didn't he?
Yeah, lets see, we moved here to Nashville and he moved to, I think it was Santa Fe, New Mexico, and that's almost as far as LA from here, you know. It's actually more out of the way to get to than LA, because LA flights from here are easy.
But no, I haven't heard or seen him for probably 8 years. And every once in a while, I heard he comes through town every once in a while and plays on some records here and there...but no, I haven't.
It's hard enough, trust me, it's hard enough seeing your own brother in town and Mike, you know, 8 months will go by before I've seen Mike.

Really?
Yeah. We'll sit down at a studio and like I'll see his gear there or he'll see my stuff there and we'll say, "Man, let's go get a drink and catch up." Everybody's just busy, you know. It's hard, you know, and we all live, we probably live about 20 minutes from each other. You know, when you're busy man, it's like, it's hard to do anything.

Absolutely. I've got a couple of side questions, what was the recording budget for the first two Giant albums? Just to get people's perspectives of what crazy numbers were...
Our budgets? Well let me put it this way, because I was always told not to give the specific numbers out, but it was more than a half million dollars to start with.

Wow.
Let's put it that way. I mean most recording budgets are 300K to maybe 400K and those are pretty nice sized recording budgets, and ours was more than that.

Wow, because it was such a big sound.
Yeah, but we also did some pretty extravagant things, we recorded over in England, which I have some photos; I have some photos from when we recorded our first record over there that are going to be in this whole thing too, so. Yeah, but you know, we flew from LA and stayed in London for 3-4 months and recorded. But it was a phenomenal experience and if it ever came to, I can probably sit down and write a short book of how we actually recorded the record, if anybody is interested, if anybody actually wanted to know how we recorded stuff, you know.

Well it's a very intricate record, that's why I think people would love it, because...
Yeah, there was definitely a very specific way of how we did things. We definitely have our way of recording. It wasn't the normal, go in and cut things as a band and see ya, you know? We definitely thought out parts a lot; we tried a lot of different sounds and actually had a lot of guitars going on – a lot of stuff going on.

Is that going to be reflected on this new record?
Oh yeah.

You're going to mix it up and...
Oh yeah, oh yeah.

What do you think the style will be?
Well, I mean, this is not new Giant stuff, this is basically stuff that was in the can that we had before that were just kind of like basement tapes, or whatever, lost tapes and, you know, just collecting dust. I think there's some really good stuff on there and that'll remain to be seen what people think about it, but there's some really cool stuff on it, some great guitar playing, phenomenal guitar playing stuff. I'm trying to pull together a lot of stuff, there's a couple of really informal things that we did in our own studios that I might put on there just to add a little personality in there. It's not any specific stuff, I don't want to give it away yet, but there's some personal stuff that people might really dig and session guitar players and stuff.

It really does sound like to me that you should be putting together a double album here.
You know what, that's what Serafino asked me to do, and I was like, "Man, dude, I don't know if I can do a double thing, I don't know if we can do a double album yet, I mean, let's see if there's interest on this one and we'll put stuff all across the board on it. We'll put old Giant stuff and we'll put some live stuff on there, we'll put some secret kind of basement kind of tape stuff on there and then see what people think. Obviously, if we were to do another Giant record, it would be...Giant has its own certain sound, I think.

Oh absolutely.
But we would...we're all pretty modern in what we, you know, in our sound and all that kind of stuff...of course I program and we used to use a lot of drum machine stuff back then when we did Giant and if we did a new record right now it would all be based around guitar riffs which is what our band was...big, it would sound big, but it would be a combination of what's out now. It would have to be really rhythmic, I think, because that's what's on the radio, that's just, that's music. Everything has melded together as far as so much groove and all that kind of stuff, which is great, because that's right up my alley, that's what I love to do.

OK.
It would be very cool rock, but with cool underlying grooves on it, you know? It wouldn't be machine grooves though, it wouldn't be dance stuff...

I get what you mean.
You know what I'm saying? I mean, look at Bon Jovi's "It's My Life", they had some cool loops in there.

Oh yeah, absolutely.
I thought that was pretty dang cool.

Yeah, I wish the rest of the record was a lot more like it.
Exactly. And since Dann and Mike and I all write a lot, I think it would reflect that, it wouldn't be like a Giant III or IV, it would be something new and fresh, but it would still have the Giant signature on it, you know.

Awesome. I think that's all people could ask. Let me just ask you about a good friend of yours and friend of mine who I've talked to a lot over the last couple of years and I feel very sort of sad for is Van Stephenson.
Yeah.

His death was very sad indeed?
I hadn't talked with him for just a little bit, but he is...my family was in contact with him.

I put a message board online for him as well and people are sending... and I'm going to mail that to his wife and family to read and keep.
He was a phenomenal person, a phenomenal writer, singer and musician, all that stuff, and your heart and your prayers and thoughts all go out to someone like that, because with a family and a wife, that's stuff that you just pray to God that you don't have to deal with in life.
Nashville's a strange place because it's a small community of musicians, but then, with everybody's schedules, it just seems like a year can go by before you see somebody that you know and it's like, "Man we have to catch up," cause everybody's busy. But Van's family, is definitely in our thoughts and prayers.

