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Tanya Donelly | |
|---|---|
 Donelly performing in 2007 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | (1966-07-14)July 14, 1966 (age 58) |
| Origin | Newport, Rhode Island, U.S. |
| Genres | Indie rock,alternative rock |
| Occupation(s) | Singer, songwriter, guitarist |
| Years active | 1981–present |
Tanya Donelly (born July 14, 1966)[1][2] is an Americansinger-songwriter andguitarist based inNew England. She came to prominence as a co-founder of the bandThrowing Muses with her step-sisterKristin Hersh.[3] Donelly went on to co-form the alternative rock bandThe Breeders alongsideKim Deal in 1989, before leaving to front her own bandBelly in 1991. By the late 1990s, she settled into a solo recording career, working largely with musicians connected to theBoston music scene.
Donelly is best known for her Grammy-nominated work in the mid-1990s as lead vocalist and songwriter for Belly, when she scored a national radio and music television hit with her composition "Feed the Tree". Belly recorded onSire/Reprise Records and4AD Records; Donelly's solo works have been released onWarner Bros. Records and 4AD.
Over the years, she has listed several musical influences. In one interview, she named her guitar playing influences asMarc Ribot,the Beatles, and former bandmate Hersh. More recently, she mentionedLeonard Cohen as a songwriting hero, citing her then-current listening favorites asLucinda Williams andJoan Wasser, and listing Boston-based groups like theDambuilders, Pixies, and Count Zero as past favorites. Although Donelly mainly performs her own original songs, she has in recent years addedcovers of songs byRobyn Hitchcock,Nina Simone, the Beatles, and Pixies to her repertoire.
Donelly has said that her parents, Richard and Kristin Donelly, shuttled the family "between Rhode Island andCalifornia" for the first four years of her life.[4] Donelly has described her early school experience as including bouts of nervous shyness from fear that what she has called her family's "hippie" background was different from that of her classmates.
Donelly has said that she metKristin Hersh in school around age eight, quickly becoming close friends. Donelly's father later married Hersh's mother after both divorced in the 1980s. When she was 12 years old, Donelly and her mother were injured in a traumatic car accident that led her to carefully weigh for the first time her spiritual values and her concept of what "God" was. Previously, her upbringing had been anatheist one, but after the car accident a family friend introduced Donelly to theHindu traditions ofKrishna, in which she immersed herself for a brief period. She graduated fromRogers High School inNewport, Rhode Island.[citation needed]
Around age 14, Hersh's and Donelly's fathers both gave them their own guitars and they initially started playing along with Beatles songs. Soon after, the two started to play along with songs written by Hersh's musical father and then began to write original songs of their own. Donelly co-foundedThrowing Muses with Hersh and other members likeElaine Adamedes at around age 15.
Throughout the 1980s, Donelly worked as lead guitarist and secondary vocalist/songwriter, complementing the work of Throwing Muses leader Hersh. The group moved from Rhode Island to Boston around 1986 and signed as the first American group on the influential British label 4AD.[5] Although the band's work generally employed complex rhythms and offbeat chord structures, Donelly has said she eventually accepted that her compositions were simpler and had "more traditional songwriting sensibilities" than Hersh's, by the last two years she worked in the band. Some of her tunes from this period include "Green", "Reel," "Pools in Eyes", "The River", "Giant", "Dragonhead", "Honeychain", "Not Too Soon" and "Angel". Hersh's most popular Muses songs like "Fish", "Dizzy", "Counting Backwards" and most ofThe Real Ramona LP almost always featured Donelly's distinctive lead guitar playing, heavy background vocals, inner vocal workings with different lyrics and pop vocal harmonies and melodic hooks.
By 1990, Donelly had additionally begun working in a side project calledThe Breeders withKim Deal ofPixies, a Boston-based group who had opened shows for Throwing Muses in the 1980s. The first album's vocals and songwriting responsibilities were centered on Deal. The group releasedPod with Donelly in 1990.
The Real Ramona, Throwing Muses' last album with Donelly, which included her "Not Too Soon" and "Honeychain" originals, was released in 1991. In May 1991, Deal and Donelly were asked to contribute vocals toThis Mortal Coil'sBlood album on 4AD, with a cover ofChris Bell's "You and Your Sister," a month before Donelly officially left Throwing Muses.
