A throwback to Alyssa Bonagura
Maverick Magazine throws back to our 2022 highlight of Alyssa Bonagura for this issue’s Blast from the Past. Alyssa grew up on the road as she joined her parents on tour from a young age, she was destined for the stage herself.
Alyssa Bonagura, now in her early thirties, has had a long and varied career which pretty much began when she was just a tot, out on the road with her parents, Michael Bonagura and Kathie Baillie. Their band, Baillie & the Boys rose to fame in the late 80’s with a string of top 20 hits on the Billboard country charts. They had originally found work as backing singers for the likes of Randy Travis whilst Michael also penned the number one hit, ‘There’s No Stopping Your Heart’ for Marie Osmond, giving themselves a taste of every side the industry had to offer.
During the height of their success as a band, Michael and Kathie also welcomed Alyssa into the world and they took her everywhere with them. “My earliest childhood memory is the sound of a diesel engine on a bus,” Alyssa reflects with a grin. “My parents used to get picked up here at our house, and we live out in the countryside. So the bus would come to the end of the driveway, and my mum would come wake me up at like midnight, she’d say, let’s go the buses are here. We’d walk down the driveway, get on the bus, and then we’d be in a different city. My whole life was like that and I just loved it.”
As she travelled round the country with her mum and dad she knew she wanted to be out on stage performing too. “My earliest memory of singing, I was like two years old, and my mum was playing this big festival. I ran on stage because I wanted to sing and so she let me sing ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’ in front of 20,000 people at this festival and so I’ve always wanted to do it.” As well as her parents, Alyssa was in good company as her parents toured with the greats of the country genre, each one welcoming Alyssa into their lives and hearts as she grew up. At the time, Alyssa didn’t realise just what a wild and crazy life she led as a child. “We were hanging out with Vince Gill or Reba McEntire, Kenny Rogers, they were on the road with George Strait. To me, they were just other people that were singers and then when you start to get older, you start going to school, and people start saying to you, your parents are famous. That’s when you start to realise who your parents actually are and what kind of business it really is. My parents, they were never the kind of people that like ever boasted or bragged about anything they did. So I was brought up in a really humble environment…”
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