Meet our guitar, bass guitar, and mandolin instructor...Gene Donaldson
** This biography was taken from "Conversation with Gene Donaldson" by Tim Leininger from the November 30 - December 1, 2019, Issue of Journal Inquirer. *
Gene Donaldson has played the blues since he picked up the guitar at the age of 12 and has played thousands of shows since then.
As a Windsor, CT resident since age 2, he lives across from his childhood home. He continues to teach at the Windsor Music Centre, the very music shop where he learned guitar decades prior.
His childhood was an idyllic place to grow up. It was quiet place, except for the planes flying overhead because they were right by the Bradley west side runway.
Gene was 12 years old when he started studying guitar. He had a cousin that would come over on Friday nights. They played cards and guitar and sang "Your Cheatin' Heart". Hank Williams Sr. stuff. He just loved it! Gene used to fall asleep with the guitar amp right next to his head. Why? Not even Gene can tell you the answer. After a year of bugging his mother, she brought him to the Windsor Music Centre, located in the center of town. The shop owner, Sal told him he was too small and to come back next year. So, at the age of 13, Gene started taking lessons with Sal, the same instructor to the Wildweeds's frontman, Al Anderson. By the age of 16, Gene was working for Windsor Music and after his 17th birthday, he was teaching too.
Gene went from wanting to be a shortstop for the Yankees to being a guitar player almost overnight. The people who lived next door...the father played pedal steel, the mother sang, and the son played guitar...had Gene play with them in their country band. This solidified what he wanted to do with his life.
He went to Hartt College of Music for two years because four years was hard to afford at the time. His father was not very happy that he wanted to study music, because he had great grades and high SAT scores. He wanted Gene to go into aerospace engineering, like he did. Gene just pursued music and walked through the doors as they opened.
The first band he played with was with a group of kids he went to school with at 15 years old. He played his first gig at the Jewish Community Center. They hired his band. Kids paid $2 a piece to get into the dance and they split the money with the band. They made $35. Gene got $7 and spent that money on two sets of Ernie Ball guitar strings. A memory that he can never forget.
It was probably about a year before Gene played another gig. As things sometimes go, the stress of getting the band ready for a gig caused the band to break up as soon as the gig was over...a fairly common occurrence.
Gene gave guitar lessons to make a living while trying to pursue his musical career. He also worked in the music store...until 1980. He had a falling-out with the store for a little bit and he started working at the airport for a delivery company called PDS. PDs had a warehouse where his band rehearsed. They used to use their trucks to bring their equipment to gigs. It was a band called Smokestack Lightning and they were very popular. That was really Gene's first real professional group.
Gene's interests were pretty much based around the blues. His major influences came from reading article and interviews with Eric Clapton, Jimmy Hendrix, and Jeff Beck...all of them were trying to play the blues. Gene felt he should too. So, he went to the Shaboo Inn in Willimantic, CT. He saw James Cotton, Bonnie Raitt, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Freddie King, Pinetop Perkins, and Gil Scott-Heron perform...the chills Gene gets just thinking about all these great blues artists. Keith Richards, to him, is one of the biggest unsung heroes of the blues. Richards was just as good as a blues player then than Clapton. The blues is cyclical and it's very much personality driven. It took a really big hit when John Belushi died.
Gene's first band, that was prominent in the Hartford, CT area, was called Smokestack Lightning. The band name was taken from a Howlin' Wolf song. He was with the band for about seven years. In 1981, he decided to leave the band because things were pretty crazy. He was playing twenty-five to thirty days a month. You name it, he played it all within a 30-mile radius of Hartford/ There would have to be at least 50 venues that were booking seven days a week.
After Gene parted ways with Smokestack Lightning, he freelanced for a couple of years. In 1985, he auditioned with a newly formed band called the Motown Review. When he got to the audition in Plainville, the band was pretty much together...the drummer, the bass player, the keyboard player, and a couple of singers that ended up with band. They told Gene they had auditioned over a hundred guitar players and after a two-hour audition, they offered him the gig. That began seven years of about two hundred gigs a year.
