Success as an artist can be hard to quantify. Many of the greatest painters the world has ever known died penniless. Most of us have favorite musicians that we’re mystified why they haven’t become superstars. The flip side of that coin is when some success does come, it can be hard to understand why you and not someone else. When Nashville’s Aaron Lee Tasjan started feeling a bit of that imposter syndrome, he turned to his good friend, Todd Snider. Snider told him to go backwards, not forwards, and focus on his songwriting roots, in particular the mantra of a song–something you could repeat over and over every night. That broke the logjam for Tasjan and started a torrent of new material that became his latest album, Get Over It, Underdog.
There’s no title track, per se, but I think the heart of the album comes from The Real. Co-written with Snider, it’s an infectious rocker with some good bass lines and saxophone parts. The gist of the song is we need to see the world as the messy thing it is, to “tell of our true history, violence we must see.” The idea that real life is important also surfaces in The Dream Comes True, a piano ballad where “the living between chasing the dream,” is the real reward. Tasjan pokes at AI and unfactual truths in a spoken word, bluesy number with strings and pedal steel called Science Friction. Even more cynical is Clown Show, a co-write with Bobby Bare Jr., and its observation “we got a new ship of fools showin’ up every day.”
Several songs on the record are less, perhaps, philosophical and instead rooted in specific experiences in ALT’s life. The poster child for that is Lydia’s Boots. It was inspired by a Lydia Loveless show Tasjan attended where she takes the audience on an emotional and intellectual trip. As he tells it, “I’m so enamored, she’s the coolest.” Ballad Of An East Canton Lowlife is a look at his family’s move from California to Ohio when he was a kid, and the place it put him as the outsider in a community not welcoming of them. Shiver is a psychedelic folk cut about an exotic dancer who’s nothing like the stereotype. Tasjan’s guitar slashes through the synthesizer haze to underscore his question, “I wanna know where she goes in her mind.”
It’s hard to distill an idea down into a foundation you can come back to again and again. Aaron Lee Tasjan rolled up his sleeves and did just that on his latest record, Get Over It, Underdog. It’s set to a wide ranging style sheet, from blues rock to Brit pop. The combination of style and substance is a record you’ll come back to again and again as well.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.