Tanya Pluth: About Tanya
Tanya Pluth
Tanya Pluth picked up a plastic guitar at age six and the violin at age 8. In the mid-90s she played as a part of a duo with Liz Nelson, performing original folk-rock tunes around the Portland, Oregon area.
Tanya struck up a solo career in 2003, writing her own material and playing gigs along the West Coast. Her debut CD, "Saving Graces," released in 2006, was recently nominated for 4 Pride in the Arts awards, including Favorite CD and Favorite Artist of 2007.
The title track from the album, "Saving Graces," is a call for holding on to the best of life and refuge given from one to another:
"This world's full of hiding places/lost souls and saving graces/take these gifts and bear them forward/through the battles, through the war"
Tanya's music has been described as four parts country, six parts folk, two parts rock – music that moves, shakes, and comforts. Music for comfort and dreams and stories that refuse the telling without notes, rhythm, sound.
Music for washing dishes, bouldering, lying in the bathtub, driving down the interstate, holding community meetings, putting the kids to sleep, framing houses and windows, running yellow lights, reading, landscaping, sipping high maintenance coffee drinks, knitting, cooking dinner.
For vision, grace, wholeness, laughter. Music.
Currently, Tanya lives in Portland, Oregon and works as a freelance artist. She teaches, edits, publishes, and performs regularly in the Northwest.
Tanya Pluth Stats. . .
Age: 33
City of Birth: St. Cloud, MN.
Gender: yes
Favorite candy: Milk Duds, in movie theatre popcorn, with brewer’s yeast. . .
Best concert experience: Giving Kenny Rogers a plastic yellow rose while he sang “Lady” at a concert in Minneapolis when I was 11.
Longest rock climb: Dreams of Wild Turkeys, Red Rocks, NV
Music history. . .
Imagine it: 1970s shag carpeting, browns, reds, oranges, up to my knees in the room I shared with my little brother growing up in St. Cloud, Minnesota. The living room’s centerpiece: a stereo with record player, and me, kneeling in front of it from the time I was old enough to say, “Mom, play this.” Kenny Rogers. Anne Murray. Abba. Neil Diamond. Dad played Mozart, Beetoven, and bluegrass of all kinds. Tapes and shoe-box sized tape players ushered in my next wave of music listening outside the living room, as I took Pat Benatar, Duran Duran, and all the big-hair bands of the 1980s into bedrooms and back yards and front steps and pressed the “play” button.
Thank God my older brother worked as a DJ at his college radio station, because he sent me early R.E.M., the Sundays, Nine Inch Nails, the Creatures. Life with roommates in Northeast Portland, Oregon, brought me to the musical brilliance of the early 1990s: k.d. lang, Jane Siberry, Salt n’ Peppa, the Indigo Girls, Ani DiFranco. Mix all these with Joan Armatrading, Lucinda Williams, Bonnie Raitt, and the likes of Veruca Salt, Luscious Jackson, Team Dresch, and maybe it makes sense that I have a hard time naming one or two musical influences.
Tanya Pluth Stats. . .
Number of times in love: 3
Number of times heartbroken: don’t ask
Number of years of national service: 2, with NWSA. Or 5, if you include staff time. . .
Best job ever: animal tracking survey in the Bull Run Watershed in Oregon
Worst job ever: concert security, specifically “guarding” an empty parking garage stairwell for 8 hours. . .
Longest road trip: 3 weeks
Longest plane flight: To New Zealand from P-town, Oregon, about 21 hours in-flight.
Lowest point reached: scuba-diving to 12 meters (how many feet is that??) in Fiji.
Scariest moment in life: oh, that’s too long of a story. . .
Biggest regret: see answer above. . .
# of years in therapy: see answer above. . .
Performance history notes. . .
I started playing violin at age 6? 7? and I played in orchestras and learned to read music. My uncle gave me my first guitar (plastic) when I was 9, but after he did something I thought was mean, I sold it at a garage sale the summer I was 10. I’d already written my first songs, though, and the rest is history (I believe the opening lyric to my first song was, ‘my life is boring and exiting, living on an exciting block’. . .I like to think my lyrics have gotten better??). I picked up the guitar again at age 16 and never looked back.
I played with Liz Nelson in the group, “Dutch,” from 1992 – 1996. We had a fun time writing, collaborating, and performing together all around P-town, including being featured on KBOO’s “Church of Northwest Music” for a live set. We didn’t want to be the Indigo Girls but the comparison came up a bunch of times. I performed with the Way Back choir in the mid-1990s, and learned so much from the women of the Way Back about music, artistry, healing, and community-building through the creative arts.
Tanya Pluth Stats. . .
Highest jackpot won: $160 bucks at a $3 craps table
Largest audience performance: Lead guitar at Marine World with Tiffany Petrossi on the bay area’s ALICE morning radio show. Did I mention it was 5:45 in the morning?
Star signs: Saggitarius, Taurus, Leo. You guess which is which.
What you’d find if you opened my refrigerator: rice milk, lettuce, tartar sauce of questionable age, cheese, tortillas, pita bread, 3 jars of raspberry jam, 2 bottles of Deschutes Brewery’s Jubelale, a can of Readiwhip of questionable age, eggs, asparagus, broccoli, yesterday’s leftovers (actual contents of refrigerator on 3.29.06).
Recent history. . .
I started writing and performing more seriously as a “solo” act in 2002, when I hit the performance circuit all over the state of Oregon. The open mic down in Medford kicks ass. I played solo shows in 2004 and 2005 on the West Coast while working out my CD, including a set at the Folk Alliance Region West conference in LA and at Mississippi Pizza Pub in Portland in fall of 2005. For a while I performed as lead guitarist with Tiffany Petrossi, in the bay area and at the ROCKRGRRL Music conference in Seattle.
The last two years I’ve devoted my time and energy to writing (fiction, non-fiction, science fiction, songs. . .) and singing. Somehow I got into an MFA program at Mills College and learned much about the craft of writing, teaching and performing. I earned my official MFA in May 2006, just weeks after my debut CD, “Saving Graces,” had its first release party in Berkeley, CA at EPICArts.
I've settled down in Portland, Oregon where the music scene is sweet, and I can setup shows all across the west. Check out upcoming Portland-area and other gigs on my calendar page. . .