ALUMNI IMPACT:
Chris Donohoe ’85
Musician and Philanthropist
D
uring his four years at Saint Francis, acclaimed indie singer/songwriter Chris Donohoe ’85 never played an instrument or sang. Yet he recalls in vivid detail the moment and place on campus when music became his calling.
“I was always moved by music but never performed,” recalls Chris, who describes himself in high school as a shy swimmer. “One day when I was a senior, there was a band of juniors playing after school next to a bank of classrooms. Watching and listening to them had me wishing I had the courage to be up onstage singing.” Chris was captivated. “To see them making music together – they were playing ‘Rio’ by Duran Duran, I remember – that moment stuck with me.”
Chris Donohoe ’85
While studying economics at the University of California, Davis, Chris picked up a guitar and taught himself to play a few tunes, even wrangling a lead singer spot for a fraternity band. Still, for the musician who released his first of now-nine albums in 2009, music was nothing more than a hobby. For the next 12 years, Chris worked as an on-air TV weatherman and reporter. “Weather was always interesting to me, and I took atmospheric science classes at college,” he explains. After a local weatherman visited one of his classes,
Chris sent out tapes and soon had a job as a production assistant at a Los Angeles TV station. In the evenings, he picked through the Beatles’ catalog on a used, cheap Ovation guitar. Next was learning guitar riffs on a Stratocaster and amp. His guitars and growing passion for music were constant companions as his broadcasting career took him to stations across the country – and not-so-coincidentally close to music meccas. Nearby Chris’ first on-air weatherman job in Florence, Ala., was the late, legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio where Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, Cat Stevens, Lynyrd Skynyrd and others recorded. At his next job at a station in Bakersfield, Calif. – the adopted hometown of Buck Owens and the birthplace of the “Bakersfield Sound” – Chris took his hobby to the next level with songwriting. He joined the West Coast Songwriters Association to develop his craft. “I discovered that I had a knack for it,” says Chris, who also was trying to figure out how to turn his love for music from hobby to career. In 2000, he met renowned music publisher and Grammywinning songwriter Liz Rose at the West Coast Songwriters Conference.
The Donohoe siblings during their Lancer years, (left to right) Terrence ’89, Sarah ’83, Martin ’87 (in back), Matthew ’87, Chris ’85
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PROGRESS Fall 2021
“I played her some of my songs, and she said you should come to Nashville and play for publishers,” he recalls. For seven years, Chris made monthly trips to Nashville from the Bay Area, plugging his songs and trying to break into country music – all while continuing to work in broadcasting
