Keith Donnelly
The Story So FarKeith started playing guitar in his teens, on a ‘beaten up old monster’ that his dad had traded with a Norwegian Sailor.
He had Classical Lessons (with Vincent Carrahagh) for a couple of years in South Shields, the perfect grounding for the finger-picking style he went on to develop for accompanying his original songs.
 Whilst studying (Psychology and Education) at Warwick University
he met and teamed up with the Multi-Instrumental Singer Songwriter
Martyn Oram, and the two worked for a couple of happy (and poor!)
years as ‘Waterfall’.Keith and Martyn recorded one critically acclaimed album ‘The Flight of The Day’ on Bob Records. This album was recently digitally re-mastered and re-released on the English Garden record label to stunning reviews. In 1980 they were joined in Waterfall by stunning female vocalist Gilly Darbey, and Waterfall went from strength to strength.
In 2003 Keith and Martyn did a short, wonderfully received, ‘Original Waterfall’ reunion tour, and are busy putting together another for 2005. Keith and Gilly worked as Little Aeroplane for a while with a successful album of the same name, before becoming Nothing By Chance.
 As Nothing By Chance they had numerous national and international
tours, culminating in the album ‘Ghosts of Love’ for Chrysalis and
their own BBC special (first shown on BBC2 then repeated on BBC1
due to public demand) and had reached ‘Cult Status’ (Keith says
this means they made lots of money for other people) by the early
90's.A series of bad breaks (e.g. Chrysalis being taken over, their TV series being cancelled due to internal wranglings at the BBC, and other sad stories!) meant disillusionment for Keith and Gilly, both started pursuing solo projects, and Nothing By Chance ceased to be in 1996. Gilly has since become one of the most sought after female voices in the world and has recently moved to New Zealand to pursue her career ‘Down Under’.
He also runs Storytelling and Music and Song workshops (as well as his now famous annual New Year's Eve Party!!!) at Stratford YHA and works as often as his schedule allows with nursery and primary schools across the country bringing live music and story to preschool children. He has worked for one series on BBC 1's Pebble Mill writing and performing a new humorous topical song each week and has done the difficult 'warm-up-man' job on many TV shows and live tours.
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