Biography
Russ Giguere intended to pursue life as a folksinger until an unexpected encounter steered him into the Association, one of the era’s leading pop-rock ensembles in the mid-1960s. Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1943, he had already committed to music professionally by the time he reached California. At twenty-one he performed solo guitar and vocals at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, where co-founders Terry Kirkman and Jules Alexander noticed him and invited him to join their big-band folk-rock ensemble. Giguere contributed lead vocals and rhythm guitar for the next six years, forming a core element of the group’s hit-making sound. In 1971 he exited to restart his solo path, issuing the album Hexagram 16 on Warner Bros. When the remaining members revived the Association in 1979, he returned and, alongside Larry Ramos, has guided the ongoing lineup through subsequent decades into the twenty-first century.
Albums