By Paddy Walsh
It was her father’s record collection that helped inspire Tanya McCole to take up singing and the guitar and it was her father’s career as a member of An Garda Síochanna that almost directed her to a different beat entirely.
Mick McCole, a native of Keadue, Kilmacrennan, was a Garda Sergeant and served in Castlefin, Buncrana, and Burnfoot among other locations. In 1973 he was despatched to Glenties and a year later transferred to Ardara.
And it was there in 1975 that one of the most powerful voices to emerge on this island was introduced to the world.
Tanya recalls her maternal connections with Carndonagh – “The Hatters were as mad as they sound, lovely people”. And the Ardara native remembers with particular affection her Nana, Annie.
”Me and Nana were very close. I was the apple of her eye and I actually looked very like her.”
When Tanya was eleven, her Nana moved from Carndonagh to Ardara and because of limitations in space, Tanya ended up sharing a room with her beloved grandmother.
“I loved being with her. She was a great woman and a very funny woman. We got on brilliantly.”
But illness doesn’t discriminate when it comes to the good people in this life.
“Nana was showing signs of a shake but it took ten years to diagnose her properly as having Parkinsons. It’s a horrible old disease.”
And one that the young Tanya attempted to ease. “When I was a kid, I used to lie on top of her to try and stop the tremors.
“But despite all, she was as sharp as a tack, mentally agile. If there were flies on her, they were paying rent!.”
When Tanya reached the age of 18, a life away from home beckoned to her. “I was torn about it because I was Nana’s carer. But she told me she loved me and said to me you can’t be staying here for me.”
And so she moved to England where she remained for a number of years working on the building sites.
Upon returning to her native soil, Tanya headed to Galway without much of an idea of what she was going to do.
“And so I was busking on the street and somebody heard me and said ‘you’ve a good voice, there’s a band looking for a singer and they’re doing auditions.’”
That musical interest and talent stemmed from her father’s record collection. “That’s where I got my education from. Daddy had records by the likes of Fats Domino, Porter Wagner, Kris Kristofferson and Elvis. I always had a tennis racket around my neck miming the guitar and singing along.”
And when she was 13, Tanya got a guitar – better strung than the tennis racket. “I taught myself to play and that’s where it all started.”
She took up that audition in Galway and started performing with the ‘Horny Devils’ – a successful combination that earned both Tanya and the rest of the band due recognition.
But just when things were running smoothly, an affliction struck. She was diagnosed with nodules in the throat – a benign growth that threatened an end to her promising career. “The doctor told me I would never sing again. That was hell for me. A lot of late nights feeling very sorry for myself.”
But the bubbly Donegal woman hadn’t given up hope and consequently arranged appointments with a speech therapist and a singing coach.
“And then I met a woman called Michel Durham who runs a voice studio in Galway and she got me back singing, teaching me that music and singing was a physical thing and how to trick the mind.”
Tanya began performing with a 26 piece brass outfit, the Black Magic Big Band while at the same time earning a crust managing a restaurant in Galway. It was a richly enjoyable period of her life before things went in reverse again.
In 2005, her Nana died at the age of 85. “I got sick of music – I think I was grieving for her and I got homesick.”
And so took herself off home with the intention of joining An Garda Síochanna.
“I realised I didn’t have a Leaving Certificate. I rebelled at the time. You had to stay in for 30 minutes before being able to leave the examination hall and I was out in 30 minutes.” And no Leaving success on the immediate horizon.
But the future was to eventually present her with a Certificate. “At the age of 30, I went back to school and sat in with the kids in Glenties Comprehensive. I did two years in the one year and got my Leaving Cert.”
Got it with the sole ambition of heading to Templemore to join the Guards.
“But my father talked me out of it. He told me there’s paper work and more paper work and asked me how I would feel if I knew a person was guilty and they were found not guilty and came out of the court and gave you two fingers. And I told daddy I couldn’t take that.”
There were also conversations with some young Gardaí who had been in the job a short time and had already become very disillusioned with it. “And I thought, right, that’s definitely not for me.”
But what was for her was a return to the initial passion that never truly left her.
“I hooked up with Denise Boyle from the Highlands Hotel in Glenties before we were joined by one Ted Ponsonby to form a trio.”
Tanya recalls that first introductory meeting with the Letterkenny musician in the Highlands in 2005.
“We were like two horses going round each other. I thought he was wild cocky and he thought I was wild cocky, We hit it off!.”
