Singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer, band leader, activist, and Grammy nominee.

Aaron Lee Tasjan has been and continues to be all of these things. 

Over his past decade plus of writing, recording, producing, Tasjan has released four excellent and critically acclaimed solo albums, toured the world over on his own and as the guitarist in the New York Dolls.  He co-founded and co-wrote all of the material for the band Semi Precious Weapons. In 2021 he was nominated for a Grammy for his writing on Yola’s “Diamond Studded Shoes” and most recently, Tasjan produced Mya Byrne's album Rhinestone Tomboy (Kill Rock Stars Nashville) which helped to establish her as one of the first openly trans artists in Americana Music.  

He’s cultivated a brilliant and outstanding career to date already.  But his forthcoming album Stellar Evolution (Blue Élan Records) is just what the title says.  Tasjan’s new album is truly the sum of all of the parts of his diverse accomplishments to date while clearly heading in a brand-new direction.  You can’t put any labels on Stellar Evolution except for it being a career defining work and a major leap forward for someone who’s never been afraid to push the boundaries of any and all expectations.

As he set out to work on Stellar Evolution, Tasjan knew better than ever what was important to him. He’s been working his way towards a record like this since he first started making solo albums, with 2015’s In the Blazes. He stuck to an alt-country paradigm early in his career, though he knew that all of his favorite artists were the ones who broke out of their own boxes. His approach to that changed when he began to be more open about his queer identity. 

“I realized that part of being an artist means building a community. What do you want that community to look like? Who do you want to be a part of that community? As an artist, it’s your job to curate that, and to be a reflection of what you wanna see in the world,” he says. “I gradually got braver to share more and more of myself through each record, and the music just kinda had to follow suit.” Stellar Evolution is a record on which Tasjan’s songwriting is beholden to nothing — no expectations, and certainly no genre. Just the pure sense of wonder and discovery that had made him fall in love with music as a kid in Orange County, devouring it all with no understanding or care for what was “cool.”

As he was writing, times became very dark for the queer community in the South. Bathroom bans and drag bans were enacted in Tennessee, while right-wing rhetoric around LGBT people became uglier and uglier. Tasjan knew this album needed to reflect the vibrant community that has become home to him. “You don’t wanna think that you live in a time where people are still so vocal about the hatred that they have for each other. But it’s something that I think we’re seeing the whole world over,” he says. “I felt like it was really important to let people know that they’re not alone, that we’re all in this fight together and that we see each other, and that we’re gonna do what this community always does, which is come together and have each other’s backs. 

“The record became a sort of rallying cry for being who you are in a time when people literally wanna try to make it illegal to do that.” 

Opening track “Alien Space Queen” is the perfect introduction to Stellar Evolution’s inclusive, celebratory ethos. Driven by slick, strutting synth, it’s a playful yet heartfelt ode to the brightest-shining weirdos among us. “She drives an old Trans Am in sunset gold / Yeah, she’s transfemme, a demigirl dream,” Tasjan sings, in what he describes as “a song of pure support and love.” 

Meanwhile, inside the funky grooves of “Pants” you’ll find perhaps Tasjan’s most life-affirming feat of songwriting. It’s a call for “authentic and righteous” self-expression, against all odds and despite all obstacles. This is a track that started out, in its early demos, as acoustic indie-rock; but the more Tasjan worked on it with co-producer Gregory Lattimer, the more he took it in the joyous and transcendent musical direction that became its final form. “It just didn’t feel right to me until it got to that place,” Tasjan says. “I wanted it to feel like we were all in a giant parade going down the street together, [saying] damn the torpedoes, we’re gonna be who we are and there’s too many of us to stop us.” 

Of course, the pursuit of living truthfully always comes with plenty to unpack and reflect on in your own self; and as such, this is also Tasjan’s most vulnerable album. On the lead single “The Horror of It All,” Tasjan reflects on the confusions and humiliations of queer adolescence — letting that pure and enduring pain bloom into a heartland-rock anthem. The woozy and darkly funny “The Drugs Did Me” sees Tasjan laughing so he doesn’t cry at the rocky, substance-laden path he had walked until fairly recently. And “Dylan Shades” is a gorgeous, tender love song, on which Tasjan reflects on the hypothetical idea of his partner deciding to leave him, and movingly explores the love present in letting go. “When I had the opportunity to examine a lot of the fear I have in my life with a therapist, there were times I allowed my brain to wander off and imagine these worst case scenarios in which I lost things or people I loved,” Tasjan explains. “I tried to imagine accepting the loss with a softness and nobility. I wanted to try to make peace with the feeling.”

