We met Chester when he was a scrappy 15-year-old and we were "seasoned" 17-year-olds. We've been friends, bandmates, and in Sean's case, business partners (via Club Tattoo), ever since. We were present for the highs, and witness to the lows. Chester was the heart and soul of Grey Daze, it was his enthusiasm, lyrical prowess and emotional integrity that propelled us to record and release two albums and a demo and it was with great pride that we watched the magic we knew was in him shared with the world.
Reuniting Grey Daze was something that we'd been kicking around for years, but because of work and family commitments, we hadn't had a chance to turn the idea into reality until early 2017. Over the years we'd become more knowledgeable, more experienced, and had more resources, so we decided to pick a selection of songs from our previously released albums and re-record them the way they deserved to have been treated back in the ‘90s when we initially wrote and released them. By February 2017 we started recording and in June, Chester and Sean announced the reunion, with a live performance planned for that Fall. Unfortunately, as we all know, that never happened.
When Talinda, Chester's widow, and his parents, gave us their blessing to move forward with the project, we did so with the utmost care, making sure to honor his legacy as well as handle the music we had written together with the utmost care.
We all wanted to fulfill Chester's dream of people hearing Grey Daze music as he always envisioned it.
We also wanted to make sure we had the proper steward for this. We reached out to Tom Whalley, the person who had been the head of Warner Bros. Records for the first nine years of Linkin Park's existence and someone who knew Chester well, with hopes he'd be interested in doing this release via his Loma Vista Recordings. Executive Producer Jay Baumgardner and Tom helped us to see our vision through, re-recording the music but keeping Chester's vocals intact. The fact that we got to retrack and rewrite the music around his vocals was an amazing experience. This is what our good friend wanted. He wanted the music to feel fresh and relevant, so people who knew his music but not his original band, could relate to it. That's what we've tried to do with this Grey Daze record now.
We cannot wait for his fans and the world to hear this new album, we hope we made him, and you, proud.
- Grey Daze
December 13, 2019