And so was born ‘Ted, Tanya and Denise’, the trio’s original name. “Denise was a cracking good player on the fiddle, mandolin and on vocals. And Ted was vocals, smart arse humour and guitar. That was a bloody good trio.
‘We played for several years before Denise headed off to India. But Ted and I continued to play with McGinley’s Bar in Letterkenny on a Monday night, our venue of choice.”
She has numerous tales to tell about her performing partner, not least the one when he was part of the Women’s Heart tour in the old Point Depot in Dublin. “Joan Baez was playing and in the Green Room afterwards, Ted went up to her at the bar and said to her: ‘How ya, Joan, buy us a drink.” Ms. Baez walked away.
Ted’s passing in 2023 hit Tanya hard as it did all who knew him, and she was quick to add her talents and tributes at a special memorial night subsequently held in the Clanree Hotel in Letterkenny,
Three years before his death, Tanya also mourned the loss of an international musical icon with whom she had performed.
Tanya McCole performing alongside the legendary John Prine at the National Concert Hall in Dublin
She’d known of the American legend, of course, before she met him but to have actually performed on stage with John Prine was the proverbial dream coming through. Their first introduction came one night when she returned from a gig that hadn’t gone well. “I just said, I’m packing it in and I was throwing my gear under the stairs.”
And then the phone rang. Prine was married to Ardara native, Fiona Whelan and unbeknown to Tanya she was being discussed by the great man himself.
“I got the call that night and it literally changed my life. “ In 2018 she went on tour with Prine, performing in Oslo, Amsterdam, and Dublin in sold out theatres.
Further tours were planned and she was meant to meet him in Manchester. “John’s hip was giving him a lot of trouble. He was in Paris doing a gig but had to postpone the rest of the tour to get his hip replaced which is what he did. The next thing he caught Covid.”
A road trip in the United States was on the cards along with the Donegal woman with the pair of musicians due to sign off on stage in Graceland.
But on April 7, 2020. John Prine breathed his last, leaving his musical partner devastated. “I had really wanted to get to know him better because he was such a nice guy. There was no ego with the man at all.
“I’ve been around less talented people who had way more of an ego than John Prine – he was such a dote of a man.”
As a fan, she remembers sitting in the audience at one of his performances and promising herself: ‘Some day I’m going to play with John Prine.”
But that phone call she had received at home clearly indicated that he had the same intentions of performing with her.
As far as albums are concerned, Tanya McCole has released two to date. “I know I should have four or five out at this stage but I’m lazy,” she laughs.
Her first release was entitled ‘Love, Hate and Blues’ and was dedicated to her sister, Arlene, who had passed away in 2008.”There’s a lot of love, hate, and blues on that album.”
For the follow-up, laziness had again threatened to take root only for her manager, Heather McKeeman – not just manager but sound engineer and roadie – to “lock me up in a room and order me not to come out until I had a load of songs written!”.
“So that’s what I did and we drove to Castledawson to record that album, ‘Because of You’. It’s not as moody as the first one which we had recorded in my cottage.”
Among those who helped in the production were fellow musicians, Martin O’Hara, Dave Wintour, and Ted Ponsonby. “All of them gone now, sad to say,” Tanya bemoans their collective loss.
And her father’s record collection? It disappeared out of her life until one day she was sitting on her bed scrolling on Facebook and a familiar album cover loomed out of the platform. “And I said, jeez, there’s a record I had as a kid. And I scrolled on and I saw another one that I had.”
They were being sold in Universal Books in Letterkenny’s Cathedral Quarter and nothing for it but to make tracks to the iconic store to chat with proprietor, David Faulkner. “If it’s meant for me, they’ll come back to me,” she had previously proclaimed. And there they were – a haul of records she was, thanks to David and his assistant, John, able to gather up and take home, purchased at face value.
“It was unreal and all I could say was, thank you Dad.”
And many happy listening hours spent reflecting on her late father and his influences.
But when you’re a performer there isn’t much time for the turntable when you have places to go and fans to entertain.
“I play quite a bit in McGinley’s Bar on a Monday night and I also love playing in the Old Courthouse in Lifford. And I’m also kept busy with festivals and the like.”
Tanya McCole’s stunning voice and guitar work can be heard in these venues and others – her songs stirred with passion and life’s stories and sung by a voice that reaches into the depths of soul and sentiment.
Helped by an affable personality to help open them up to her audiences.
