We recently connected with Chelsea O’Donnell and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Chelsea thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.
My parents have always been incredibly support of my pursuits and never discouraged me. From a young age I felt like my creative aspirations were heard and recognized instead of being dismissed. When I told them I wanted to be an animator for Disney, I received an animation drawing kit for Christmas that year. When I told them I wanted to be an author and illustrator, I was given art supplies and writing utensils. When I expressed an interest in playing guitar, it was my dad who bought me my first guitar for my 14th birthday. And when I finally worked up the courage to perform one of my originals live at a high school open mic night, they came to the show and sat front and center. Their support made me feel like anything was possible.
As with all parent/child relationships not every moment has been seamless, but my parents are two of my favorite people on the planet and I know that they always have my back. To this day, they still make an effort to attend many of my performances and take the time to listen to my music. They mean the world to me and I feel very fortunate to have them in my life.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Hey all – my name is Chelsea. I’m a musician and songwriter from Buffalo, NY who plays under the name Stress Dolls, as well as with an electro-pop duo called Urge Surfer. This past year I founded my own record label, Angry Girl Music, and reissued my debut album, Queen of No, in May. I also work in radio on a station called BTPM the Bridge, which is part of Buffalo Toronto Public Media, my region’s NPR affiliate.
My interest in pursuing music started around age 12. Up until that point, my brother and I were mostly listening to what our parents liked: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Neil Young, The Doors, and The Beatles were all in regular rotation. However, once I became a pre-teen I began branching out and finding my own musical taste in artists such as Avril Lavigne, Green Day, and Blink-182. Although I was enrolled in piano lessons from the time I was 5 years old, and had even written an instrumental song on piano at age 11, I found that what I really desired was to learn to play guitar in order to write music that was more pop/rock-oriented.
Once my dad recognized my interest, he gifted me with an acoustic/electric Ibanez for my 14th birthday, but even prior to that I spent many evenings writing songs – not with an instrument accompaniment, but by writing lyrics and memorizing melodies in my head, singing them over and over until I had them down. Needless to say, once I had a guitar in hand and started to learn chords, I was off to the races. I spent many days with the guitar attached to my body from the time I got home from school to the time I went to bed. I was obsessed.
As I grew older I knew that I yearned to be a performer, but I was painfully shy and afraid of judgment. I tried to rip off the bandaid by performing a couple of times while in high school, but it wasn’t until college that I joined my first band and made true strides toward no longer being terrified of getting on stage. Upon graduating, I decided that I wanted to make an effort to become a part of the Buffalo music scene and make a go at having music be a larger part of my life than just a hobby. That path led me to starting my solo project, Wolf, that morphed into a band and, ultimately, became Stress Dolls.
Stress Dolls went through several iterations over the years, but I re-established it as a solo project in 2017 mostly due to my chronic health issues. I have Crohn’s disease, gastroparesis, and a few other conditions, and due to various complications, including a long hospitalization and a surgical recovery, it felt easier to go at my own pace and not have the stress of managing a band. Throughout the highs and lows of chronic illness, music remained (and still remains) a port of calm in the storm. Tapping into the creative vein is one of the few times where I feel completely focused and very much alive and fulfilled – nothing can touch me there. I’m grateful to have had it as an outlet all these years.
In 2022 some of my tunes were discovered by a producer named Jim Wirt (past credits include Fiona Apple, Something Corporate, and Incubus). He invited me to work with him at Superior Sound Studios in Cleveland, OH, and I accepted. At the time Jim was contracted by an indie label, Tragic Hero Music Group, and after we recorded a few songs together they ended up inviting me to sign a record deal with one of their subsidiaries, Sun Pedal Recordings. Afterwards, Jim and I went on to record 8 more songs that comprised my debut album, Queen of No. Around the same time, I did form a band again and we started regularly playing out in Western New York as well as embarking on mini tours throughout the Midwest and Southern Ontario.
In 2025 the label and I amicably decided to part ways and I bought back the recordings and reissued Queen of No on my own label, Angry Girl Music. Although I released my music independently prior to signing with Sun Pedal, this feels like a new era and I’m excited to move forward with this venture. I already have another release in the queue: this September, Angry Girl Music will be putting out the EP MISNOMERS by Urge Surfer, an electro-pop project comprised of my friend Jordan Smith and I that draws inspiration from such artists as Fever Ray and Sylvan Esso.
Concurrent with my music career, I’ve also worked on and off in radio since 2010. I started in commercial radio working as a Promotions intern before moving over to Production. Post-graduation I was hired and went on to host my own show, Localized, on Alternative Buffalo 107.7 FM (now The Wolf). In 2017 I resigned to make a move to Nashville where I briefly worked at WSM 650 AM, the station of the Grand Ole Opry, as a freelance journalist. When my time was cut short due to complications surrounding my chronic illness and I was forced to move back to Buffalo, I had doubts I would ever be involved in radio again. However, in 2023 I was approached by Tiffany Bentley, Program Director of BTPM The Bridge, about coming onboard to host a regional music show on the station. The Scene kicked off in May of 2023 and is still going strong- you can learn more over at https://www.btpm.org/show/the-scene-with-chelsea-o.
