Hello reader!
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I’m excited to share another fantastic Nashville-based artist making great music: Aaron Lee Tasjan.
Over the last dozen years, the singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer has been incredibly prolific. His impressive catalog includes Crooked River Burning EP (2014), In the Blazes (2015), Silver Tears (2016), Karma for Cheap (2018), Karma for Cheap: Reincarnated (2019), Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! (2021), and Stellar Evolution (2024).
On July 17, the Grammy-nominated artist released his latest album, Get Over It, Underdog, via Blue Élan Records. The album, according to a press release, “examines the persona of the American underdog who is navigating the everyday difficulties and chaos of modern society with wit, urgency, and a deeply human perspective” and “weaves forthright social commentary and vivid storytelling throughout the record.”
Following the Grammy-nominated success of Stellar Evolution, Tasjan faced a deep creative impasse fueled by self-doubt over the gloomy outlook for independent musicians. It reflects his journey overcoming impostor syndrome, creative burnout, and the general struggles of being an independent underdog artist.
The album’s defining influence was Tasjan’s close friend and mentor, the late Todd Snider. Snider acted as an informal advisor for the record, reviewing tracks with Tasjan to ensure they were the best they could be. The two co-wrote “The Real,” marking one of their final creative collaborations. They bonded over a songwriting trick learned from John Prine: finding an ’emotional rock.” Snider’s advice inspired him to center the album around the unglamorous but resilient reality of resilient reality of being an entertainment underdog.
While we at SWT recommend listening to the album in full, one of the standout tracks is ‘Lost & Alone.’ The song features an instantly catchy, upbeat tempo that brilliantly masks heavier, deeply reflective themes of heartbreak and self-doubt. Blending roots-pop and Americana sensibilities with rich guitar work, the organic arrangement underlines self-examining lines like, “How’d I end up so lost and alone? / Afraid of myself, afraid of my phone.” Ultimately, it is a brilliant exploration of modern anxiety, isolation, and the desperate wish to find a sense of safety and belonging.
Tasjan shared the deep personal history behind the track with SWT:
“Plain and simple, I wrote Lost & Alone because I had to. It’s one of those songs where the music and the lyric are almost opposed to each other, where the music sounds so upbeat, and the lyric has a stark and heavy tonality that only comes to you when you’ve reached a point where you’ve had enough in life.
I chose to write the lyrics through the voice of a character who found himself out on the streets and addicted to heavy drugs. I have personal experience with addiction, though I’m now sober, and have spent time playing for folks in shelters. I know many folks end up on the street as the result of a prolonged mental or emotional crisis, and that experience mirrors the head and heart space one faces in the throes of addiction. I wanted to write partially through the character’s voice and partially from my personal experience to ground the song with an emotional rock. This concept in writing was taught to me by Todd Snider, who learned it from John Prine. A song doesn’t have to be 100% true if you can find that emotional rock to stand on, where you do rely on something personal to get to the truth.
I recorded the whole thing in about an hour at the Cabin Studios in East Nashville. I played all the instruments except drums, which were played by Matt Alger, and I sang all of the vocals. There is an immediacy in the track that I feel comes in part from the urgency of the subject matter and also in part from the manner in which it was quickly but thoughtfully recorded.
The center lyric of the song, to me, which makes the song universal, is the line “I’d give anything to get back home.” That part is something we all feel at times. Whether it’s because we feel lost in our life or simply because we are exhausted from a long day, the idea of returning to a place we feel safe, understood, or at ease is relatable.
The hope or goal for the song and record is that it will make the listener feel at home enough in these stories and melodies to find their own story within them and feel something. In these times, it’s easy to become numb to life. So, I think consciously feeling is brave and noble. We don’t have the luxury of letting these times slide off of our backs. And songs can help us process our own experiences in healthy ways. At this point, unless you’re a billionaire or an AI mogul, we’re all underdogs now. I’d like to see us root for each other, and that’s a big part of what this album is all about.”
Right on, Tasjan! It’s a sentiment we can relate to, being an independent outlet, and an unfortunate reality most of us face of going on an uphill battle. Hopefully, attention like this will make it possible for more underdogs to soar and disrupt the status quo!
You can connect with and listen to Aaron Lee Tasjan at the following links:
Website: Aaronleetasjan.com
Facebook: Facebook.com/therealaaronleetasjan
Instagram: Instagram.com/aaronleetasjan
Bandcamp: Altobviously.bandcamp.com
Spotify: Aaron Lee Tasjan on Spotify
YouTube: Youtube.com/@aaronleetasjanofficial
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
