A Magic School Bus-style trip through the mind of Aaron Lee Tasjan would be a wild one. Floating around inside the singer-songwriter and guitarist’s kaleidoscopic consciousness, one might encounter his encyclopedic knowledge of jazz music, ideas for gender-bending stage attire, sage bits of hard-earned wisdom, white-hot glam-rock licks and a seemingly infinite well of compassion for others.
Until there really is a way for us to motor around inside Tasjan’s singular mind, his fantastically titled new album Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! is the next-best thing. Out Friday via New West Records, the new LP picks up where the empathic psychedelia of its predecessor, 2018’s Karma for Cheap, left off. Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!, however, is both broader in its sonic scope and deeper in its lyrical vulnerability. Fittingly, Tasjan produced the album himself, alongside co-producer Gregory Lattimer.
“At the time … either producing or co-producing this record felt important,” Tasjan tells the Scene. “I didn’t know why, at first; it was a gut feeling. So I presented it [to New West] like, ‘What would you think if I produced it?’ The label was like, ‘We certainly have faith in you, but you don’t have any kind of track record as a producer. We’re not really sure that we feel comfortable with that entirely.’ ”
Tasjan explains that if he’d heard such feedback earlier in his career, he would have likely heeded his label’s advice and moved on. But now, as a seasoned artist confident in his vision and abilities, he decided to make Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! his own way, doing so without New West’s knowledge and coming up with all the necessary funding himself.
“I realized I could basically finance this record up front on my own,” he explains. “There’s the chance, obviously, I could show it to them and I’d be out however much I’d spent if they didn’t like it. But it felt worth the risk to me, so I did it.”
Tasjan contacted Lattimer to gauge his interest in the project, and he hopped on board immediately. While touring Karma for Cheap, Tasjan would bring a handful of new songs to Lattimer’s Make Sound Good studio during breaks at home, and the pair gradually pieced together what would become the final album.
A prolific writer, Tasjan had no shortage of material for the pair to work with. And with friends in all corners of the music scene, Tasjan had his pick of players for the Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! sessions, with a roster including bassmen Tommy Scifres and Keith Christopher; Spaceship of the Imagination synth wizard Matt Rowland; and drummers Fred Eltringham (k.d. lang, Sheryl Crow, Sadler Vaden), Dom Billett (Andrew Combs, Erin Rae), Dylan Sevey (Ron Gallo) and Jon Radford (Robyn Hitchcock, Steelism, many more).
“I’d call up all kinds of different musicians,” Tasjan says. “We used tons of different drummers, because I love drums. I’d rather hear a cool rhythm guitar solo than some amazing, note-y thing. And there are a bunch of drummers here in town that I love.”
When he felt the album was finished, Tasjan let New West in on his LP-size secret. He sent vice president of A&R Kim Buie four songs. She and the label loved what they heard.
“To New West’s credit, after saying they weren’t sure about me as a producer and not hearing anything from me for three months, I sent them a bunch of songs I produced and they gave it a chance,” Tasjan says, laughing. “They could have said, ‘Geez, we told this guy we didn’t see him as a producer. Is he deaf?’ To their credit, instead they said, ‘OK, well, he obviously thinks this is what he needs to do, so let’s give it a listen.’ ”
Tasjan’s first release for New West, 2016’s Silver Tears, fit comfortably within the broad confines of Americana. The genre is known for pitching its big tent over seemingly disparate styles of music that showed up on the record, like traditional folk, alt-country and modern blues. Karma for Cheap pushed firmly at those boundaries with a lot more power pop, and Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! eschews them entirely.
“There were questions on the Karma for Cheap record from the label,” he says. “I’d be turning in songs for that and hear things back like, ‘Are you sure these are the songs you want to record?’ But you know, they signed me when I was playing a show at The 5 Spot with my buddy John Moreland. I was playing an acoustic guitar onstage. I had made my bones, at that point, doing that because it was affordable. You can get in the Volvo station wagon and be in Knoxville in a couple hours to play a gig by yourself.”
Though he’d gotten a record deal on the strength of one facet of his work, Tasjan had many more sides of himself to share. He felt it was important to not get pegged as a singer-songwriter with just one mode, so he included a variety of fare on Silver Tears. He points to two songs from that album — the first a lush, poppy lament and the second a groovy ballad.
“I’d make songs like ‘Little Movies,’ but I think New West wondered, ‘Is this guy “Little Movies” or “Memphis Rain” ?’ ... But my whole life is like this. I know it looks like a pickle in a peanut butter sandwich on paper, but I can tell you for a fact it’s the truth.”
Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!’s opening track “Sunday Women” sounds like a newly unearthed Velvet Underground tune interpreted by Jeff Lynne’s ELO. “Cartoon Music” recalls The Beatles at their trippiest, interspersed with moments of blues and soul. “Dada Bois” is a glam-pop anthem, as well as a rebuke to some of Tasjan’s more closed-minded critics. “I know I make ’em uncomfortable, but I’m just living my life,” he sings, as he buoyantly declares his love for “dada bois” and “gaga girls.”
Tasjan is one of contemporary music’s most talented ax-slingers, so it’s no surprise that guitar is a focal point on the album. His style is rooted in rhythmic, highly percussive playing — like that of Count Basie Orchestra guitarist Freddie Green, whom Tasjan idolizes — and on this new material, he stretches the limits of his playing, and even what we think a guitar can sound like.
“I thought about people like Annie Clark [aka St. Vincent], and how she’ll do extreme things with the guitar, like tune every string to the same note. … So there was a lot of thought beforehand put into how I say something on the guitar that isn’t something I’ve said a million times before.”
Lyrically, Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! finds the artist plumbing his own depths, frankly exploring gender, sexuality, mental health and self-acceptance. “Feminine Walk” builds outward from a moment in Tasjan’s early childhood when, in a public restroom with his father, a stranger asked if he was a boy or a girl. First single “Up All Night” draws from a relationship Tasjan had with a drag performer, with the second verse that opens: “Broke up with my boyfriend / To go out with my girlfriend / Because love is like that.”
Love — whether for oneself, for others or for art — is always squarely at the heart of the music Tasjan creates. For him, there are few purer ways of sharing love than to be fully open with others. Across Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!’s 11 tracks, he’s putting everything he has on the table, with style, grace and generosity of spirit.
“I make music very much in the spirit of asking to be seen,” he says. “This is who I am and this is what I can do. It might be confusing for some people, or it might even turn some people off. But [the goal for me] is to create something that will make people feel something.”
