“You never know how people are going to perceive you,” says Aaron Lee Tasjan. “You never know how the work will be received by the public.
A musician who skillfully straddles the line between Americana and pop, Tasjan is marking the tenth anniversary of his breakthrough album In the Blazes. He’s celebrating with a tour built around the record’s shimmering rhythms and melodic hooks.
The album — released on Oct. 6, 2015 — captured Tasjan at a point when he leaned heavily into country-folk roots. Later albums saw him expand his horizons, weaving in synths — most notably on the impossibly catchy “Up All Night” from 2021’s Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan! — and drawing more deeply from his personal life for inspiration.
“I feel like I’ve really opened up in my songs,” says the artist, who identifies as part of the LGBTQ community. “A friend was telling me the other day, ‘A lot of your more recent songs are kind of like little diary entries. They’re really these much more direct looks into your life.’”
The songs on In the Blazes prove well worth revisiting in a live setting, especially the sumptuous “Lucinda’s Room,” the tender “Judee Was a Punk,” and the bright, bouncy “E.n.S.a.a.T.”
“It’s really fun to revisit these songs live because a lot of them go back to the place where they originally started,” says the 39-year-old with a penchant for fluffy hats and sweaters. “They were the first songs I wrote when I moved to Nashville, and they were the first songs many people here in town ever heard me play.”
Tasjan notes that the music on his more recent records features layered sounds and studio flourishes that are harder to recreate in a live setting, while the In the Blazes material “is just a lot earthier. It’s very simple in terms of its instrumentation, and that works so well live.”
Tasjan says his goal is to “connect with other people through song.” He’s moved when fans tell him they’ve been listening to the album for ten years. “What a gracious gift to be given as a creator and as a songwriter, that someone would revisit the work over that long a period of time. It blows me away, especially today, because I feel like everything is designed to be instant, and then it’s over and you move on to the next thing. So anytime anything sticks around, it feels more meaningful.”
In conversation, Tasjan comes across as upbeat and optimistic, with a knack for longform storytelling. He recalls recently stumbling on a YouTube comment that surprised him.
“I was trying to find a live thing I had done years ago. And when I finally found what I was looking for, the first comment, which was from two weeks ago, was from some guy being like, ‘Oh, this was from before he was gay.’
“So you never know who’s listening and how they’re perceiving you,” he continues, bringing our conversation full circle. “But I’ve always believed that music wins people over in time. It’s got a bit of a magic spell to it, in that if you make a song that captures somebody’s imagination, they’ll come back to it. And over time that can kind of soften somebody who maybe doesn’t initially understand where you’re coming from.”
He illustrates the point with a memory from last spring: “I had a lady apologize to me at a show in Nashville. She came up to me and was like, ‘When you first were coming out, for whatever reason, I didn’t get what you were doing, and I didn’t really give you a chance. But I’ve kept listening, and I came here tonight and was really taken with your performance. I can see now that I was wrong — and I just wanted to apologize to you for not being a bigger fan sooner.’”
Aaron Lee Tasjan’s In the Blazes 10th Anniversary Tour includes two Virginia stops: Oct. 7 at The Tin Pan in Richmond and Oct. 9 at Jammin Java in Vienna. Learn more about these and other tour dates at aaronleetasjan.com/tour.
"David Lynch would be so happy about this," says mehro, seated on an ornate scarlet couch, his slender, black-shirted frame flanked by lush, red curtains. "It all looks very Lynchian."
They're at SIR -- Studio Instrument Rentals -- in Los Angeles, taking a Zoom break for this cover interview. And they couldn't be nicer -- or more enigmatic.
It's impossible to tell if mehro's coyness is deliberate or simply part of his nature during our hour-long conversation. The deflections -- always polite, almost disarmingly so -- make personal questions more of a challenge than I expected.
The fall looks primed to be a strong season of concerts by -- and appealing to -- the LGBTQ community. Among the highlights in the category of the well-known, consider Andy Bell (Lincoln), Jane Lynch (Strathmore), Renee Rapp (Merriweather), DOECHII (Anthem), and of course All Things Go (Merriweather). In the category of merely appealing, not gay per se, consider The Queens (Capital One Arena), Deborah Cox (Bethesda Theater), and Judith Hill (The Hamilton).
That barely scratches the surface. There's a lot of new -- or perhaps new to you -- queer artists out there, just waiting for you get into them including Katie Pruitt (Union Station, Rams Head), Rio Romeo (Songbyrd), Aaron Lee Tasjan (Jammin Java), Dixon Dallas (Union Stage).
"It was kind of confusing," David Archuleta says, recalling the time roughly 16 years ago when he was first asked to write a memoir. "What am I supposed to talk about? I'm 18 years old, and I feel like I'm just starting my journey, and you want me to write a memoir now?"
That memoir, Chords of Strength: A Memoir of Soul, Song, and the Power of Perseverance, was written by Archuleta with Monica Haim and published by an imprint of Penguin Group in 2010. He was barely an adult at the time, and it had only been two years since he competed on American Idol, becoming the season seven runner-up.
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