What we talk about when we talk about MJ Lenderman
Olivia Nieporte is a content writer for KCPR. The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Mustang Media Group.
10:50 p.m.
MJ LENDERMAN & THE WIND
Sept. 11, 2025. Shrine Expo Hall, Los Angeles, CA.
A curly-headed hue of shaggy dark hair is supported by wide shoulders that the rest of his body hangs from. MJ Lenderman cradles a Fender Jazzmaster, the cutaway held together by a silver strip of duct tape stuck under his Ernie Ball Slinky strings. He staggers, his head hanging, his hands almost abusing the whammy. A steel guitar and howling fiddle lap his riffs. Like his hair, his tone is shaggy in overdrive and distorted texture.
Mark Jacob Lenderman may be the busiest man in all of indie rock. The funny-faced moniker, a self-effacing innuendo for his non–pin-up looks and everyman grit. His songwriting, a wah-wah waltz through ache, slanted with specificity.
Lenderman has newly broken into mainstream from complete DIY and unsung indie. “Manning Fireworks,” a whistleblower to the 26-year-old’s extended discography, an un-alpha-laced nine-track (fourth studio) album littered with deadpan humor and basketball references, gained the approval of college radio heads and Americana fans alike.
Radio junkies carry it like a prize above their heads. The green fire-striped cover, ablaze with the holy trinity (Zack, Zono and an unidentified cousin), acts as a shrine on their walls and a centerpiece for their mantles. Enter a home on the Central Coast, and you’ll find it somewhere.
In early 2025, Waxahatchee (singer-songwriter, Kathryn Crutchfield) brought Lenderman into the limelight, literally, with his harmonies behind her chorus in lead single “Right Back to It” from her album “Tigers Blood.” The feature threw Lenderman from an Ozempic-like social media diet to an international TV debut on Late Night With Stephen Colbert.
Shortly after, he kicked off the first leg of his North American tour. Tonight, The Wind — changing often, at one point swelling to eight members because Lenderman couldn’t muster the courage to cut it — is at four.
Lenderman and I were matching (black tee and blue jeans), an understated fortuity to the yellow blouse I had discarded 20 minutes prior to leaving in a BMW Uber Black, with the driver assuring me he was the “only BMW around.”
We barreled way too slowly down the 110. I hoped he’d step on the gas or at least make it above 25. We exited on Jefferson, free of the standstill. I gripped nauseously to my seat, turning the air vents towards my face in hopes it would make the time go by faster, pretending it wasn’t 30 minutes past 8 p.m., about-to-miss-the-opening-act-o’clock.
I’d need a cross, like in Lenderman’s Catholic references.
I met my childhood best friend at the inside entrance, following her and her boyfriend into the hall while reviewing their overpriced t-shirt purchases. I was relieved to find the stage empty, well, mostly. A sound guy checked every instrument alone, playing each slowly, dropping and picking up another as if it were a one-man performance.
After a catch-up chitchat trip to the ladies’ room, the crowd had filled in, couples and college radio kids in KC** so-and-so shirts melted into each other in sweaty molasses.
I pressed my phone to my ear in a cheating effort to part the sea. I was Moses, and this claggy was stiff. A tall man in a black trench coat and another stalkier fellow made up my concert buddies. In a deal with the guy to my left, I could stand in front of them both. (There should be a concert etiquette rule: everyone over 7 ft to the back.)
A few older folks whose childhoods were Neil Young and Wilco sprinkled in, their adulthoods now Lenderman, taking inspiration from other non-heroic alt-country rock artists like Dinosaur Jr., Drive-By Truckers, Paul Westerberg, Pavement, R.E.M. and dare I say ’90s Sheryl Crow.
Cass McCombs and Nap Eyes opened shortly after; McCombs, like Lenderman, a love child of Anti Records, spearheaded by Tom Waits to release his 1999 album “Mule Variations.”
After a lengthy walk-up, Lenderman plowed into “Rudolph,” a cautionary tale surveying the aftermath of a hit-and-run to a red-nosed yard ornament, the killer none other than Lightning McQueen? A laughable take on a severed relationship and a “jerk who flirts with the clergy nurse ’til it burns”. It’s a one-verse song with a fragmented chorus, bending the rules of structured songwriting.
The giant next to me is SCREAMING. This was his Christmas, and mine too; our present just missing a big red bow.
Lenderman performs the first couple of songs without a word, before pausing between “Catholic Priest” and “Joker Lips” to mutter an apology to his cult for his lack of introduction:
“I hit my nose on my guitar, and it was bleeding … like this,” he reenacts lifting the strap and swiping his guitar smack into his kisser. The gap in his front teeth is peeking through.
A voice erupts, caterwaul (I can’t make out) at Lenderman, before breaking his silence again, “Ok?” he asks, throwing in a thumbs-up.
I’m tapped on the shoulder; someone’s nose is bleeding. I look in my purse (performatively, of course, knowing I don’t have a tissue) before offering him a tampon for the flow. I lost my slot as “twin” for the night.
