Tanya Donelly (born July 14, 1966) [1][2] is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist based in New England. She came to prominence as a co-founder of the band Throwing Muses with her step-sister Kristin Hersh.[3] Donelly went on to co-form the alternative rock band The Breeders alongside Kim Deal in 1989, before leaving to front her own band Belly in 1991. By the late 1990s, she settled into a solo recording career, working largely with musicians connected to the Boston 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 on Sire/Reprise Records and 4AD Records; Donelly's solo works have been released on Warner Bros. Records and 4AD.
Over the years, she has listed several musical influences. In one interview, she named her guitar playing influences as Marc Ribot, the Beatles, and former bandmate Hersh. More recently, she mentioned Leonard Cohen as a songwriting hero, citing her then-current listening favorites as Lucinda Williams and Joan Wasser, and listing Boston-based groups like the Dambuilders, Pixies, and Count Zero as past favorites. Although Donelly mainly performs her own original songs, she has in recent years added covers of songs by Robyn Hitchcock, Nina Simone, the Beatles, and Pixies to her repertoire.
Early life
Donelly has said that her parents, Richard and Kristin Donelly, shuttled the family "between Rhode Island and California" 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 met Kristin 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 an atheist one, but after the car accident a family friend introduced Donelly to the Hindu traditions of Krishna, in which she immersed herself for a brief period. She graduated from Rogers High School in Newport, Rhode Island.[citation needed]
Throwing Muses band beginnings
Donelly performing with Throwing Muses, 1991
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-founded Throwing Muses with Hersh and other members like Elaine 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 of "The 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.
1990s: Breeders and Belly
By 1990, Donelly had additionally begun working in a side project called The Breeders with Kim Deal of Pixies, 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 released Pod 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 to This Mortal Coil's Blood album on 4AD, with a cover of Chris Bell's "You and Your Sister," a month before Donelly officially left Throwing Muses.
In December 1991, Donelly formed Belly as guitarist, vocalist and songwriter, with Thomas Gorman on lead guitar, Chris Gorman on drums, and Fred 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 the Safari EP.
In 1993 Belly released the Star LP, with Gail 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 the RIAA. The band was also nominated for two Grammy 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 by Glyn Johns, did not match the commercial success of Star. The band broke up in 1996.
1990s solo career begins
In 1995, during her post-Belly/pre-solo career, Donelly recorded a track with Catherine Wheel entitled "Judy Staring at the Sun," which appeared on Catherine Wheel's 1995 album Happy Days. The single version featured Donelly and Catherine Wheel's lead singer Rob 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]
In November 1996, Donelly put together a group of musicians to tour internationally with, just prior to her first solo release, the Sliding & Diving EP on 4AD. Included on the tour were husband Fisher on bass, keyboardist Lisa Mednick (formerly of Juliana Hatfield's group), drummer Stacy Jones (formerly of Letters to Cleo and Veruca Salt), and Madder Rose guitarists Mary 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 drummers David Lovering (formerly of the Pixies) and Jones.
After the 1997 dual solo release of Pretty Deep with two different B-sides, she toured North America with Fisher, Throwing Muses' drummer Dave Narcizo, Gilbert, and keyboardist Elizabeth Steen. She soon released her solo debut LP Lovesongs for Underdogs, recorded with Gilbert, Fisher, Jones, Narcizo, and engineer Wally Gagel on assorted instruments.
Career since 2000
In 2000, Donelly performed live in her first reunion with Throwing Muses at a special fan gathering called "Gut Pageant" in Cambridge, 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's Sweet 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 2002 Beautysleep release. Mark Sandman, of Boston's Morphine 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. Boston post-punk band Mission of Burma included Donelly's backing vocals on their reunion album, Onoffon in 2004.
The same year, she released Whiskey Tango Ghosts, a sparely arranged, acoustic album laced with Gilbert's pedal 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 in Bellows 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 (of Come) on drums. The performances were recorded by Donelly's manager, veteran producer Gary Smith of Fort 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 titled This Hungry Life and was released by Eleven Thirty Records on October 17, 2006 in the US and October 24, 2006 in Canada.
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 with Mark 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, and London, 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 of Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" with producer Paul Kolderie for the American Laundromat Records benefit CD titled Cinnamon Girl - Women Artists Cover Neil Young for Charity.
She wrote four songs for the pop girl group Girl Authority for their second debut Road Trip, one of which is titled "This Is My Day". Her daughter, Gracie, is a fan of the group, according to an article in The 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" for American Laundromat Records tribute compilation "Just Like Heaven - a tribute to The Cure".
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.
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.
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] She was slated to compose the score for the 2022 animated film Luck, but was replaced by John Debney.[10]
Personal life
Donelly married former Juliana Hatfield bassist Dean Fisher on September 22, 1996.[11][12] They have two daughters.[11]
The Breeders are an American alternative rock band based in Dayton, Ohio, consisting of members Kim Deal, her twin sister Kelley Deal, Josephine Wiggs and Jim Macpherson (drums).
Throwing Muses are an American alternative rock band formed in 1981 in Newport, Rhode Island, United States, that toured and recorded extensively until 1997, when its members began concentrating more on other projects.
Martha Kristin Hersh is an American singer, guitarist and songwriter known for her solo work and with her rock bands Throwing Muses and 50FootWave. She has released eleven solo albums. Her guitar work and composition style ranges from jaggedly dissonant to traditional folk. Hersh's lyrics have a stream-of-consciousness style, reflecting her personal experiences.
