Aaron Lee Tasjan doesn’t suffer fools gladly at this stage in his career. As someone with six albums, three EPs, a Grammy nomination and more than a decade of roadwork behind him, he’s even played the fool himself on occasion. And yet the Nashville-based singer/songwriter recently found himself confronting a fundamental question: Just what the hell am I doing here anyway? A succession of personal losses and upheavals had collided with the unforgiving economics of independent music, leaving him with the worst sort of writer’s block.
So Tasjan turned to a guy who had a habit of showing up just when he was needed most, and with late Todd Snider’s encouragement, the songs began coming again. Working alongside trusted collaborator Mark Miller, Tasjan tracked 17 songs in seven days in an environment loose enough for friends to wander in and contribute. It amounts to a new album that celebrates the messier—and, frankly, more interesting—side of powering through adversity. Perhaps more importantly, Get Over It, Underdog (Blue Élan) is a reaffirmation of Tasjan’s place in a diverse music community fueled by more than just commercial viability. And, yeah, we’re talking about Nashville.
MAGNET’s Hobart Rowland got the full story from Tasjan on his most recent recovery from imposter syndrome.
Get Over It, Underdog feels like a celebration of perseverance without coming off as sentimental. How did you avoid turning these songs into self-help anthems?
As a songwriter, I’m always walking a line between how much of my life is in the song and how much of the song is stories or observations that I relate to because they correlate with the emotion I’m singing about. I think having a bit of each in most of my songs has allowed me to create material that feels personal and authentic to me when I sing it. But it’s also open enough to be a mirror for someone else’s story or life to reflect back to them when they listen. That’s my hope anyway.
The new album began during the worst bout of imposter syndrome of your career. What triggered those feelings?
Lots of personal loss, life changes and the state of the music industry post-COVID. Everything became more expensive for touring, my mom got diagnosed with cancer, I quit smoking pot, my friend Jill Sobule passed away very tragically, and it felt like one thing after the next. I was having seizures because of a vagus nerve syncope. It was a lot to handle, and it took a toll on my perspective of my abilities. I was having a lot of trouble writing anything that felt worth a damn to me. I had people on my team telling me that touring wasn’t working for me anymore because some of my numbers were down. They said, I should try to make money staying at home. Just the idea of that felt like someone said, “Just hold your breath for the rest of your life.”
What compelled you to send that email to Todd Snider?
Todd was my North Star guy. He always helped me out. He had an almost psychic ability to know when to reach out—and had done it many times before. One time, I got into a big fight with a record-business guy. I was really depressed about it and at my lowest point, I wondered, “Do I really have what it takes to do this?” The next morning, I had an unprompted email from Todd in my inbox. It said: “One time when I was your age, Robert Earl Keen sent me a letter in the mail. I opened it and all it said was, ‘You were born for this.’ That’s how I feel about you.” I reached out to him because we had that sort of history already. I knew I could go to him with anything.
“Twilight Zone Blues” explores our attraction to destructive impulses. In this case, what inspired you to write about that tension?
When I wrote it, I meant it as a song about consequences. For me, it’s about reckoning with the choices we make. It felt timely to me because we, as a society and a country, have made a lot of extreme choices in the past 15 years or so. I think a lot of what we see every day right now are the consequences of some of those decisions. Honestly, I’m not even sure we’ve experienced the heaviest consequences of these choices and actions yet.
What did producing the LP with Mark Miller allow you to preserve that might have been lost otherwise?
We could work all day and all night and not care about time—and we did just that. No clock. We got 17 songs tracked in seven days. I got to use all my own instruments. My own pianos, amps and guitars—not just whatever was at some studio. When we were recording “Shiver,” Father John Misty was playing the Ryman. His two guitar players, David Vandervelde and Chris Darley, came over to the house before soundcheck and smoked cigarettes. David sang gorgeous harmonies on that song, and Chris produced his vocals. It was really fun to sit back and watch it go down. Theo Katzman from Vulfpeck came over two days later and laid down all the harmonies on “Can She Get An Amen.” The environment was just ripe for music and for musicians to come hang.
This album seems to question the idea of success. How has your definition of success changed?
I used to think I needed to break through somehow. It never occurred to me that a decade plus of just doing my best on every record could do the same thing for me. I feel like I’m just a part of music now—and that feels like a massive success to me. The fact that we’re talking right now after over 10 years, six albums, three EPs and countless shows feels more like success to me than whatever else I could have. Maybe I’ll have a really big audience one day … Who knows? But right now, I get to be a part of music, and that’s really all I ever wanted to begin with. I feel welcome at every venue and record store in town. What an incredible place to be for a musician who’s also a huge music fan.
Get Over It, Underdog was completed shortly before Todd Snider passed away. If he were sitting across from you now listening to the LP, what would you most want him to hear in these songs?
That when we sat down and went over this stuff, his input and ideas really helped me. That I’d never have gotten to the place I am today without him. We were able to be really close friends, make music together and have both of those relationships work in tandem—I think that’s rare to have with someone for 20 years. The only other person I’ve gotten to have that with is Kevn Kinney, and he was the guy who introduced me to Todd Snider. I still can’t believe those guys let me be around them and that I got to be friends with them. Kevn Kinney rules … and Todd Snider rules.
See Aaron Lee Tasjan live.