Saturday, January 21, 2017

Meet Dallas Cantland and the band Thorazine in my latest release, Daring Proposal



A friend of mine, Dallas Cantland, is the drummer and one of the founders of the band Thorazine. He does a cameo appearance in the second book of my Dare Menage Series, Daring Proposal. Here is an excerpt:


During a break between sets, his old schoolmate, Dallas Cantland, climbed off the stage to join them. Cole stood up and did the clasp hands, bump shoulders sort of greeting. Dallas had a towel around his neck, and kept wiping the sweat off his smooth bald head. Cole introduced her.
“You’re a great drummer!” Eve said, while shaking his hand. While she may not like his genre of music, she recognized the skills of the musicians.
Dallas spun an empty chair around at their table to sit backward on it, leaning against the back of the seat.
Eve could feel him checking her out, or at least eyeing what he could see since she was sitting… It was enough to feel his gaze from her cleavage to the top of her head.
He shot her a big smile. “Wow, smart and beautiful.” He turned to Cole and elbowed him. “Where did you find her?”
Eve tried not to blush. She didn’t like liars, but she hoped Cole ended up stretching the truth a bit. He didn’t.
Cole gave him a mouthy smile. “She bought me at an auction.”
“What? What? What?” Dallas’ eyebrows rose. “No she didn’t. You’re fucking with me.”
Eve placed a hand to her hot face. “No. I didn’t buy him. I bid on a date with him for charity.”
“Same shit,” both men said at the same time. They looked at each other in surprise and then laughed.
“Damn, it’s been years,” Dallas said to Cole.
“I know. Once we were out of college, you got busy with music and me with football.”
“Dallas, you didn’t want to pursue football?” Eve asked him.
He shook his head. “I was good enough in football to put me through college but wasn’t good enough to get drafted, and I was A-okay with that. Being a drummer is the shit and I get to tour all over the country and Canada. You can’t beat that.”
Eve thought Cole might argue that point. The football star did have a Super Bowl ring and, she assumed, a nice fat bank account. But he didn’t mention it, and for that he went up a notch in her eyes.
Dallas turned to her. “Do you like the music?”
She smiled, choosing her words carefully, “It’s a lot of fun. I especially liked the last song before the break.”
Dallas chuckled quietly, as if he knew it wasn’t her type of music and she was only being polite. “There comes a time when you will know and you will see/Accept your place, your life, your vulnerabilities/Look within yourself and you do it on your own…”
Eve looked at him in surprise. “What?”
“That’s the lyrics. The song’s title is ‘The End.’”
She shook her head and stood, pushing her chair back. “Dallas, would you like something to drink?”
He shook his head. “I have something on stage, but thanks.”
She glanced at Cole. “Excuse me while I head to the ladies’ room. It’ll give you a few minutes to catch up.”
She straightened the skirt she had worn for the evening, and turned to go.
Dallas’s words stopped her in her tracks. “What an onion!”
Eve turned back to him and frowned. “I’m sorry?” Maybe he thought she was being rude by excusing herself.
“An onion,” Dallas repeated, as if she should know what he meant.
Cole gave her a look and shrugged.
“That ass. It’s like an onion, ’cause that thing is going to make me cry.”

Want to read more? It's available here: books2read.com/Daring-Proposal

Learn more about the band Thorazine:

Established in 1992, Philadelphia's Thorazine have toured North America eight ten times, sharing stages (and vans) with such icons as FEAR, Antiseen, The Mentors, The Anti-Nowhere League, The Murder Junkies, Gang Green, The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, Yo La Tengo, and Exene Cervenka – as well as Pegboy, Blanks 77, NOFX, and, wait for it… Blink 182. The Philly quartet also released a series of albums (1995's Crazy Uncle Paul's Dead Squirrel Wedding and 1998's Vicious Cycle), EP's, singles, and countless compilations on LA's Dionysus Records/Hell Yeah label throughout the 90's, and appeared at the 1995 Lollapalooza in Pittsburgh, PA.

Thorazine reached, perhaps, the peak of their mainstream infamy due to a trademark dispute with big pharma behemoth SmithKline Beecham. Long story short: The drug maker got a lesson in fair use, the band declined a lucrative offer to change names, and the whole kerfuffle produced a lot of free national publicity in newspapers, magazines, and television – including (ignominiously?) a full weekend of regularly scheduled name-checks on MTV's The Week in Rock courtesy of Ocean City, New Jersey's favorite son, Kurt Loder.

The band was the brainchild of drummer Dallas Cantland, guitarist Elliot Taylor, and (first and fourth) bassist Ed Ormsby. Jo-Ann Rogan completed the lineup when they "discovered" her slinging drinks at Philly's landmark dive, McGlinchy's – she remains a fixture and, some would argue, a civic treasure, behind the bar there to this day. The core trio of Cantland, Taylor and Rogan have remained steady since the band's inception.

Taylor and Rogan also got married and have two boys, who frequent band rehearsals and even turn up at all-ages shows. Ormsby left the band early on, returned, and left again, but still collaborates in songwriting. Other bassist emeriti include John Quinn, Scotty Parker, Jim Kydonious and, most significantly, key influencer and canonical Thorazine bassist Ross Abraham, who put in the most time in front of the Ampeg "fridge" throughout the bulk of the 90's. Dan Hoover (or "h00v3r," as he insists on referring to himself) is the latest to fill that fourth slot to complete the lineup.
After an unscheduled band hiatus of several years, documentary filmmaker Heather Gillespie was inspired to shoot a film about the creation and history of the crypto-taxidermic artwork gracing the cover of the Dead Squirrel album. Her project reunited Cantland and Abraham with Rogan and Taylor for the first time in nearly a decade. The old chemistry soon returned, some shows were booked, and then a whole shitload of shows were booked – including a West Coast tour in August, 2015 and a tour of the South in May, 2016. Songwriting and recording picked right back up and the band has several new releases, including a featured spot on the Punk Aid 4 compilation to benefit autism research.

Find them here:

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