Aaron Lee Tasjan will take you on a journey and drop you off somewhere both familiar and unknown. And when you get there, he'll break your heart and make you bend over laughing with only his voice and an acoustic guitar.
More than 50 people congregated at Standard Deluxe, a venue in Waverly, Ala., Sunday to listen to Tasjan sing. Littered with art, posters and memorabilia from past acts, the venue included a couple of houses and a small field bordered with pines.
Tasjan sat on a yellow metal chair on one of the porches and checked his small silver flip phone.
"I used to get nice phones," Tasjan said. "I had a couple, and I lost them. So, I kinda decided it wasn't a good investment anymore to buy nice phones."
He grew up in a small Ohio town where he graduated with a class of less than 100 students. Right out of high school, he bought a plane ticket to New York City where he learned how to survive. His biggest feat was finding an apartment through Craigslist that saved thousands of dollars in hidden fees.
Tasjan spent his years living in the Big Apple writing and performing music that people always told him sounded southern. He attributes this sound to his influences.
"My number one hero of all time is this guy named Kevn Kinney who is the lead singer of this band called Drivin' 'N' Cryin,'" Tasjan said. "He made this record with a guy named Peter Buck, and the record was called Macdougal Blues. I thought, there's probably no way that I'll ever do it, but if I could just write one song that was as good as anything on this record one day, I would retire. And I'm still trying to do it."
He laughed and joked through his interview, but when he took the stage there was a noticeable change in his demeanor. He was a born performer and he was in his element. Song after song sent ripples of laughter through the cold, crowded room, only to be met by intimate silence as Tasjan sang about hard truths.
"His act made me feel like I was from Ohio. He was a good storyteller," said Michael Brudi, senior in architecture. Musicians, and artists in general, have a stereotype of being narcissistic and thinking that no one understands them, but Tasjan doesn't fit any stereotypes. He talked about the beauty of words and how he didn't see music as a business, but rather as an opportunity to be great.
"I just wanna write the best song I can write, I wanna play the guitar the best that I can, and I wanna sing it for anybody that wants to listen to it and might get something out of it," Tasjan said. "I don't really know where that leaves me nowadays, but I'm really hopeful that I am able to keep doing it cause it is my favorite thing in the whole world."
His debut solo EP "Crooked River Burning" will be available this spring.
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