50 Foot Wave is an American alternative rock band, formed in 2003. The band is fronted by Kristin Hersh, who writes the group's songs with collaborative efforts from the other group members in composing and arranging the music. The group's name is a reference to both an illustration and the term for the 50-foot sound wave of the lowest F tone audible to the human ear. The band sometimes abbreviates its name as L'~, using the Roman numeral for 50.
Belly is an alternative rock band formed in Rhode Island in 1991 by Tanya Donelly. The original lineup consisted of Donelly on vocals and guitar, Fred Abong on bass, and brothers Tom and Chris Gorman on guitar and drums respectively. The band released two albums during the early 1990s alternative rock boom before breaking up in 1995. They reunited in 2016 and mounted limited tours in the United States and United Kingdom that year.
Lovesongs for Underdogs is the solo debut album by American singer Tanya Donelly, who had formerly recorded with Throwing Muses, The Breeders, and Belly. It was released on September 9, 1997. Two singles were released for promotion of the album. "Pretty Deep" was released in July 1997, while "The Bright Light" was released in October 1997. In the U.S both 4AD released singles were released in two parts, each including 2 newly released B-Sides. "Pretty Deep" featured "Spaghetti", "Morna", "These Days" and "Influenza". "The Bright Light" featured "Bury My Heart", "How Can You Sleep?", "Life On Sirius" and "Moon Over Boston". A music video for each single was produced and aired on Vh1 and MTV2. Both videos differed highly in creative and artistic direction from previous Belly videos and exclusively featured Tanya solo, in movie like settings. "Pretty Deep" and "The Bright Light" enjoyed heavy airplay on Triple A radio stations in the U.S Northeast. "Lovesongs For Underdogs" peaked at #36 on the Official UK Albums Chart for 2 weeks upon its release. The singles, "Pretty Deep" and "The Bright Light" peaked at #55 and #65 for 2 weeks each upon their 2 CD Single releases.
Pod is the debut studio album by American alternative rock band the Breeders, released by 4AD records on May 29, 1990. Engineered by Steve Albini, the album features band leader Kim Deal on vocals and guitar, Josephine Wiggs on bass, Britt Walford on drums, and Tanya Donelly on guitar. Albini's production prioritized sound over technical accomplishment; the final takes favor the band's spontaneous live "in studio" performances.
David John Narcizo is an American musician and graphic designer, primarily known for his work as the longtime drummer for Throwing Muses.
Lakuna was an electronic instrumental project begun by drummer David Narcizo after Throwing Muses first split up following their 1996 Limbo album. Lakuna first released a 12-inch called So Happy and then a 1999 full-length album called Castle of Crime. Narcizo provided drums, drum programming, and keyboards on all the tracks. The album's guest musicians included Bernard Georges on bass, Kristin Hersh on guitar loops, Belly's Tom Gorman on bass, Melissa "Misi" Narcizo on piano and keyboards, and Frank Gardner on bass and bass synthesizer. Narcizo employed tape loops and samples from obscure, vintage music to achieve the album's ambient-styled instrumental sounds. Lakuna recorded on the 4AD and Throwing Music labels.
Star is the debut studio album by American alternative rock band Belly, released on January 25, 1993.
The Real Ramona is the fourth studio album by Throwing Muses, released in 1991. It peaked at number 26 on the UK Albums Chart.
Hips and Makers is the debut solo album by Kristin Hersh, best known as the primary singer and songwriter of the band Throwing Muses. The album was released by 4AD in the UK on January 24, 1994, and by Sire Records in the US on February 1, 1994. In contrast to Hersh's rock-oriented work with Throwing Muses, the album is primarily acoustic, with Hersh usually playing unaccompanied. Other credited musicians include Jane Scarpantoni on cello and Michael Stipe of R.E.M., who sings backing vocals on the opening track, "Your Ghost." In addition to Hersh's own material, the album features a cover of the traditional song "The Cuckoo".
Hunkpapa is the third studio album by Throwing Muses, released in 1989. It peaked at number 59 on the UK Albums Chart.
House Tornado is the second studio album by the alternative rock band Throwing Muses. Produced by Gary Smith and engineered by Paul Q. Kolderie, it was recorded at Fort Apache Studios in Cambridge, MA. The album was released in 1988 internationally on the 4AD label, except in the United States, where it was released by Sire Records. Sire used a different album cover for its release, as the label was putting a strong promotional push behind the band, and label executives favored a picture of the band over the collage featured on the 4AD release.
Gail Greenwood is an American musician and illustrator most notable for performing bass guitar and guitar with the bands Belly and L7.
Throwing Muses is the 1986 debut album of the band Throwing Muses, released on British independent label 4AD. This was the first album by an American band to be released on 4AD, which had concentrated primarily on British-based acts up to this point. The release marked a shift in the label's direction; a year later 4AD would sign Pixies based in part on the band's connection to Throwing Muses, and by the mid-1990s much of the label's roster was made up of American bands.
Throwing Muses is the eighth studio album by the alternative rock band Throwing Muses. It was recorded over three weekends and released simultaneously with Kristin Hersh's solo record The Grotto on 17 March 2003. The album features Bernard Georges on bass and David Narcizo on drums as well as original bandmate Tanya Donelly on backing vocals.
Red Heaven is a studio album by the American band Throwing Muses, released in 1992. It peaked at number 13 on the UK Albums Chart. Throwing Muses promoted the album by touring with the Flaming Lips. "Firepile" was released as a single.
Chains Changed is an EP recording by Throwing Muses, released in 1987.
The Fat Skier is a mini-album by Throwing Muses, released on 6 July 1987 on the 4AD label in the UK and licensed to Sire Records in the US. It played at 33 ⅓ RPM on the A-side and at 45 RPM on the B-side. It reached number two in the Independent Albums Chart in the UK.
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