Titan

Titan came together in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in 1976, started by singer and keyboard player David Roberts while he was still in high school. The first lineup had Roberts, Peter Large on drums, John Tate on second keyboards, Dana Westall on bass, and Steve “Jughead” Brown and Brian Frail on guitars.

For its first couple of years Titan played school dances around the Atlantic provinces and put much of the money back into the show. Guitarist Jim Rice, who joined later, remembered the light rig as the largest owned by any working band in the area. The band’s lighting technician, Peter Hendrickson, started renting the lights out and went on to found Tour Tech East, the Halifax production company. For a time Titan shared a warehouse on Duncan Street in Halifax with the lighting firm Atlantic Illumination, moving in after the band Roadwork moved out.

The first single, ‘Play Me’ backed with ‘Dreamers’, came out on The Great Eastern Production Co. in 1977, and CJCH in Halifax had it on its playlist that December. By then Bruce Nelson and Mark Desjardins had taken over the guitars from Frail and Brown. The second single paired Roberts’ ‘Won’t You Come With Me’ with Nelson’s ‘(Why Are You) Leaving Me’, recorded at Solar Audio & Recording in Dartmouth and released on Solar Records in 1978. According to Rice, ‘Won’t You Come With Me’ reached No. 9 on the local rock station and finished at No. 33 in its top 100 of the year.

In the spring of 1979 John Biggs replaced Westall on bass and Rice replaced Desjardins. That year CBC Radio’s The Great Canadian Gold Rush featured Titan in its look at up-and-coming bands, with Claire Lawrence of Chilliwack producing ‘Light Up the Night’, ‘Stole My Love’ and ‘Hold Me’. That summer Titan opened for Moxy and for Max Webster, whom they had already opened for in Welland, Ontario, the year before. The Max Webster show made Titan the first local act to play the new Halifax Metro Centre. Reviewers singled out their Queen medley and their ‘Stairway to Heaven’. Moe Lauzon took over from Rice that fall.

The band spent the next few years on the road through Central and Western Canada, and Ron Mayer replaced Biggs on bass in 1981. Kim Fowley, the Los Angeles producer behind the Runaways, read about Titan in a magazine and tracked them down while they were playing St. John’s, Newfoundland, hoping he had found the next Loverboy. He could not get the band to Los Angeles and had no wish to go to Halifax, so he told Bob Segarini to record them for him. Segarini cut the sessions at his small studio in Brampton, Ontario, and remembered a band that was “tight, talented, and ready for Prime Time.” Rice counted five songs from those sessions. Only ‘Midnight Romeo’ came out, on Eastern Alliance, a 1982 album of Maritime acts the record industry had overlooked.

Titan broke up soon after. Nelson and Roberts kept working together in Bats In The Belfry, Screaming Trees, The Trees and Fire Rooster, and later teamed up with Steve Brown again as Blueberry Grunt. Biggs became a Halifax disc jockey and television host.

Titan reunited in 2024 to open Rock the Harbour at Alderney Landing in Dartmouth. The following summer Steve Brown’s son Geordie, a guest vocalist with Foreigner, released his own version of ‘Won’t You Come With Me’, recorded to tape at Fang Recording in Dartmouth. Four members of Titan played on it: Mark Desjardins on lead guitar, Steve Brown on 12-string guitar and backing vocals, and Bruce Nelson and Dave Roberts on backing vocals.

-Robert Williston

David Roberts: vocals, keyboards (1976 on)

Peter Large: drums (1976 on)

John Tate: keyboards (1976 on)

Dana Westall: bass (1976 to spring 1979)

Steve “Jughead” Brown: guitar (1976 to 1977)

Brian Frail: guitar (1976 to 1977)

Bruce Nelson: guitar (1977 on, replaced Frail)

Mark Desjardins: guitar (1977 to spring 1979, replaced Brown)

John Biggs: bass (spring 1979 to 1981)

Jim Rice: guitar (spring 1979 to fall 1979)

Moe Lauzon: guitar (fall 1979 on)

Ron Mayer: bass (1981 on)