Last, but not least, I’m a visual artist as well (I didn’t want to list it in the heading because, well, how many titles can one person have before it starts sounding absurd? haha). For a few years I sold custom greeting cards and portraits under my business, Buffalo in Love Designs, via Etsy and local craft shows. However, once my music and radio careers started picking up pace, it became increasingly difficult to keep up with orders, so I put the business on pause back in 2023. I still take on occasional custom card orders ([email protected]), but most of the time when I draw it’s for leisure or to make merch designs for Stress Dolls. I also created the logo for Angry Girl Music!
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
There have been many times where I’ve felt like I’ve had to start over again. I feel this is a relatable human experience: you climb the mountain and feel like you’ve gotten to the top… only to realize you’re at the bottom of another mountain.
Part of my ‘journey’ has been learning how to manage, and balance, my chronic conditions with my pursuits. It hasn’t been easy, but it’s played a huge role in how I’ve grown as a person and how I relate to the world, not only in my interpersonal relationships, but in my career(s). I’m far from having it mastered and I’m still constantly learning, but without this experience I don’t think I’d be able to have the same view of what I’m chasing or what my personal definition of ‘success’ is.
To explain: back in 2017, I drove myself into the ground with how hard I was working while essentially ignoring what my body was telling me, which was to SLOW DOWN. Chronic illness started in earnest when I was 23, but it wasn’t until my mid-20’s that it ramped up in severity and became unavoidable. However, when you’re that young it almost doesn’t compute that your body is refusing to work the way that it once did – deep down I was angry and in denial. I won’t get into the nitty gritty, but basically I knew that I was skimping on what my body truly needed (rest, recovery, a more solid plan forward toward healing) in order to chase my dreams because I was worried that if I didn’t achieve things on this arbitrary timeline I had made, then I would lose out on everything for forever.
Welp, that timeline ended up meaning sh*t when I wound up hospitalized for a feeding tube procedure due to my conditions reaching a fever pitch. A series of complications led that hospitalization to being nearly a month long, and afterwards I had no choice but to move back home and live with my parents. As the months wore on and my condition kept bouncing around from bad to worse to tolerable to bad to worse it became evident that I was not returning to Nashville any time soon, if ever again.
Aside from the support of my family and friends, the thing that kept me sane was creativity, most of which was filtered into music. Early on during my recovery I wrote a song called “Dream,” and it made me realize that no matter what happened, music would always be a part of my life; a safe haven. Having everything seemingly ripped away broke life down to its bare essentials, and it was suddenly obvious that so much of what I had once perceived as ‘success’ didn’t actually matter to me in the ways that I thought it did. As long as I was able to play, write, and perform, I considered myself lucky.
When I finally was able to manage performing again, I did so in ways that made sense for me – evenings were when my symptoms were the least active, so taking on opening slots, 20 to 30 minutes at most, were doable. In time, I was able to form a band again, and I received the opportunity to sign with an indie label and work with a producer I admired, all things that I never dreamed could happen in a million years after what I’d been through.
My conditions are chronic, so it’s not like they’re gone. Daily maintenance is key to attempting to keep stability, and my health regimen will always be a massive part of my life. In 2023 I joined an organization called RAMPD (Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities), and that’s helped immensely in the way I view chronic illness and the language I use to describe it, and has also connected me with other creatives who deal with similar circumstances. I’ll never stop being thankful for art and the ways it allows me to process my experiences and ultimately, find acceptance.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
In the case of music: DON’T SLEEP ON YOUR REGIONAL MUSIC SCENE!
If you’re interested in contributing to cultivating a thriving arts community, look no further than your own backyard. There have been countless times where I’ve been blown away by music being made by artists who I can go see on a Wednesday night in Buffalo for $10 (sometimes free).
I get that I have a leg up when it comes to being exposed to these acts since it’s part of my job to find them (I’m the host of the regional music radio program, The Scene, on BTPM The Bridge), but it’s honestly not that hard to discover your local music scene. Check out websites of music venues and bars, or look at their social media, and you’ll typically find listings of what’s happening that week and beyond. If for some reason you can’t go to a show but you really like what you hear, perhaps buy some merch or a physical copy (!) of that artist’s music online. Or, easiest of all, if you don’t have extra money to spend, it’s helpful to hit the ‘follow’ button on your favorite streaming platform or social media app and engage with the artist’s posts. It may seem trivial, but algorithms tend to work less and less in our favor, and the engagement you give to a local artist could make a big difference in the number of impressions their posts get.
Very few, if any, got into music to become ‘content creators’ or social media stars. What we really seek, or at least what I know I really seek, is connection and to know that people are digging the music. When I think about some of my favorite music, I don’t immediately think about aesthetics or some TikTok dance or viral trend. I think about the memories associated with those songs, the way they make me feel, and the connection they’ve fostered. Sometimes you can listen to a song and, in that moment, feel like it was written especially for you. It can be a lifeline. Don’t write off local and regional artists as not being able to provide that same feeling – attend shows, buy merch, and uplift what they’re doing online. In order for art and creativity to flourish, we have to work together.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://stressdollsmusic.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stressdolls/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stressdollsmusic
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@stressdolls
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/stressdolls
- Other: Bandcamp: https://angrygirlmusicrecords.bandcamp.com/
Image Credits
Black &a white performance photo: Lexi Tamm
Queen of No promo photo: Peter Heuer
Stress Dolls band photo: Aaron Bobeck
Urge Surfer photo: Jacqueline Csiga
Queen of No vinyl record – Artwork: Osi Okoro
Angry Girl Music logo – Artwork: Chelsea O’Donnell
Stress Dolls sticker – Artwork: Chelsea O’Donnell