Let’s go “Somewhere Beautiful” - new music project inspired by love and caregiving.

Award-winning, platinum-selling songwriter (and Bronx native), Tanya Leah, has a new album project in the works. The music was inspired as a way to soothe her gifted artist/father, Ira “Panjo” Wollen (a long-time Riverdale resident), after he was devastated and incapacitated by a stroke in September, 2011.

Although she currently owns a home with her husband, Arnie Roman (also a songwriter), in Nashville, TN, she has been here in Riverdale since that time. She visits her father every day, and helps her stepmother, Arlyne, with the caregiving.

As anyone in this type of situation knows, there is very little time or energy left after caregiving to take good care of one’s self, much less to be creative. But somehow, in the midst of that very difficult time, Tanya says the idea for what she calls “happy-making” music was born. Or rather, she says, “the songs started spilling out” over a two day period in January, 2012.

After his stroke, what had been Mr. Wollen’s slight dementia worsened quite a bit, and he became, at times, very agitated. Tanya says that once she and her stepmother got him home from the rehab hospital, they began to play him music by artists such as Norah Jones and James Taylor, which seemed to help calm him a bit. It was then Tanya had the idea that she would like to try to write some music specifically to try to help soothe him.

Despite fighting exhaustion and not having “written a song, or even touched a guitar” in the 5 months after her father’s first stroke, she felt compelled to sit down and see what would come through. In those first 2 days, 5 songs were written, much to her amazement. Before that, she said it was a good day for her if she finished one whole song in a day, so five in two days was nearly miraculous.

Rather than go to a record label to help her make the record, she has decided to try the new route of “crowd funding”, where artists and inventors ask the public at large to pledge various amounts towards the project in exchange for rewards and being updated on the progress. There are many sites now that are using this new platform, but she has chosen one called “kickstarter”. The site works very much like a PBS fund drive, except that projects on this site must fully fund within a given time limit, or none of the backer’s credit cards are charged.

Her project must reach it’s $18,000.00 goal by this Saturday, November 24. If you are interested in supporting her and her kickstarter project, please click on the link below, and follow the directions for pledging. There are only 2 days left to do so.

If you are reading this after the kickstarter pledge drive has already ended, you will still be able to support the project, by pre-ordering the CD on the artist’s website (also linked below). The website will have a store set up after the end of the pledge drive. All funds will go directly to support the release of the album, which will in turn donate a percentage of all proceeds to support caregiver’s resources.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rosesforpanjo/lets-go-somewhere-beautiful

http://rosesforpanjo.com/