Once upon a time she was a busy singer in the Boston music scene. Until life intervened. Tanya Darling recently jumped back into the music scene. In last January of this year she picked up guitar and started writing about her new life and taking her songs to open mics.
Darling played the Boston circuit in the 1990s and got to tour in England and Switzerland after an international booking agent saw her perform at Club Passim in Cambridge. Recently, a major life change prompted her to dive back into writing. She’s been taking her 20 or so new songs to open mics in New Hampshire and Boston.
“I was doing really well in the career I had moved into and there wasn’t a lot of room for music,” she said. “Without support, it’s really easy for an artist to lose that energy to continue performing and writing. Then I had two kids. Every time I tried to play piano—my first one is autistic—he’d scream.” Yet, her music has been like therapy for her kids, giving her more time to focus on her music.
Darlings first three full length CDs were composed on piano but she has recently taken up guitar. “It’s a huge difference for me. It’s easier to hit the folk note with a guitar,” she said.
Darling writes in numerous genres. Some of her newer songs have a Texas folk feel. A couple of them, “Don’t Know What You’re Thinking” and “Tough Enough,” went over big at an open mic at Studio 99 in Nashua a week ago.
“Don’t Know What You‘re Thinking” is pretty literal. “It’s about a guy breaking promises but still showing up and expecting everything to be what he wanted,” she said. “But he’s pretty much on the way out. He needs to grow up and be a man.”
“Tough Enough” is about Darling coming out of what she calls her “asleep period.” It’s about starting over again and coming out of a ten years sleep,” she said. “If you’re going to walk across my path, I’m probably going to write about it right now. I’m in a writing frenzy. I have a lot to catch up on.”
Her writing frenzy was inspired by a new found freedom, new pressures, and getting rid of old baggage. “Everything is inspiring me right now,” she said. “I just take inspiration and I blow it up. I write stores about experiences.”
One of her favorite new songs is “Land Of The Free” which is about somebody else’s love story, a teacher falling in love with a very young male student. Darling had seen it on TV some years ago. “It inspired me to write a song about it,” she said. “It was pretty big news at the time.”
These day, Darling doesn’t need to read newspapers for songwriting grist. She said there is more drama in her life each passing week. “I don’t need to look out right now. It’s all coming at me, a lot of changes,” she said.
Darling can be found sharing these experiences via open mics at Tupelo Music Hall in Londonderry, New Hampshire, Studio 99 in Nashua, New Hampshire, Lizard Lounge in Cambridge, and The Burren in Somerville, Massachusetts. “I love the Lizard Lounge,” she exclaimed. “It’s one great musician after another with a sprinkling of crazy.”
She also digs The Lizard Lounge open mics because host Tom Bianchi maintains a nice listening room environment, even though it’s a bar where you can drink beer and wine.
Darling had made and released three full length CDs and two E.P.s up until 2003 when she fell off the Boston music scene’s radar. Her discography, though, remains impressive. Darling’s debut CD “Broken Boy” appeared in 1996. She had won a songwriting contest for the title track then she went on to release four more discs before marrying, moving to Nashua, New Hampshire, getting a graphic design job. She stopped gigging when she put her energy into her full time job, ending her performance run in 2001 and releasing her final full length CD “Intoxicating” in 2003, which she never toured to support.
Not working on music when she’s at heart a musician wasn’t easy. Her piano was always in her living room collecting dust. She would only play it once in a while. “It was hard,” she said. “When you’re asleep you’re not aware that you’re asleep. It was not until I woke up that I realized that I was ignoring my real passion and my life and the real reason why I was born. But when you’re sleep walking, you don’t always know what’s going on.”
The singer-songwriter had accomplished much in her five CDs before she fell off the map. Her sense of lost time is understandable. For now, Darling has set her sights on an album she wants to release this summer. Her previous works had a sprinkling of different genres, which she attributes to being a singer-songwriter using those genres as tools in her arsenal.
“I’m such a typical singer-songwriter. Whatever kind of music, the song is going to take form, that’s what I do,” she said.. “If I hear a great song or a great artist that might influence my next song. It’s more about the song than any style.” Darling’s early work could’ve been compared to a Tori Amos but her new material is more like pop piano ballad. Some of her new stuff is more heavily influenced by older style blues. “I live the blues,” she quipped. “I try to get out of it though and write some happier songs.”
Darling has been auditioning producers and studios for the album of 20 news songs she will choose from her this summer’s CD. She also has ten older songs that she’d like to record. Some of her songs she would like to record herself on solo piano and some she’d like to use other players to flesh out her vision.
Darling has been talking to John Wozniak of the band Marcy Playground, among others, about helping her out. Darling will likely be recruiting some old friends from Berklee College Of Music, where she got her degree in Vocal Performance And Songwriting in the 1990s. Darling, though, isn’t sure what to call her music.
“That’s always been an issue for me. I don’t fit into tidy genres,” she said. Darling pointed to Adele as an artist that nobody can clearly define.
Darling, writing songs since she was 10 years old, has music in her genes. She is the daughter of songwriter Ralph Colangione who wrote the song “Black Is Black” recorded by Los Bravos and “Carrie Anne” recorded by The Hollies. “He sold his rights outright so he got a lump sum of money, and he doesn’t even get credit on the songs,” she said. “But everybody who knows him knows that they’re his songs. That’s all that matters to him.”
“He never went around playing music in the house or anything,” Darling continues, “so it totally came from the genes. It didn’t come from environment. There wasn’t a lot of music in my home. He was working really hard to provide for five kids. It’s the same thing with me. When you get busy, it’s very easy to lose your passion.”
Darling will compete in a songwriting contest at Simple Gifts Coffeehouse in Nashua, New Hampshire on May 19. A fundraiser for Nashua Soup Kitchen And Shelter, it will showcase four artists per round for six rounds until they pick a winner at the end of the day. Darling will be performing five of her new songs in this singer-songwriter showdown.
“Writing helps me to figure out where I am,” she said. “Sometimes I know myself better in my lyrics than in my thoughts. I look at what I’ve written and I’m like ‘Oh, yeah. That’s really good advice. I probably should take it. That happens a lot.”
