The Queen of country returns to the Mount Errigal Hotel this October

Singing star Margo O’Donnell will be celebrating 60 years of joining the Keynotes band next year and while she says she isn’t planning to retire any time soon she feels she has come “full circle”.
The singing star returns to The Mount Errigal Hotel, on Wednesday, October 4 and is delighted that she will be joined on stage by David James, Shunie Crampsie and the Ryan Turner Band.
This time last year, Margo was looking forward to getting back to her home county to perform at the Mount Errigal Hotel- her first performance since the pandemic. However, this year she is also conscious that some of those who come to her concerts regularly will no longer be there.
Thoughts of her dear sister Kathleen Doogan, whom she lost early last year, are never far from the singer’s mind: “A lot of things changed when my sister died. It is hard to believe that I will be going back and there will be faces missing this time but that is life.”
She also lost her good friend Big Tom in recent times, a friend she was exceptionally close to and to his family.
“I am looking forward to going back to see all of my lovely fans. Next year, it will have been sixty years since I joined the Keynotes,” she said.

Young singer takes to stage
The Kinncasslagh native, joined the Keynotes in 1964 and in 1968 they recorded their first single.
Margo began singing with the Keynotes when she was 12 years of age.
As a child, Margo sang in the local choir and when concerts took place in St Mary’s Hall in Kincasslagh the local priest would ask her to sing during the intermission.
She was only five years of age when she took to the stage in the hall. At that time, during Lent, the Keynotes put on dramas in the parochial halls and they knew Margo could sing so they often asked the her to join them.
One fateful summer, the young singer’s life was on course to change dramatically.
She had spent the summer in Ayrshire tattie hoking with her brother John and other relations. She returned home one Saturday tired and exhausted from being having been away. The following day, she and her cousin went for a walk and when she came home, her mother, Julia, told her the Keynotes had called to see if she would sing with them during school holidays and at weekends. The lead singer, Enda Breslin, had joined An Garda Síochána.
“Then with my father and mother’s blessing … with a stern set of rules set by my dad to Tony Boyle from Convoy to look after his little girl, I sang for the first time when I was 13, in Ardara, in October of 1964.
“At that time, I didn’t look at it as a job, I always wanted to become a nurse, get married and have a couple of kids,” she said.

The passing of her dear father Francie

Her first album was tempered by the untimely death of her dear father, Francie.
In 1968, Margo recorded her first song with the Keynotes, Bonnie Irish Boy. The song was given to her by her father. Francie was extremely excited to hear the recording. Unfortunately on the day the song was released - a day that Margo and her family were due to celebrate - Francie unexpectedly passed away.
Following the release of the song, Margo, her mother, Julia, John, Kathleen and Daniel took a little portable record player over to the graveyard and played it over the grave.
“That was the day, I always say, that changed my life forever,” she said.
Margo’s life was set to take another unexpected turn. She later received a call from a Dublin producer who promised to pay her a hundred pounds a week and give her a car with a driver.
She had promised her father earlier that she would help look after her siblings. She spoke to her mother about the offer and they agreed she would take it and Margo has not looked back since that fateful day.
She has traveled the world, befriended stars across the globe but still remains modest, humble and true to her roots. Over six decades later, she can look back on a truly successful life on stage.
“I am not using the word retirement but I have sort of come full circle … I will never stop singing as long as God gives me my voice,” she said.

Irish Country Hall Of Fame
When the Keynotes recorded their second record in 1969, the singer appeared on the Late Late Show for the first time.
Early last year, Margo was inducted into the Irish Country Hall Of Fame on The Late, Late Show and in accepting the prestigious award she paid a heartfelt tribute to the people of Donegal for believing in her from the outset of her long-standing career. The award was presented to her by her brother Daniel O’Donnell.
Margo feels honoured and privileged to come from Donegal and often recognises the support her fans give her. Margo says she would not be where she is today without her beloved fans: “I have a great relationship with the people who come to see me and I know them all now.
“I suppose if I didn’t after sixty years there would be something far wrong. Everything that I have today, all the good things I have, come from these people.”

"Their hearts are as big as mountains"
Margo left the Keynotes in 1969 following the death of her father, Francie, and feels that if that had not happened she would have remained with the Keynotes. The band played mostly around Donegal and surrounding counties.
“People would say you are never a hero in your own land but every single person in Donegal was behind us. It is not just because I come from there - but I have to say the people of Donegal their hearts are indeed as big as mountains.
“The Mount Errigal, I don’t know what it is about it, but it is like really coming home to me - coming home to my own home. That is what it is like to me.
“Last year, I had taken Shunie Crampsie, David James and the Ryan Turner band all around the concerts I did from Kerry, Galway, Tullaghmore and Kilkenny. I took a Donegal show around and it is amazing what it meant to everybody and how many people contacted me since to ask me when I was taking the Donegal show around again.
“We have so much talent in Donegal, Clannad, Enya, Altan and Daniel and all the young artists who are on the way up now, it is truly incredible. We have a great amount of talent in that county of ours and I am very proud to be a Donegal woman,” she said.

