Asheville, NC · indie rock · alt-country

MJ Lenderman

1 upcoming festival →

Asheville guitarist whose deadpan, Crazy Horse-leaning songs about wasted afternoons made Manning Fireworks one of 2024's most loved rock records.

Jake Lenderman plays guitar in the Asheville band Wednesday and has been releasing records under his own initials since the start of the decade. Boat Songs, in 2022, was the one that got him heard outside North Carolina: loose, fuzzed-out songs delivered in a flat drawl, with jokes about Michael Jordan and Dan Marino sitting next to lines about drinking and going nowhere.

He tours with a backing band called the Wind, who also appear on the live album he put out between studio records. Outside his own work, Lenderman played guitar on Waxahatchee's Tigers Blood and sang with Katie Crutchfield on it, which put his voice in front of a considerably larger audience. Onstage he leans harder into the guitar than the records let on, with long ragged solos stretching the endings out.

indie rockalt-country