Onya

Onya O Doherty Cowboy X The Blizzards @ Whelan’s, Wexford St, Dublin 12th April 2006
Current mood: grateful
Category: Music Onya O Doherty Cowboy X The Blizzards @ Whelans, Wexford St, Dublin 12th April 2006
Paid a return visit to see Onya O Doherty perform in Whelans after a busy year that has seen the stunning Donegal lass refine her stagecraft on a relentless touring schedule in Ireland, Europe and America.
Last year I witnessed Onya do a solo opening act performance for West of Ireland flamenco guitar stylist singer songwriter Albert Niland, and introduced us to her own song writing skills that built on the acclaim and wave of popularity her excellent weekly show pieces on the Your A Star talent show generated.
Opening the show in Whelans on Wednesday night ahead of Cowboy X with Karen an intriguing Avril Lavigne look-alike lead singer and the headlining soaringly popular Mullingar band The Blizzards and backed by band mates Falloni Poni and Seamy O Doherty on additional guitar and percussion, Onyas original songs and warm likable stage presence worked beautifully.
Although I had gone along primarily to see Onya and how she had got on in the past year I was thrilled to come upon The Blizzards, a multi talented outfit playing out of their skins with an exciting, fun performance that is guaranteed to satisfy and hopefully solve the commercial nature of their business on foot of what I seen on stage in Whelans.
It was an outstanding performance; a high energy cocktail sonically honed to perfection from these Mullingar boys at a midland musical roundabout thats got high-speed influences coming from all directions and blending seamlessly together, its Madness racing around The Sawdoctors or the Boomtown Rats in their hay day with the vocal majesty of Queen reeling around tainted love and god knows what else it was awe-diance zapping, amazing and wonderful.
Onyas strength is her voice, with its infectiously fragile and hopeful timbre, with that endearing Donegal accent, singing straightforward, emotionally direct lyrics capturing the feel and wit of her warm, pleasant and affably personality.
Onya delivered a determined performance full of confidence and charisma, which is no easy task for the first act of the night in trying to attract the attention of a packed house yapping away like they were meeting up in the arrivals lounge in Dublin Airport on Christmas Eve.
But when the artist is authoritative and inventive people do listen and pretty soon Onya was sharing the inspiration for her songs and breaking down the barriers of communication, setting out the theme for each of her own songs, which stand solidly from start to finish.
Her lyrical style is mellow with a delicate balance of facing lifes problems with a hopeful and positive perspective.
She illustrates hard choices in her songs like staying in bed with whoever your with or getting up grabbing the guitar and getting on with things you really want to do for yourself and being willing to pay the price to make it happen.
Its life thats just what it is.
Quiet frankly my dear with the voice of an angel and the buoyant bullet proof twenty something year old good looks of a Celtic Madonna, Onya could sing the yellow pages and it would do it for me, in the same way as Sheryl Crow, Melanie, Shelby Lynn and Lucinda Williams, they simply gracefully brighten up the room when they drop in to see you all.
Onya moves from sassy slabs of classic rock chick and modern Irish pop pizzazz with that Donegal lemon and honey vocals topping off the magic, demonstrating that she has a stable and perfect relationship with her art.
I remember when the wicked godmother on the Your a Star panel had a cheep pop at her short dress the male population of Ireland texted 53600 to defend our rights to see not only the most likable act but a vision of perfection that puts sunshine to shame.
Pass the bottle is a good example of Onyas carefree and breezy vibe on stage with its catchy slinky beat, catchy chorus, lyrical four letter word undercurrents and rural observations of small town talk where everyone knows what everyone else is up to around the town.
Her minor major major hypnotic rhythm chord progressions in G# and relative keys moved about with the capo transmit many influential images of folk pop, cool summer breezes, reggae sparks burning on a beautiful west coast beach bonfire at midnight.
Onya's music is barely legal radiant beach girls on the crest of a wave surfing over a bed of bleached red-hot barbequed folk rock with all the sweetening you will ever need.
Short and Sweet is captivatingly beautiful for all these reasons with its stripped down rhythms taking shape around lyrics that are self questioning revelations about life on the career N4 where love has to take a back seat and life has to focus if you want to stay in tune.
Went for a holiday break a few years ago around spring time up around the Donegal coast line and remember finding a beac - Myspace review

