MJ Lenderman Tickets

MJ Lenderman’s world-weary, rootsy rock classicism belies his age. But with the release of his fourth studio album, Manning Fireworks, the scruffy singer-songwriter is quickly coming of age as one of guitar music’s most idiosyncratic new talents.

Mark Jacob Lenderman was born in 1999 in Asheville, North Carolina, raised with a Catholic household, and was even an altar boy. With music in his family heritage however – he’s the great-grandson of American saxophonist Charlie Ventura – Lenderman naturally gravitated towards music as a youngster, connecting particularly to Jason Molina’s Songs: Ohia and Mark Linkous’ Sparklehorse due to their own South and Midwest origins. Whilst he’s cited the aforementioned musicians and Bob Dylan, Warren Zevon and Leon Russell as early influences, it was his childhood obsession with televised sports and its icons such as Michael Jordan and Dan Marino which would shape his channel-hopping postcard style of songwriting years later. 

Carving his own path within the local Asheville music scene, Lenderman played in a few bands at high school before enrolling for a short stint at the University of North Carolina. He lasted three semesters. Dropping out, he left student digs to move in with local players Karly Hartzman and Colin Miller. Hartzman formed the band Wednesday, and invited Lenderman, both by which point were romantically entangled, to play lead guitar as he juggled playing drums for Indigo De Souza that year, uploading various songs to Bandcamp and working on his own debut solo album concurrently. Miller would produce MJ Lenderman’s self-released eponymous debut album in 2019, who worked in an ice cream shop and dabbled in landscape gardening to fund his creative output. 

Two albums followed post-pandemic in 2021 and 2022: Ghost Of Your Guitar Solo and Boat Songs, the latter of which would prove to be his critical breakthrough. Lenderman’s first album to be recorded professionally in a studio, it contained all the hallmarks of his characteristic sound. Warped pedal steel, loose-wristed lo-fi guitar riffs and breezily warbled vocal delivery make up the anatomy of an MJ Lenderman song. It was clearly resonating, especially when ANTI- Records offered him a deal. 

As Wednesday’s 2023 album Rat Saw God garnered critical acclaim across the board – with Lenderman still a fully-fledged, vital member of the band despite his and Hartzman’s eventual break-up – the troubadour fortified his promise with his own solo live album, And The Wind (Live and Loose!) within the same twelve months.

2024 would be the year MJ Lenderman’s reputation took full flight. Not only would he co-write and feature on arguably the song of the year in Waxahatchee’s ‘Right Back To It’, Lenderman was later heralded by classic rock dads, internet musos and respected publications as guitar music’s new golden boy: all thanks to his fourth studio album, Manning Fireworks. Dry, observational and chiefly unpredictable lyricism saw him dubbed ‘the new John Prine’ – some accolade, though the easy-going Lenderman hasn’t let it go to his head.

Touring with his band The Wind, MJ Lenderman heads to Leeds’ Brudenell Social Club, Manchester’s YES, and The Garage in London at the tail end of 2024, before returning to British shores in 2025 with gigs in Nottingham, Glasgow and Manchester once again.