Loneliness and song
Margo believes that a lot of the song and talent within the county emanated from a time when people sang songs to recall those who had left the county to go and work in countries across the world. Those who left the county sang songs to remember those they had left behind them at home. It was a time of great sadness for many families.
“A lot of people do ask, how is it that so many great singers come from Donegal? I think a lot of it is connected with the way we were brought up. A lot of my history, if I go back to the beginning, would go back to the songs of immigration.”
Recalling her first-ever tour in America, Margo was given an insight into the heartfelt loneliness those who had left home felt.
“The first time I went to New York to tour. The first night I was in Tower View in Queens - a fabulous venue, and it was run by a man from Carrick on Shannon and I remember him telling me that when I would come on stage that there would be people who loved the country and western music as well as Irish music.
“I remember singing a number of country songs and I knew I was losing them so I sang two Irish songs about immigration and they were all back in the palm of my hand and that is all they wanted to hear. They wanted to hear songs of the homeland.
“I also remember one night in 1979, being over in the Hibernian, in Fulham, and the people who were there - they would’ve been forty-deep at the front of the stage waiting on the guest band. It was me and the Country Folk,” she recalled.
Margo remembered the tears on their faces as she sang songs of Ireland from the stage. People were missing home and Margo and her band were bringing a little piece of home to those who were living away from home often in difficult circumstances.
“You have to remember, people at that time couldn’t fly home every week. People couldn’t call home every night. They didn’t have telephones in houses and it was all letter writing and it would take a week or more for a letter to go over and back and I remember times when I would go to Scotland or England, I would have messages like maybe a jumper or baked bread for people who had people away. So, I had a great connection with those people,” she said.
Many people immigrate from Donegal in times gone by to earn money for their families. Margo remembered an event that amplified the impact that immigration had on the county and on her own family.
Many years ago, the singer went to the wake of her late uncle Edward McGonigle who lived on the outskirts of Dungloe, in a place called Sheskinarone.
Margo and her mother had been at the wake and returned home before the Rosary.
“And her nephew came in and she was sitting in the corner and I was making her a cup of tea and something to eat. James was his name and he said to my mother ‘Aunt Julia, you’re a long time a widow now’ and she said, ‘yes, Margaret’s father died in 1968. I was married to him for twenty years when he died and I lived with him for thirteen months.”’
Margo recalls that her father worked in Scotland for most of her young life. Like many fathers of that era, he would come home to work the bog: “He came home to do the turf and set the potatoes and he would try to be home for Christmas.”
Margo recalls walking into the kitchen at that moment and trying to process the information that had been relayed between her mother and cousin as people didn’t live together before they got married during that era: “I realised in that moment that that was all the time they had spent together. Thirteen months.”

Margo's many gifts
Oftentimes, Margo considers the role she played in the lives who lived away from home: “God gave me a gift and for that I will be eternally grateful but he gave me more than that, he gave me the gift of being help those who were away from home and he also gave me the gift of true fans, true people who love me for who I am and what I am.”
Margo says that as long as her fans are with her she needn’t worry about many things. Margo said it is of the utmost importance that you use the talent you have.
“God gave me a gift when I came here and he will take it when I go,” she says.

Margo says she is as good as the band behind her
Returning to the stage following the pandemic proved emotional for Margo. However, she embraced the evening knowing her friends had gathered to hear her and that those who would be on stage with her were great friends whom she admires, trusts and appreciates.
“I didn’t know how it was going to go but I have great admiration for Shunie Crampsie both as a singer and a songwriter and David James is a young fellow with a great heart and a great way with people. I see a lot of my brother in him when Daniel started out and I believe in him.
“And the band, Ryan Turner, artists don’t talk about the people behind them but when I go out on stage, I am only as good as the band behind me.
“Ryan’s from outside Carndonagh and Shunie is from Inis Eoghain - it is great to be with Donegal people too,” she said.
Wednesday night will see people travel from all corners of the province and indeed the country to hear the voice of a woman that has transcended the water and connected people on both sides of the Atlantic when it was needed, a woman who left the small village of Kincasslagh over six decades ago to earn a living and help raise her family and a woman who is truly appreciative and humble of all that God has bestowed upon her.