Megon McDonough is an American folk

American folk music revival

The American folk music revival was a phenomenon in the United States that began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Richard Dyer-Bennett, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob...

/cabaret

Cabaret

Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

 singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

 and actress, from Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

. After her early solo recording career brought national attention, she became a founding member of Four Bitchin' Babes

Four Bitchin' Babes

The Four Bitchin' Babes is a group of female singer-songwriters with rotating membership, performing mainly humorous, satirical or light-hearted songs in the folk genre. The group was described as "slyly outre" writing songs about the "humorous satire of everyday life" with an "inherent charm"...

, performing and recording with them from 1990 to 2001 and then resuming her solo work.

McDonough wrote her first song at age 11 and had her first record deal by the time she was 14. The label was Wooden Nickel

Wooden Nickel Records

Wooden Nickel Records was an American independent record label started in 1971 by Bill Traut, Jim Golden and Jerry Weintraub as a successor to Dunwich Records. Most of Wooden Nickel's releases were by acts based in the Chicago area, including the Siegel-Schwall Band, Megan McDonough and Styx. The...

, and she released four albums between 1972 and 1974. By age 17, she was the opening act for John Denver

John Denver

Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. , known professionally as John Denver, was an American singer/songwriter, activist, and humanitarian. After growing up in numerous locations with his military family, Denver began his music career in folk music groups in the late 1960s. His greatest commercial success...

 at Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

. She also opened for acts such as Steve Martin

Steve Martin

Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin is an American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, musician and composer....

 and Harry Chapin

Harry Chapin

Harry Forster Chapin was an American singer-songwriter best known in particular for his folk rock songs including "Taxi", "W*O*L*D", and the number-one hit "Cat's in the Cradle". Chapin was also a dedicated humanitarian who fought to end world hunger; he was a key player in the creation of the...

.

McDonough played Patsy Cline

Patsy Cline

Patsy Cline , born Virginia Patterson Hensley in Gore, Virginia, was an American country music singer who enjoyed pop music crossover success during the era of the Nashville sound in the early 1960s...

 in the musical Always...Patsy Cline. She wrote and performed a one-woman cabaret show, An Interesting Bunch of Gals, in which she pays tribute to eight artists who influenced her, including Édith Piaf

Édith Piaf

Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...

, Billie Holliday, and Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...

.

Solo discography

Her first name was spelled "Megan" on her earlier albums, changing to "Megon" with Day by Day.

• In the Megan Manner (privately re-released songs from defunct 1972 Wooden Nickel album # WNS-1004)
• Megan Music (privately re-released songs from defunct 1972 Wooden Nickel album # WNS-1007)
• Keepsake (privately re-released songs from defunct 1973 Wooden Nickel album # BWL1-0145)
• Sketches (privately re-released songs from defunct 1974 Wooden Nickel album # BWL1-0499)
• If I Could Only Reach You (unknown release year - privately released songs from late 1970s pop-country era while playing college campuses and Chicago clubs)
• Day by Day (1989)
• American Girl (1990)
• Blue Star Highway (1993)
• My One and Only Love (1996)
• 4+1 (2002)
• The Patsy Project (2002) (with Don Stiernberg)
• Spirits in the Material World (2006)

External links

• Discography (annotated by MEGON on her OFFICIAL WEBSITE) with links to current suppliers of all albums
• [ AllMusic.com discography, including hotlinks to Charles Donovan's reviews of the early Wooden Nickel label albums]
• Wooden Nickel album Discography, including some obscure album producer details