Tanya Donelly

Tanya Donelly (born July 14, 1966) 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.