Bio
Rock artist and composer Dan McGlade has dreamed of double-neck guitars and triple-gated album covers since he was a teen. His rock n’ roll epiphany came while having his brain melted in a rickety farmhouse, when his best mate played him Queen’s Fairy King at a mind-shearing volume.
Since that seismic moment, Dan hasn’t made peace with his rock n’ roll fantasy, though he’s made some valiant efforts. For nearly thirty years, he composed, devised, recorded and performed music for theatre, film, bands, schools, universities and community groups. But when Dan found himself, eyes glazed over, trying to explain his university day gig to his toddler daughter, he realised it was time for a change. Today, he loudly rings in a new era with his debut solo EP, Mid Vice Crises, an exhilarating 5-song collection of dramatic and mythical glam-rock.
“The kid in me had some unfinished business, but the dreams are deliciously dull this time around. I want to support my family doing what I love—that would be winning at life for me,” the Shipley, West Yorkshire, UK based artist says with a good natured laugh.
In the nineties, Dan founded theatrical dandy-rock the 4-11 piece band Rent, for which he was the lead singer and primary songwriter. The band was playfully described as "a three-way train crash between the Divine Comedy, Scissor Sisters and the Rocky Horror Show.” Rent played major venues and theatres in Leeds, Bradford, London and the rest of the UK, supporting—and sometimes partying with—the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Bill Wyman and the Rhythm Kings, Rolan Bolan (son of Marc), and Shana Morrison (daughter of Van).
Select rock musician career highlights also include playing the iconic Reading and Leeds Festivals with the band Loqui, his tenure with Captain Wilberforce during which he played the legendary Cavern Club in Liverpool, and writing and performing the closing song for 2010 movie The Big I Am, starring Michael Madsen and Steven Berkoff.
Dan’s resume as a Composer and Musical Director is richly diverse. He has recently MD’d and arranged the music for the national touring production of Mikron Theatre’s A Force To Be Reckoned With, and will be composing the songs for their 2024 production, Common Ground. Prior to that he composed for and MD’d three productions for Leeds Conservatoire, two of which were performed at Leeds Playhouse. Dan has scored film and art installation soundtracks for 509Arts and Wrongsemble Theatre, for both of whom he has also MD’d live productions. His solo EP is partly financed by a successful bid to the Arts Council of Great Britain’s Developing Your Creative Practice (DYCP) fund. The DYCP grant also supported Dan’s upcoming compositional venture for his newly penned “Victorian sleaze-rock” music theatre piece, Darcy Filthound.
Dan’s penchant for cinematic musicality courses through his songs. His imaginative musicality is rooted in classic rock and Americana but also creeps into the shadows of Southern Gothic and UK Dark Wave. His adventurously-arranged rock compositions are peopled with eccentric fictional characters often mired in morally questionable situations. Though his narratives are darkly alluring, there is often a sense of whimsy throughout his dramatic arcs.
Mid Vice Crisis is rife with tales of Oscar Wilde-esque deviant ribaldry and bubbling-under delicious drama, but the stories are also peppered with more focused (and literal) observations gleaned closer to home. In fact, the sound at the very start of the EP is Dan’s daughter’s prenatal heartbeat, which morphs into the synthesised beat of the five minute rock operetta “The Rake’s Regress”.
The other four songs on Mid Vice Crisis have provoked a sweep of comparisons, from the Deep Purple swagger of pub-rocker “Too Old For This Sh!t (The Redemption of Zachary Blake)”, through the Robert Johnson-like mythology on “Rhapsody Road”, the Southern Gothic-flavoured “Bring Out Your Dead”, concluding with the aptly-titled, “An Exit…”, a strutting Stones-y rocker originally written by Dan for the 2010 movie The Big I Am, but reworked with a heavier production and a full brass section.
The songs on Mid Vice Crises recall the majesty of band such as Queen, Deep Purple, Rush, and Led Zeppelin - a tribute to the artists who inspired Dan as a teenager. His increasing interest in the rootsier side of music may owe something to his current side project, the alt-country/Americana acoustic harmony trio, Poison & Wine.
The EP was recorded at a vibey studio called Trapdoor Studios, a converted old mill building located in Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK. The album was produced by Dan and studio engineer Alex Eden. The recordings exhibit an intriguing mix of organic performances and synthetic fairy dust.
Dan was raised on a high protein diet of concept albums, classical music, show tunes and rock, leaving him with a passion for narrative, melody, and loud guitars. These artistic strands wove together during college where he explored all facets of music, theatre, film, and musicals while earning an English degree.
Post college, he spent years cutting his musical teeth in a variety of musical contexts. He did time in London as a bassist and a guitarist in a bevy of bands. He wrote and musically directed the rock opera Pout & About which sold out a five night run at Theatre In The Mill, Bradford West Yorkshire. He also became the lead singer and primary songwriter of the theatrical dandy-rock band Rent. When that band closed its rich velvet curtains, Dan began to carve out a lasting side career as a composer for theatre, film, schools and the community, opening up new avenues down which to explore the potential for narrative through music.