One other quick question...
By the way, I just had to interject something, when I met with Mario and Serafino the first time, they asked a lot of Giant questions so if it takes me a minute to answer something, I mean every time they ask me something about Giant, I look at them and go, "Um... I think." I had to think back a little bit man because it's been awhile, it's like I said, like another life time, it's pretty funny.

Yeah, its been about 9 years since Time To Burn.
Yeah. You figure, it's like OK, you gotta start going back in your memory bank a little bit.

Yeah, absolutely.
OK. Sorry.

I just wanted to ask what the story was with a band called David and the Giants?
There was a band out of Mississippi and I think we got confused a lot and they got confused a lot because there's a guy in the band named David Huff.

Yeah. But they even use the Giant sort of name? <laugh>
Yeah, well, you know what, I think if you go back, I think they had the name David and the Giants before we had Giant.

Oh really?
Yeah, I think so, I'm not positive but I think so.

OK, OK.
I don't know their music, I couldn't even tell you exactly what kind of stuff they do, but I do know they're out of Mississippi and the name is very confusing. When we came out with our first single, I remember this because when our single came out, they had a song on the Christian...they're a Christian band, and they had a song out on the Christian charts that instantly got a ton of spins because they thought it was us.

Oh really?
Yeah, and I think they got hits a lot from our release. But they're very sweet guys they're very...the one guy...I've met them before and I know there's one guy that used to be in that band and his name is Keith Thibodeaux, he used to be little Ricky on "I Love Lucy".

OK.
And he was the drummer so I got to know him a little bit and he was a pretty cool guy. I don't know those guys very well but I do know they are very sweet guys, I mean they're really cool guys, but it has nothing to do with us and we have nothing to do with them.

Very funny coincidence.
Yeah, isn't that weird? I mean, we didn't name our band Giant. I don't know if you know the whole story of how we got signed?

No.
To make a long story very short, we had some demos that we had done and we had had a production deal with Atlantic records with another producer that just was not...it was not a good deal, we didn't have a manager, we were just session players and we had done some demos and this guy had had...this producer had us in a production deal and we had actually gotten sound in a studio and we had gotten some advice from a friend, from a personal friend of ours, and they said, "Man, you need to call this manager and you all need to get management before you sign and don't sign anything," so we backed off and found out that the deal we were in was not good, plus the producer did not want Dann to sing.

Oh really?
He wanted to find another lead singer, yeah.

Dann's got a killer voice.
Yeah, and we were all like, you know what forget this man, we love your voice. So where was I going with this story?

The naming.
Oh, so we had done some demos and I think Dann had worked with Herb Albert and Herb...I'll never forget it...Herb called one day from his car phone and he said, "Man." Basically, he had heard a couple of those songs and said, "Man, I want to sign you guys." That's where we got management and stuff so we got signed off some demos and we had met with our A&R guy and obviously came up with some songs, but we didn't have a name; we never thought, you know, let's name ourselves this and that, and I don't know if you've ever had to come up with a name of a product or something, but it's really hard to name yourself, because you're too biased, or you get too introspective or whatever, and a friend of ours had somehow come up with the name. Obviously it comes from the James Dean movie, I guess Rock Hudson/James Dean movie, an old...I don't know if it was a Western or not...but it was an old movie called Giant.

Right.
And it just so happened to be coincidental with the fact that we had seen a photograph in a silver like diner one day and it was all kind of like black and white photography that ended up...the shot on our first record cover was one of the photos that we had picked up, we had bought it from the girl who did the photography. We took it to the label and sad, "Man, we dig this shot," you know, and it became the album cover, and the name came from a friend of ours who had seen the movie Giant and everything kind of fell together that way.

Right.
It wasn't us who named it, and someone came up and said, "Man, your music kind of reminds us of this."

It is giant isn't it, it's a big sound.
Yeah, so just so everybody knows the inside scoop, we never really...that sounds a little presumptuous if you ask me, you know, we think we're big, you know - it wasn't that, somebody else named us.

That's cool.
I wanted to name it, of course, the David Huff Band, but...

Nice <laughs>
Yeah. <laughs>

Very good, that's great. Well that's about all the questions I had for you David.
Good man.

I appreciate your time and maybe we can keep in touch.
Man, let's definitely do.

Yeah, please do.
I'll get them to do that, and like I said, I can keep in touch. There's definitely a heavy possibility of us doing these dates in the fall.

I think that would be absolutely tremendous.
So like I say, it just has to coincide with our schedules and as long as we know way out front. But I'll tell you, everybody wants to do it; there's not a hesitant person in the group who doesn't want to do it, we just kind of have to pull all the details together.

Yeah, I'm really pleased to hear that.
I've got the sound men who used to tour with us and I mean, I've had more people...tax and all that kind of stuff...hey, I'll go over there and don't pay me anything, I'll just go over there and just do it.

Great.
I'm like, man, I don't think Dann and Mike have seen the response yet of what's happened, you know, but I'll speak for them, they'll be very overwhelmed like I am.

Fantastic.
Thanks for your time man, it's been great talking to you and hopefully we'll hook up in person.

Yeah, absolutely. That'd be great.
All right. I'll e-mail you my address. I'll put a little response to the thing, and thank you on behalf of Dann and Mike. Thank you, we feel honored that you even did a page like that, good Lord, that's very nice of you.

Oh, I'm an absolute diehard fan and it's a pleasure.
Well thanks, Andrew.

G'Day now.
Bye.