By Ken Wallis.
Terry Donaghue has been playing music since the 60s. He began playing folk and bluegrass on the banjo in a couple of different groups in his hometown of Sault Ste Marie. Later he took up the guitar and more recently the mandolin. He has been writing songs for the past 20 years or so in a variety of styles. His songs resonate with music lovers in a multitude of genres.
Ken Wallis interviewed Terry Donaghue for the radio show BluesSource Canada. The following are excerpts of that interview edited and amended for brevity and clarity,
Ken Wallis
Terry Donaghue has a new album out, it is called Shades Of Blue and joining us is Terry Donaghue. Terry thanks for coming on the show,
Terry Donaghue
My pleasure to be here.
Well, I've got to ask you first of all, why Shades Of Blue? What's the significance of that title to you?
So, Shades Of Blue refers to the many variations of music that get encompassed broadly within the blues genre and I've built a pretty big tent around the word Blues. So many different flavours that's for sure, and there's a lot of flavours on this album.
What I really like is you've got a lot of very special guests on this album.
Terry Donaghue
I was just thrilled by the number of people who would come and join in the recording sessions and it was a thrill to watch them add their magic to the mix.
Ken Wallis
Tell our audience who's on the album with you.
Terry Donaghue
Well starting with the first song, I've got Paul Reddick, a great local harp singer-songwriter. Jenie Thai, who's got fabulous keyboard playing skills who’s a blues singer-songwriter. Al Cross on drums, Al is just terrific. Rick Fines, another local blues guy playing slide guitar in one cut. I've got Cam McInnes on slide, Nora Spades playing washboard, John David Williams playing clarinet on my New Orleans favourite tune that closes out the album. Then I've got my recording engineer, multi-instrumentalist Vezi Tayyeb playing a slew of instruments from electric guitar to acoustic, B3 and synth.
So, for folks that haven't heard the album yet, how would you basically describe the music that's on this album?
I would say it's a a mix from up-tempo bar blues, to country blues, to New Orleans flavoured jazz blues and a bunch of stuff in between.
Ken Wallis
And how do you go about writing your material?
Usually, it starts with the lyrics, and it comes to me from various sources. Either some of these are from my own personal experience and some of them just get beamed down to me from somewhere in the universe. I'm not quite too sure how it happens, and the words just come out of the fingers onto the keyboard.
Ken Wallis
This is your third solo release. What sparked the desire to record another album? These are difficult times for musicians.
Just trying to live a creative life, trying to maintain my sanity during the crazy period that we've been living through. It started a number of years ago when I'd written a bunch of songs and one of the members of the band that I was in at the time kept saying, Terry you've got a lot of good music that somebody needs to hear. Then at my wife's funeral I played a few songs that I'd written for her and a bunch of people came up to me afterwards, for this one song called I Tune Into You, and they said Terry you gotta record this, people need to hear this song. So that got me going on the trail and once hooked, I was addicted and had to keep going.
Ken Wallis
What does the future hold for Terry Donaghue? Are you going to do a lot of touring?
Terry Donaghue
No, I've got arthritis in my fingers so I can't play nearly what I used to play. I really view myself more as a songwriter than a performer. I'll do some local gigs, but I don't think I'll be doing much touring. I'm thinking about a fourth solo recording in the immediate future. I've got a protest song that I've written that tomorrow will get the final mix and I'm working on a video for it. I’m also working on a video for Rosalee that should be up on my YouTube channel within a couple of weeks. So, lots of stuff going and then it's going to be spring and summer and got my gardens and time for fun.
Hallelujah let's hear it for spring! Where can folks get a hold of your album?
Terry Donaghue
It's available for downloading or streaming from just about any site that you could think of online where you get your music from. If you really want a hard copy of it, then look me up on my Facebook page send me a message and I'll we'll find a way to get a hard copy to you.
Ken Wallis
Well Terry it's been great chatting with you and it is a really good album and I encourage everybody out there to go and buy it as opposed to streaming it. Let's get the money flowing so again, thanks for being on the show and hope to catch up with you soon.
Terry Donaghue
Well thanks a lot Ken it's been a great pleasure talking to you.
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