Two of the album’s most striking songs lie back-to-back near its center. “I Love America Better Than You” is a scathing protest song which took Tasjan eight years to write — and ended up more relevant now than it had been when he started. “I love America better than you / Her dirty water and her hot dogs too,” goes the winking chorus; “First Black president, insurrectionists / I love America better than you.” Then there’s “Nightmare,” a deeply poignant track, which subverts its clubby beat in exploring the ever-present fear of becoming victim to a hate crime. “I want all my friends to know I love ‘em, just in case I should disappear,” Tasjan heartbreakingly sings on the bridge. It’s a document of exhaustion and terror which will ring true to most queer listeners; and it’s a song like this that makes the celebrations elsewhere on the record feel all the more vital. 

The album comes to a sweet close with the duo of “Cry Till You’re Laughing”, a Lennon-McCartney-esque romp that calls out for hard-won optimism, and the hushed piano ballad “Young.” The latter track brings the scope of the album back down to something personal and bare. In each verse, Tasjan sings about his perspective of love from a different time of his life; from childhood, to adolescence, to adulthood. Yet each is tied together with the simple chorus line, almost a prayer: “Holding on to my only one.” “There’s parts of me that feel the same, as well as parts of me that life experience has changed forever,” Tasjan says. “It was another love song that felt a little different than the kind of stuff one usually hears. Maybe I can write one more verse when I’m 70?”

There’s not a wasted word on Stellar Evolution, and that’s deliberate. After everything he’s been through and everything he’s learned, Aaron Lee Tasjan is a more intentional artist than ever before. “When you’re a touring artist, songs are like mantras; you have to say them every night. And so I really wanted those words to be affirming, and for the energy that’s gonna come out of them to create more of what I hope to foster,” he says. It’s another grasp towards the community and connection that matters most to Tasjan. “The role I feel like I can occupy is to say, okay, I’m gonna be in these rooms where people are gonna be paying attention, and somebody’s gonna get lifted up; who’s it gonna be?” That’s an attitude that harkens right back to the 11-year-old Aaron Lee in Orange County, a throughline that Tasjan never loses sight of for a minute across this album. With Stellar Evolution, he honors that kid and every other version of himself — past, present and future.

“I started off that record scared to death,” Kim Richey recalls of making ​Glimmer​ with producer Hugh Padgham back in 1999 in New York and London. A disastrous haircut, unfamiliar musicians, and oversized budgets didn’t help matters. “It wasn’t the way I was used to making records.”

The way Richey was used to making records was with friends in a vibed-out, low-key setting. That’s how she made her debut album with Richard Bennett, and it’s how she made her new album, ​Long Way Back… The Songs of Glimmer, ​with Doug Lancio. So Glimmer​ was different, and not just on the production side.

Then, as now, the compositions that comprise ​Glimmer​ were the Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter’s first collection of true confessionals. Prior to that she’d been a staff writer at Blue Water Music writing from a more arm’s-length vantage point for her first two releases, 1995’s ​Kim Richey ​and 1997’s B​itter Sweet​. But ​Glimmer ​was all her.

Revisiting that history for ​A Long Way Back​ was both emotional and edifying for her. “I was pretty broken-hearted when I wrote and recorded most of those songs and I remember feeling that way,” she says. “At the time, I needed to really get out of my head and out of Nashville. I think that was what appealed to me so much about making a record somewhere that wasn’t home and with new people. Recording these songs again was a good way to look back and remember I made it through those times.”

The 20 years of distance between then and now provided another benefit, as well: Richey is more comfortable with her voice, both literally and metaphorically. As a result, Long Way Back​ sounds like it has nothing to prove and nothing to hide. It’s more spacious, but not less spirited, with Richey’s voice, in particular, feeling more relaxed and rounded than on the original. Starting with “Come Around,” the 14 new renderings take their time to make their points, meandering casually around, much like their maker.