But the concert continued, Lenderman switching from his Jazzmaster to a 1979 Gibson, the “SG,” one of many in his collection. The Gibson, I’m guessing, stays in D standard, the other in E. He’s a big Dinosaur Jr. fan, once sitting in on a live session of “In A Jar.” Another one of his guitars is tuned likewise in C–G–D–G–G–E for “You’re Every Girl to Me” (which he unfortunately never played that evening). Numerous other pedals lay before him, ones I would not know the name of.
Two capos hang from the tip of his mic stand, his wide-set eyes closed in concentration.
I turn to my friend, whispering, “I think he’s playing ‘Knockin’” but instead he breaks into “You Have Bought Yourself a Boat.” Even his most loyal fans can admit that most of his song structures are interchangeable, many in riff patterns of G to C and maybe an Am if he’s feeling lonesome.
Despite its simplistic nature, “Manning Fireworks” is one of the greatest rock albums of the past five years, bringing us back, yet forward, to playfully earnest depictions of shitty situations, the mundane and heartache laced with inappropriate vignettes of wet dreams, piss and Lucky Charms.
I had originally been turned on to Lenderman by “Wristwatch,” like most (late to his music). I was similarly late to understanding the imagery of “Wristwatch,” a reference to an Apple product, rather than a crown and dial. Its success is a prequel to “Knockin’,” “And The Wind (Live and Loose)” and his 2022 album “Boat Songs” (released under a friend’s label, Dear Life), making it an anticipated and well-surveilled album.
Lenderman remarks feeling like he had to “relearn how to write” with people actually paying attention (Rolling Stone).
Lenderman’s hard outer shell of shredded guitar solos and nine-minute-long wailing odysseys sheds, revealing softened insides, like “You Don’t Know the Shape I’m In” and “Rip Torn.”
I grew to possess an attachment to his ballads, being blue country at its roots, surrounding you like a gentle embrace. A nostalgic brawl with heartache and young love, yet hopefulness in hopelessness.
Lenderman’s catalog had become my score, reminding me of the music I grew up on, now driving Sunset Boulevard each morning down the Strip past colossal billboards that say “Honk if you hate it here” onto Santa Monica to my internship or to the studio to record. Getting so lost sometimes in Lenderman’s world — god forbid you brush the Range Rover with its hazards on.
The Asheville native, likewise, spent his summers working and recording music. He was an ice cream scooper (a milked-dry tale about his pre-fame days). His father — a doctor and his middle school basketball coach — the sport and Catholic traditions present as themes throughout his childhood and lyricism. He spent much of his time playing Guitar Hero before getting a real-life version at age 10.
“Bark at the Moon,” a track titled after Ozzy Osbourne’s Guitar Hero (the name is about the only thing the two have in common), paints a picture of what might’ve been if his efforts had never propelled him beyond his PlayStation; he howls, admitting he’s stuck — in his bedroom, his ass and his schtick.
Fortunately for Lenderman, unemployment checks and a house equipped with a swinging screen door opened to his bandmates/neighbors of the East Asheville music scene and then-girlfriend Karly Hartzman. Playing guitar for their band Wednesday (on a similar come-up as his solo act) and completing other musical side quests, like drums for Indigo De Souza.
The pair had split earlier in 2024 after six years together, keeping the breakup on the low for five weeks of tour in Tokyo (GQ). Still, Karly is known to make an appearance to sing vocal-flipped backup on tour. Lenderman, entering an “indie-cest” dating game, is now with Rachel Brown (Water From Your Eyes), previously dating Nate Amos from This Is Loreli. Yes, the one with whom Lenderman sings “Dancing in the Club” with … yeah, it’s a lot.
“TLC Cage Match” struck me hollow, in a final blow to anything holding me together. An undercut so strong it had me crying like a baby; the only thing pacifying my pain was the fact that Lenderman was five feet before me.
I was crying, jumping, maybe even throwing up before accidentally filming the poor man with flash.
Dragging his guitar through the end of “Knockin’” by the strap across the floor, walking it like an animal, he pushes it against the amp. Forearms lifting the instrument into feedback, he screams Black Flag chaos that leaves me laughing; it’s good to know the underdog still has his bite. It’s the last song of the night.
After an understated goodbye with Lenderman out of sight, the venue quaked for an encore. But I don’t think he’s going anywhere.
“So you say I’ve got a funny face.”
The crowd motions at the man with their pointer fingers, their insensitive assessment of truth.
“It makes me money,” he howls, penance for the wry.
Applause erodes his previous convictions.
Lenderman barely cracks a smile, but you know he’s laughing.
SET LIST
Rudolph
Toontown
SUV
Catholic Priest
Joker Lips
Wristwatch
You Have Bought Yourself a Boat
TLC Cage Match
Pick Up the Pieces
Sacrifice (For Love) Greg Sage cover
Dancing in the Club (This Is Loreli cover)
Rip Torn
Manning Fireworks
On My Knees
Bark at the Moon
I Ate Too Much at the Fair
She’s Leaving You
Hangover Game
Lotta Love (Neil Young cover)
Knockin’
No Mercy