Motown Records was suing the band for using the name "Motown". They changed the name of the band to "M'town Review", but the posters from far away still looked like "Motown". Gene left the band in March of 1992, about seven years after he joined and 1,400 gigs later. They played everywhere...Hershey Park, PA, Caesars in the Poconos, Portland, ME, New Jersey, up and down the East Coast, the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston, and Apple Computer's Christmas party. Gene never thought he'd play a Kennedy wedding on Martha's Vineyard. They played Nantucket two or three times a year. He played so many great places when he was with the band. Gene thought that was going to the pinnacle of his success, but it turned out it really wasn't. Touring with Phil Guy, Buddy Guy's brother, was.
They did five blues festivals in 2005 and each one of them had between 12,000 and 16,000 people in attendance. Afterward, Phil got the cover of Living Blues magazine. It wasn't too long after that he was diagnosed with early-onset prostate cancer. That was the last tour that Gene did with him.
After Gene left Motown Review, he started the Stingrays with a couple of his co-workers at the Windsor Music Centre...Geoffrey Wadhams, who is now in Changes in Latitudes; Greg Garcia; Rob DeSorbo; and Ross Burba, who's now a guidance counselor at Windsor High School. That was the beginning of the Stingrays.
As time went on, about a year later, Greg left to play with a band called "The Kelvins". He still plays with them as well as teaches English. Geoff has played with bands like "Shakedown" and "The Dead Show". He now plays with "Changes in Latitude", a Jimmy Buffet tribute thing.
After a few years of playing with the Stingrays, Gene got offers from a booking agent to play with blues artists that came to Black-Eyed Sally's. Guys like Larry Burton and Phil Guy. Gene played bass for Sherman Robertson one night. The original bassist had a death in the family and had to return to Houston.
Gene played with a whole bunch of different blues people who were on the road and need a pick-up band. He did a tour with the great Eddie Kirkland. He worked with Mary Taylor for a little while. In 2000, he did the Hartford Blues Festival and I played with two bands, with Mary Taylor and Phil Guy.
Gene found out he was being inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame two days before the ceremony. He didn't know what to think. He never really put too much stock in recognition awards. He hadn't really pursued fame at all and, as a matter of fact, his entire tactic for getting gigs precludes that in a way. The first thing most bar owners would say to you is, 'how many people can you bring?' When someone would say that to Gene, he instinctively didn't want to work there. In the 60s, 70s, and even into the 80s, it seemed like it was the venue's job to promote, not the artist.
They were not asking him how well he played. Not about how hard he has worked or what kind of repertoire he had. It was 'how many people can you bring?' Someone could play a piece of crap and bring 50 people because their whole family wants to see them play. The whole question of 'how much money are you going to make me?' is really what the bar owners are asking.
Gene remembers booking agents for bands for bars trying their best to have quality entertainment every weekend so that their clientele would keep coming back. Now it is solely put on the entertainer. So, what happens, as a result, less and less bands have enough of a following to warrant even booking them.
Gene just wanted to play. He developed his repertoire. He had over 250 songs that he can choose from.
To this day, Gene continues to perform whenever and wherever he can...Union Street Tavern in Windsor, the Bidwell Tavern in Coventry, the Hungry Tiger in Manchester, and Black-Eyed Sally's in Hartford. He has no intention of hanging up his guitar any time soon. As he continues to play with the Stingrays, Gene averages 100 gigs per year. He also continues his teaching his 20 students at the Windsor Music Centre.
What's the most important lesson you tell your students?
Gene Donaldson: "You don't have to be a professional to love music. Being a professional musician is not for everyone, but playing music and enjoying it is a life-long pursuit. One of my former students is going to Vassar now. She's a pretty accomplished guitarist, but that's not what she's going to focus her life on. One of my other former students is a music teacher at a high school now...Gary Nolan. He's a really good kid. It was meant for him. He has it in his blood. he has it in his heart. But it's not for everyone. The thing that binds us all together for all my students is our love of music. That's the thing. We all love music. If we didn't, we wouldn't be doing what we do."
