betty donelly

The story of Betty Donelly

Betty, at age seven, started out on the violin and caught the stage bug already .. Until at age 14 she got tired of her very strict female teacher... Betty Donelly grew up without rock and roll or popsongs whatsoever...her father strictly didn't allow it to be played on the home radio ... Only classical music and jazz, and a couple singles The Beatles were allowed alongside records of Cliff Richard..A nd django Reinhardt for sure ... the rest was all classical...

So when betty was about 16 years old she got a hard reality check when everyone was suddenly a hard rocker or a punk or a disco freak ..

For the first time she discovered music of her proper generation .. One day when she was at home and listening to her brother's cassette she suddenly heard this magickal music coming out of the speaker...Betty was really stunned when she heard that voice for the first time...it was let's go to bed from The Cure...."i felt such a connectedness with that person i did not know...instantly...it never grew away again..."

In the last year of high school she decided she wanted to play in a band after seeing some friends do the same ... it didn't work out well for the other band after having them stripped of their guitarist .. Anyways, THE FEAR, a band name Betty got to invent, created a local buzz and a small following but after a fight with the guitar player The Fear split..

Betty Donelly immediately formed another band, a foursome this time just before the early nineties..."we played in venues that had like 500 people in there and were a big success everytime we gigged..."

In the mean time Betty was going to school as well ... In fact she studied three different things all at once: social readaptation sciences, rock school for musical stage arts and business manager at some pont it all became too much and that was the end of THE ELEPHANTS..you can still listen to those live oldies -

By then disaster struck Betty at her dayjob as a civil servant..."i guess it all became a bit too much for me...maybe i couldn't handle all the stress from the 3 schools and my job and The Elephants in between...so i went bananas and experienced a psychosis ..

Over the next years i've had a couple of them but the more recent they occured the less severe they became and the psychosises transitioned into manic euphoric symptoms...im still good", Betty Donelly says.

In 2004 Betty recorded two songs and started digitising some cassettes and thus created her first web presence

The next two years were filled with writing new material, recording at home without drums...to the point where she is now ready to perform...solo

Betty: "i'd rather play in a full band but if no one is willing or if i haven't met the right people yet i will play solo"

Betty Donelly is a indie one musician band.

Based, born and raised in the suburbs of Brussels, Betty Donelly has come a long way before giving a whole new meaning to the indie rock genre, due to the sheer uniqueness of being a soft-androgyne woman in transition.

Betty Donelly, who's main influences include The Cure, David Bowie, Pixies and The Beatles, has been covering some different styles throughout the eighties, nineties and 2000's, from downright curish old skool, over pixies like music, to what has now become something of a signature genre Betty Donelly dubbed Enchanted Witch Rock for Witches in Love or just Witch Rock in short.

In 1984 a culture shock shook Betty Donelly after hearing The Cure on the home radio. After being in The Fear, and The elephants, which led to her evolving into a band leader and multi-instrumentalist, Betty really kicked off her solo act when she wrote My Untouchable Friend and The Void in 2004

Betty Donelly really kicked of her solo career as a one musician band back in 2004, when she wrote My Untouchable Friend and The Void in. Being a member of a one musician band simply means she performs all music related activities herself from music creation, recording, post production over marketing and promotion.

Then, in November 2010 she started running simple music world, geared towards helping out one musician bands in a tribal environment, and actually running Witchy Records, a small online indie label, since April 2011.

Witchy Records and simple music world are non-profit projects with offices in Ganshoren, Brussels, with access to a theatre room for some 300 people and Headquarters, completely equiped with a basic home based recording studio in Betty Donelly's home in Zaventem, Flemish Brabant, Belgium.

With access to real existing office facilities within the context of a cultural center, running Witchy Records is a dedicated project by Betty Donelly, assigned by the cultural center's director to roll out musical activities.

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