A New LifeFrom showbands to singing waitress, from herbal farming to liqueur-making, Sylvia Thompson meets the woman who has done it all
What has a Dublin-born woman in her mid-20s working in a London nightclub, dressed in a leotard with a fluffy tail got in common with a 40-year-old mother of two living in a farmhouse in Co Carlow?
No, it's not a trick question but just a kind of teaser to show how unrelated the things we do in our early years can seem to the people we later become.
Michelle Power grew up on Dublin's northside, leaving school to work in a nightclub, before auditioning and getting work as a backing vocalist with Irish showband singer, Red Hurley.
Therein followed years of nearly making it big as a singer working in busy London nightclubs throughout the 1980s, returning to Ireland with her musician husband, first to live in Bray, Co Wicklow and then moving with their young son, Illann (now 13), to a farmhouse in Ballyconnell, near Tullow, Co Carlow.
Ten years on, Michelle Power exudes a kind of contentment which motherhood (her second child, a daughter, Slaney, is now eight) sometimes brings coupled with a working woman's commitment to the project in hand (a liqueur she has recently developed, following on from six years growing and selling herbs).
She speaks in a matter of fact way about finding her dream home by accident in the heart of the Irish countryside after over 10 years of gigging and working in London nightclubs such as Stringfellows, Bootleggers and the Hippodrome and later as a singing waitress in George's Bistro in Dublin.
"We were looking for something in Wicklow so we could commute to Dublin but we couldn't afford Wicklow. We climbed over the gate and walked up the avenue to this derelict house with an empty barn and an acre of land and I fell in love with it. We lived in the kitchen for the first while and Niall did most of the work on the house himself."
Niall Power is a drummer who plays with various groups including Bob Geldof's band, The Bob Kats. All of this seems a far cry from gigging with bands such as Les Enfants and Albania and then later trying to make it as a solo singer-songwriter performing regularly at the International Bar in Dublin.
"It was tough ould going - especially the early years where I was working five to seven nights a week. The high point was when Les Enfants played support to Elton John in the RDS in the mid-80s. That was a great experience. When Niall and I moved to England, I got into working in nightclubs because it was more lucrative than working in a band. The wages were really bad but the tips were fantastic."
It was during this time that Michelle had to sport a leotard with a fluffy tail or sometimes even a tutu. "We had to wear ridiculous costumes but you got used to it."
Alongside the nightclub work, she continued to plug away at her singing. "While in London, I was writing songs and singing with Albania and we got very close to getting a record deal. When that fell through, the lead singer left the band and then I left too, going back to working in nightclubs so I could start saving money to buy a house.
"I remember the last nightclub job I had was horrible. I was working in a club for people who worked in nightclubs so it was open from 1am to 6am and the people who came there were so drunk.
"I came home for Easter in 1990 and never went back again - not even to pack my clothes. It was the end of an era for me."
Back in Dublin, Michelle picked up a job in George's Bistro. "The atmosphere was fantastic there, all the waitresses sang," she says.
Soon after that, Illann was born and Michelle continued to write songs, teaching herself to play the guitar. In 1997 she was one of eight finalists in Eurosong (the predecessor to You're A Star).
However, when her children was small and Niall was often away at night working, she began to turn her thoughts to creating work for herself from her farmhouse base.
"You have to be 100 per cent committed to a music career and I liked being with my children so I started growing herbs. It seemed the natural thing to do. Then I began supplying herbs to one friend who had a restaurant in Dublin, then another and eventually, I was harvesting and bagging herbs early in the morning, travelling twice a week to Dublin and once a week to Carlow and Kilkenny."
Alongside the growing and selling of flowering oregano, basil, coriander and the like, Michelle started to run courses and workshops in the restored barn next to their farmhouse.
"Because growing the herbs was so seasonal, I found I had to do something else so I ran courses for four years: getting tutors to come to teach one-day courses in basket-making, soap-making [that one was very popular for a few years], willow fencing and healing with herbs.
"Half the time, I lost money on these courses and last year, I cut back to what worked and then decided to stop altogether this year. I realised that there are others giving similar courses based closer to Dublin than I am."
So, tired of the hard work involved in harvesting herbs and the waning interest in 'back to nature' courses, Michelle hit on the idea of making a liqueur while preserving fruit. "Since I moved to the country, I've been making unusual jams and preserves which I sell in the farmers markets so one day, I made a liqueur with blackcurrants and got my friends to try it out. Everyone loved it. I immediately called it Boozeberries and the name just stuck."
One year on and Michelle is keenly promoting her new product through trade fairs and contacts she is making with off licence chains. "It's like everything I've done. I've just fallen into it but I'm happy with the way it has been going. I probably won't make a fortune but if I can make a week's wages out of it and be comfortable.
"If it doesn't work, I'll just go back to being self-sufficient, growing my own vegetables. I love the peace here. It's so relaxed. When you turn off the lights at night you can see the stars."