An Ohio native, Richey’s passion for music was sparked early on in her great aunt’s record shop where she’d scour the bins and soak it all in. She took up the guitar in high school and, while studying environmental education and sociology at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, she played in a band with Bill Lloyd. But it didn’t stick… not right away.

After Kentucky, Richey worked in nature centers in Colorado and Ohio and traveled to Sweden and South America. She eventually landed in Bellingham, Washington, where she worked as a cook while her boyfriend went to grad school. Their deal was, she got to decide where they went after he graduated. One night in 1988, some old friends — Bill Lloyd and Radney Foster — rolled through town. She sold t-shirts at their gig, and they talked up Nashville. To drive the point home, Lloyd sent her a tape with Steve Earle and others on it. So taken by the songwriting, Richey and her partner loaded up their Ford F150 and headed to Music City.

In Nashville, Richey cooked at the famed Bluebird Café and gigged around town at writers’ nights. At a show one night at 12t​ h​ & Porter, Mercury Records’ Luke Lewis approached her. In classic Richey fashion, she didn’t know who he was. Still, she went to a meeting with him and Keith Stegall, played one song, talked a lot, and got a record deal at the musical home of Billy Ray Cyrus and Shania Twain. Remembering the glory days of major labels in the ’90s, Richey says, “They gave me way more than enough rope to hang myself with. I could do whatever I wanted.”

What she wanted was to work with her friend, producer Richard Bennett. So she did. For Bitter Sweet​, she put Angelo Petraglia at the helm, before turning to Padgham for Glimmer.​ “​Bitter Sweet​ was recorded in Nashville with my road band and friends,” Richey says. “That record was as if the kids had taken over the recording studio while the adults were away. ​Glimmer​ was more pro and less messing around having fun. The musicians were all super-talented and gave the songs a voice I never would have thought to give them. Hugh was up for trying anything and really encouraged me to add all those vocal arrangements that ended up on the record”.

For 2002’s ​Rise,​ Richey took another left turn, signed to Lost Highway Records, and hired Bill Bottrell as producer. Though it was her first time writing in a studio with a band, the players’ talent and Bottrell’s whimsy proved to be great complements to Richey’s own rule-breaking style. The resulting record was quirky, confessional, mesmerizing, and masterful. And it officially set her outside contemporary country’s bounds which was fine by Richey, whose music had always broken barriers.

A greatest hits collection dropped in 2004, buying her some time to tour, write, and make 2007’s ​Chinese Boxes​ with Giles Martin in the UK, followed by 2010’s ​Wreck Your Wheels a​nd​ 2​013’s ​Thorn in My Heart, ​both produced by Neilson Hubbard in Nashville. The latter landed her at Yep Roc Records, where she also released 2018’s ​Edgeland, made with producer Brad Jones in what she has described as the easiest recording process she’s ever had, despite working with three different tracking bands in the studio.

Through it all, Richey has worn her heart on her lyrical sleeve, revealing herself time and again. “I started writing songs because of Joni Mitchell, probably like most women songwriters of a certain age,” Richey confesses. “I loved being able to write songs because I was really super-shy. I couldn’t say things to people that I wanted to say. If I put it in a song, there was the deniability. If I ever got called on it, I could say, ‘Oh, heavens no, that’s just a song! I made that up.’”

Though she ​could​ fall back on plausible deniability, with Richey, what you hear is actually what you get. “I don’t have a lot of character songs because I’m not that good at making things up out of thin air.” Even when it comes to the main narrator of a song like Edgeland’​ s “Your Dear John,” Richey demurs with a laugh, “I do think that song is probably just another song about me and I’m pretending to be a barge worker.”

On ​Long Way Back… The Songs of Glimmer​, though, she’s not pretending to be anything or anyone she’s not, and neither are the songs. Richey and Lancio set out to make a guitar/vocal record, but the songs had something else in mind, and that something included drums by Lancio’s legendary neighbor, Aaron “the A-Train” Smith, among other things. “Once we stopped making rules about what could and could not be on the record, the songs spoke for themselves,” Richey says. “I knew all along I wanted Dan Mitchell to play flugelhorn, and the two tracks he played on are two of my favorites. In the end, the songs decided.”

From her move to Nashville to her making this record, for Kim Richey, the songs have always decided.