In December 1991, Donelly formedBelly as guitarist, vocalist and songwriter, withThomas Gorman on lead guitar,Chris Gorman on drums, andFred Abong (previously with Throwing Muses) on bass guitar. This group would become her primary creative focus for the next few years, as Donelly's participation in The Breeders faded after the 1992 release of theSafari EP.
In 1993 Belly released theStar LP, withGail Greenwood soon replacing Fred Abong on bass after the release for touring. The album soon peaked at number two on the United Kingdom music charts and featured a single and music video, "Feed the Tree", that quickly was rated number one on the Modern Rock Tracks Survey. The album scored commercial chart successes and was certified as a gold record in 1994 by theRIAA. The band was also nominated for twoGrammy Awards (Best New Artist and Best Alternative Music Performance) and won two Boston Music Awards the same year.
In 1995, Belly released a second album,King, which progressed the avant folk-rock influences,power-pop jangle guitar sounds, and vocal harmonies of the first album into a direction driven more by vocals and driving rhythms, varying the pace within the songs to create tension. Flangers and chorus effects were evident in the guitar sounds. This album, produced byGlyn Johns, did not match the commercial success ofStar. The band broke up in 1996.
In 1995, during her post-Belly/pre-solo career, Donelly recorded a track withCatherine Wheel entitled "Judy Staring at the Sun," which appeared on Catherine Wheel's 1995 albumHappy Days. The single version featured Donelly and Catherine Wheel's lead singerRob Dickinson singing in trade-off vocals, but after the final Belly album, Catherine Wheel's record label insisted that the song be re-recorded to remove most of Donelly's vocals, replacing them with Dickinson's, although Donelly's voice can still be heard during the chorus of the reworked version.[citation needed]
The 1995tribute albumSaturday Morning: Cartoons' Greatest Hits, produced byRalph Sall forMCA Records, included the cover of "Josie and the Pussycats" performed by Tanya Donelly andJuliana Hatfield.[6]
In November 1996, Donelly put together a group of musicians to tour internationally with, just prior to her first solo release, theSliding & Diving EP on 4AD. Included on the tour were husband Fisher on bass, keyboardist Lisa Mednick (formerly ofJuliana Hatfield's group), drummer Stacy Jones (formerly ofLetters to Cleo andVeruca Salt), and Madder Rose guitaristsMary Lorson and Billy Coté. The album release featured Donelly on vocals, guitars and keyboards, Rich Gilbert (of Human Sexual Response, Goober & the Peas, Blackstone Valley Sinners) on pedal steel, Fisher on bass, and drummersDavid Lovering (formerly of the Pixies) and Jones.
After the 1997 dual solo release ofPretty Deep with two different B-sides, she toured North America with Fisher, Throwing Muses' drummerDave Narcizo, Gilbert, and keyboardist Elizabeth Steen. She soon released her solo debut LPLovesongs for Underdogs, recorded with Gilbert, Fisher, Jones, Narcizo, and engineer Wally Gagel on assorted instruments.
In 2000, Donelly performed live in her first reunion with Throwing Muses at a special fan gathering called "Gut Pageant" inCambridge, Massachusetts, and at a Rhode Island festival.
She continued to record and release symbol-laden, alternative folk-pop solo EPs and full-length LPs on 4AD in 2001, 2002, and 2004. Belly'sSweet Ride: The Best of Belly retrospective was also released in 2002.
As Donelly's writing continued to mature into a softer rhythmic vein than with the Belly material, allusions to motherhood were heard in songs like "Life is But a Dream" and "The Night You Saved My Life" on her 2002Beautysleep release.Mark Sandman, of Boston'sMorphine indie-rock group, sang on "Moonbeam Monkey." Donelly's background vocals are heard on several tracks of the 2003 self-titled Throwing Muses reunion album, which she helped promote with public performances as backing vocalist and guitarist for a few concerts in 2003. Bostonpost-punk bandMission of Burma included Donelly's backing vocals on their reunion album,Onoffon in 2004.
The same year, she releasedWhiskey Tango Ghosts, a sparely arranged, acoustic album laced with Gilbert'spedal steel guitar touches. The album's personnel included Steen on piano, Narcizo on drums, and Fisher on guitar, bass, and drums. The album's lyrics explored, in part, marital relationships and family life. Donelly has said the album's minor-key tone was influenced by "a horrible war, a horrible administration, a bleak, mean winter."
