ROCK & ROLLER OF THE YEAR MJ LENDERMAN

BACK IN LATE February, less than six months after MJ Lenderman released Manning Fireworks, his 2024 deadpan-sophisticate ringer of a breakthrough album, he told me that maybe it was time for his tour to end.

- BY GRAYSON HAVER CURRIN

vintage t-shirt, his own vintage jeans Wrangler from Raggedy Threads boots John Lobb eyewear (throughout) Jacques Marie Mage

“I don’t know,” he said, standing backstage at a small sold-out theater in Boulder, Colorado, when the winter snow was still accreting. “But I think enough people have already seen us.”

Three months later, in the brutalizing May heat of Charleston, South Carolina, Lenderman indeed looked tired. He and his alternating band of longtime friends, the Wind, had just returned from Australia and New Zealand; then they'd powered down the East Coast, playing sold-out stands in DC and New York along the way. He’d spent one day in his little rental in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, then driven south in the minivan his dad had given him, a white Toyota so old its bumper stickers were cracking like damaged skin. In a week, they were bound for Europe. But before he left, he covered Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” with his hero, Patterson Hood, beneath a sprawl of twisted live oaks, and told me later it had at least been fun.

And then, after three more months, Lenderman returned to Colorado, playing a room that could hold nearly 4,000 people. In three days, Manning Fireworks would turn one. He looked happy and loose, maybe even glowing. This was the first night of a two-week tour, and a few members of the Wind had gotten substitutes so they could spend time with dogs back home or get ready to tour with Wednesday, the sister band of sorts to the Wind that Lenderman left as a touring member after he split with founder Karly Hartzman last year. They still share several players.