Aaron Lee Tasjan is among the hardest-to-describe songwriter/artists in modern Nashville, and that’s high praise. He bumps up against the tent walls of Americana while confounding the male archetypes of the format. He’s a jazz guitar standout turned New York glam rocker turned Nashville songwriter and roots rocker, one who’s shown inspiring range and vision over seven solo albums in the past 13 years. On the road and on stage he’s a force of nature as a frontman and electrifying guitarist. At home he’s a warm and beloved member of the community.
But as he approached 40 years old a couple of years ago, even Tasjan himself began asking himself who he is.
“I was having trouble figuring out how to move forward,” says Tasjan in Episode 365 of The String. The post-pandemic economics of touring with a band felt like they’d turned against him (along with most everyone). He says in his album promo material that he was feeling surges of imposter syndrome, even after a string of acclaimed albums and robust support from Americana radio. He suffered losses that were professional (a longtime booking agent) and the personal (a partner of 10 years), and it was just a tough time.
“When you lose a lot at once, you can end up in a place that feels very unfamiliar to you and unmoored. And you're just sort of adrift at sea,” he says. “And the irony is like you're looking for answers everywhere, you know? And I think the real answer is in your resolve and your ability to stand up and brush yourself off and get up and keep moving.”
One thing Tasjan did to keep moving was call on his old friend Todd Snider (this would be not long before Snider tragically died in November 2025) and asked for help. He recalled how Snider had used John Prine as a song sounding board when Snider was on Prine’s Oh Boy record label. And he tells us that it was a critical step on the road to finishing his newest project, Get Over It, Underdog on Blue Elan Records.
“We would go through the songs, and (Todd) would help me find what Prine had described to him as the emotional rock of the song,” Tasjan says. “And it could just be a couple of lines or or a couple of words that had this very specific meaning to me personally. And and it's interesting how once you find that within a song, even if it is just a line, you know, you no longer need to perform the song, because you have found this part of yourself within the song that always exists that you can always go back to, and that was just something that I hadn't ever even really thought about before.”
One of those songs was “The Dream Comes True,” a piano ballad that closes the album on a melancholy note with its portrait of a “broken believer, underdog dreamer, fallen angel of love.” And Aaron recalls Snider spotting that an his emotional rock. “He was like, ‘Man, that's you. You're singing about yourself there.’ And that sort of crystallized the whole idea for leaning the record in that direction.”
It goes in a lot of directions actually. Opener “Science Friction” takes a cosmic-scale but witty look at the human race and our inexhaustible capacity for self-sabotage. “Lost And Alone” sets a country music tale of lonesome wandering to the kind of scintillating power pop that is Tasjan’s stock in trade. “Lydia’s Boots” is a gorgeous glammy fantasy. “The Real” feels like the album’s hopeful climax, with its anthemic ode to that which is true and loving, capped off with a long, luxurious and ecstatic Aaron Lee Tasjan electric guitar solo.
The underdog, in Tasjan’s take, is “an identity or an archetype that I have been associated with, whether through my own choice or you know other people you know sort of viewing me that way through the years. And you know everybody is waiting for the big breakthrough moment. And it's interesting when you sort of realize actually sometimes the ‘breakthrough’ can be your longevity.”
In this hour, we talk about the shifting sands of the music business, resilience, Tasjan’s longstanding fascination with stage presence, and the surprising release strategy that by one important measure makes Get Over It, Underdog the artist’s most successful album to date. He’s touring the southeast and Europe this summer.