She then followed that acoustic album release with three weekend shows of old and new songs performed in 2004 before audiences at The Windham, an old hotel inBellows Falls, Vermont. Backing Donelly in concert were Fisher on guitar, Gilbert on pedal steel and acoustic guitar,Joan Wasser (of the Dambuilders, and Joan as Policewoman,Lou Reed, Antony and the Johnsons) on violin and backing vocals, Joe McMahon (of Señor Happy and Will Dailey) on upright bass,Bill Janovitz (lead singer of Buffalo Tom) contributing vocals, and Arthur Johnson (ofCome) on drums. The performances were recorded by Donelly's manager, veteran producerGary Smith ofFort Apache Studios, which helps operate the small concert space and recording room in The Windham's lobby. While Donelly included some of her longtime lyrical allusions to nature imagery, such as bees and honey, in the songs recorded at the Vermont concerts, she said that some of her new material reflected a more direct approach, relying less on symbolic analogy. The topics of religion and spiritual hypocrisy, which first began to interest her after her childhood automobile accident, were reflected in the lyrics to "Kundalini Slide," performed at these concerts. The album of the Vermont performances is titledThis Hungry Life and was released byEleven Thirty Records on October 17, 2006 in the US and October 24, 2006 inCanada.
In June 2005, Donelly mentioned on her official "Slumberland" message board that her future plans included working on a children's compilation album with Boston musicians such as Chris Toppin, writing a book, working withMark Eitzel and Greek songwriter Manolis Famellos, and occasionally performing live. She planned to focus future performance plans on a few cities like Boston, New York, andLondon, playing live when time permitted as she raised her daughter. In March 2006, she gave birth to another daughter, Harriet Pearl Fisher.
In early 2006, Donelly sang on two songs on the debut EP from the Boston-based band Dylan In The Movies. In October 2006, she recorded a cover ofNeil Young's "Heart of Gold" with producer Paul Kolderie for theAmerican Laundromat Records benefit CD titledCinnamon Girl - Women Artists Cover Neil Young for Charity.
She wrote four songs for the pop girl groupGirl Authority for their second debutRoad Trip, one of which is titled "This Is My Day". Her daughter, Gracie, is a fan of the group, according to an article inThe Phoenix.
Two shows at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 6, 2007, were a musical reunion of sorts, as Donelly co-headlined with Hersh.
In 2008, Donelly teamed up with Dylan in the Movies to cover The Cure's "Lovecats" forAmerican Laundromat Records tribute compilation "Just Like Heaven - a tribute to The Cure". They later repeated this pairing to cover the Smiths' Shoplifters of the World Unite in 2011.[1]
A 2010 feature inSpin Magazine profiles Donelly's new career as apostpartum doula.[7]
In December 2010, Donelly teamed up once again with singer and songwriter Brian Sullivan's band, Dylan In The Movies, to release the single "Girl With the Black Tights" on American Laundromat Records. Donelly shares a co-writing credit and sings on the track, which was later included on his album release in 2014.
In August 2013, Donelly surprised her audience by announcing a series of extended plays to be issued online. Each release featured songs co-written with friends, musicians and previous collaborators including authors. The first volume contained five songs; "Mass Ave" (for which a video was also released), "Christopher Street", "Let Fall The Sky", "Blame The Muse" and "Meteor Shower". In a rare and extensive interview on a podcast by UK music website The Mouth Magazine, Donelly announced that the series was her way of taking control of an exit strategy as she retired from the music industry. The recordings from the 5 EPs were released as a 31 track compilation, the Swan Song Series.[2]
In early February 2016, the official Belly website announced the group would reform to play shows in Europe the following July and, subsequently, North America.[8][9] The group released a new album,Dove, in 2018. They took a hiatus after 2018, but have toured again since 2023.[3]
An album of covers with the Parkington Sisters was released in 2020, including of tracks by Leonard Cohen and her oft stated influence, Mary Margaret O’Hara.[4]
Donelly was slated to compose the score for the 2022 animated filmLuck, but was replaced by John Debney.[10]
In 2020, Donelly formed a new duo with long time collaborator Brian Sullivan, entitled The Loyal Seas. The debut single “Strange Mornings in the Garden” was released in December 2020. The duo's full-length debut “Strange Mornings In the Garden” followed in 2022.[5]
Donelly married formerJuliana Hatfield bassist Dean Fisher on September 22, 1996.[11][12] They have two daughters.[11]
Albums
EPs
Other albums
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