Breakaway

Early 70’s, David Taylor and Bill Montgomery were playing in a club band on the West Coast when they met Dale Sweetland who was playing at “The Turquoise Room”, a popular late nightclub in Portland, OR. Hearing Dale Sweetland play, they knew immediately that they had to have him in their band, it took a year of calls, but Dale Sweetland finally agreed to join the band in 1972.

Soon after they formed a new group with a producer and manager in Las Vegas, who urged them to put a Las Vegas Show band together to play the club circuit, in late 1972. They rehearsed in Las Vegas as a 7-piece show band and went on the road with the core of the band being, David L. Taylor, Bill Montgomery, Dale Sweetland, and Terry McCoy from South Carolina. After a year or so on the road, they went back to Las Vegas and put a new band together with Terry Richards, from the band Chase, a Cleveland, OH based band who had just lost almost everyone except Terry Richards in a plane crash. They went back on the road again being David, Bill, Dale, and Terry McCoy as the core, Terry Richards was a big draw having been in the Billboard charts for months with Chase, about a year later they settled on a 6 piece band having replaced Terry Richards with Corky Blake from St Louis, MO.

It was during that time Kathy Newbry-Taylor from Las Vegas joint Breakaway, she was sent to them by their manager at the time, Joe Zito. This band combination lasted until 1976 when Joe Zito was dropped, as well as Corky Blake. Breakaway became the 4 piece group that started using the name Breakaway and moved to St Louis where Art Risavy, a local record store owner in Collinsville, IL, could provide them with enough work in the Midwest for the band stay in one place for long enough to start focusing on studio recordings. As the recordings were self-financed, it was necessary for the band to work [meaning play gigs] to pay for the studio sessions, so as the work was guaranteed they stayed in St. Louis to produce the 2 albums.

Breakaway disbanded in 1980 as work dried up in St Louis, economy was poor there in that time. David L. Taylor and Kathy Newbry-Taylor moved to Las Vegas (where Kathy was from), and Dale Sweetland moved back to Portland, OR two years later in 1982. David and Kathy played as a duo for about 15 years after the break-up of Breakaway, touring in the US plus a few years in Europe and the UK. As well as writing a sound scores for the movie Alligator.