Writer and director Gerry Nelson, whose recent films have included 'Dear Frankie' and 'DeValera and the Irish Press', and whose documentary work has taken him to such far-flung locations as Lebanon, South Africa and Kosovo, talks about his experience making 'This Note's for You' for RTÉ.
The idea for a documentary on songwriting sprang from an idle conversation between producer John Murray of Crossing the Line Films and Ray Harman from Something Happens. Both concluded that there were no decent music programmes that are actually analysing songs.
Initially we were to make a one-hour documentary but after a couple of weeks' filming it became obvious there was no way we could fit what we needed to say into 52 minutes and thus the six-part series 'This Note's for You' was born. The series is, of course, named in homage to Neil Young's great anti-corporate anthem.
The goal for the series was simple. If you take current music programmes they generally go down the route of a quick interview and a bit of a performance and the ball doesn't roll any further than that. With 'This Note's For You' we wanted to look more in depth at songs, songwriting, why we love the songs we love and what makes it all so magical. But above all we wanted to make a series that was visually interesting, stylish and befitting such creative subject matter
We were blessed to have the series presented by Tom Dunne, a respected songwriter himself; his imprimatur most certainly offered a level of credibility that was second to none.
Taken as a series, we've got an incredible array of songwriting talent; Damien Dempsey, Paul Brady, Declan O'Rourke, Gemma Hayes, Aine O’ Doherty Fiachna Ó Braonáin, Phil Coulter - such a craftsman - these people are revelations, real songwriters.
These people are the glue that holds our society together, they are the people who live out on the edge and allow us to go about our daily lives, but yet are full off humility and eager to expose their inner workings and motivations. As Neil Hannon says, "We give the bricklayer something to whistle while he lays his bricks."
One of the most magical moments of the series was when we conducted an experiment with Bundoran singer-songwriter, Aine O'Doherty. We wanted to film a song actually being written, so Fiachna Ó Braonáin from Hothouse Flowers came and said, "Yeah, I'll write a song with Aine".
They met in his living room one morning and they'd written a song by that night. But this wasn't something just thrown out, you could really feel when the muse arrived. The end result was this cool, country-inspired song called 'Keep Ya Guessing', and everyone involved was just floored by it.
There is no doubt that making this series was a true labour of love, it has taken over a year to complete. The editing process, I can safely say, was one of the most difficult challenges of my twenty years in television as we wanted the songwriters to drive the programme with very little voiceover. Selecting the music alone was torturous, but great at the same time. I wanted to get a snippet of every great song that I could and at one point we had one thousand songs in the edit machine to choose from.
'This Note's for You' is not a guide book; you will not learn how to write a hit, let alone a song. What it might do is give the music listener a fresh appreciation for the creative process that begets a song, why songs are so important to our lives, and maybe when they hear a songwriter say, "I wrote this song in ten minutes," they might remember that it took decades of learning the craft of songwriting to produce those ten minutes of genius.
The beautiful thing about this series is that there is no end, there are no real answers. Like music, it is all about the journey. Gerry Nelson

- RTE website

Surfing Chic Makes New Waves YOU’VE no doubt heard of Enya, the super rich New Age Donegal priestess? Well, if you like your women on the rock side, check out Irish rock chick Onya when she returns to Manhattan with her unique brand of acoustic surf-rock, Irish style. You might think the terms “surf” and “Irish” don’t go together, and you would be wrong. “Ireland is a sick place to surf,” exclaims Jim, owner of Legend Surfboards, a board manufacturer who is making waves on either side of the Atlantic with his Celtic inspired swag (for more information, log onto http://homepage.eircom.net/~legendsurfboards/index.html). “When you think about it, Ireland is an island in the middle of the Atlantic, and it is pounded on all sides by waves. The weather doesn’t always allow for beach babes and sun, but anyone who is serious about surfing knows how great the waves are in Ireland.” Jack Johnson, the Hawaiian surfer who traded in his board for a folk guitar and became the godfather of surf music, recently sold out Dublin’s Point Theatre and rode the Irish chart wave successfully. Onya has fallen into the surfing crowd with a similar vibe. She strums aggressive folk rock with a love-’em-and-leave-’em attitude that plays well with the rebelliousness of surf culture. She has done some solo work on both sides of the Atlantic, supporting the likes of Mark Geary, Hothouse Flowers and Luka Bloom. I caught her act at Connolly’s, where she played riotous acoustic versions of ‘80s guilty pleasures from the songbooks of the Police, U2, and Bob Marley with her friend, Niamh Hamill. The two gals make up Surfchixx, and their lively set must be seen to be believed. You’ll have your chance to do just that as the girls join Rory Fallon on June 9 at Coppermiths (793 9th Avenue) Failte, Otto’s Shrunken Head on the 10th (538 East 14th Street) at 8 p.m. Additionally, Onya will be strumming original tunes at the Bitter End on June 15 or the Baggot Inn (82 West 3rd Street (between Sullivan and Thompson) on Friday, June 16. Did I mention the small matter of looks? For a gander at some steamy pictures or to get a full download of music and dates, log onto www.myspace.com/onyamusic. - Irish Voice