Given how often they pop into each other’s projects, it was only a matter of time before Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee and MJ Lenderman embarked on a co-headling tour. Apparently, that time is next spring, which is when you’ll find them at the Riverside Theatre for an April 28 performance.
Befitting the frequent collaborators, the pair will perform separate solo sets, as well as together throughout the tour. That’ll come in particularly handy during Waxahatchee’s selections, with Lederman playing a big role in Crutchfield’s 2024 album Tigers Blood while also joining her as part of Snocaps, the band with Katie’s sister Allison and producer Brad Cook.
Tickets for the April 28 show will go on sale to the general public at 10 a.m. this Friday, Nov. 21, online via AXS and at the Pabst/Riverside box offices.
Artist bio: Waxahatchee
Katie Crutchfield was born in Alabama and grew up near Waxahatchee Creek before skipping town and struck out on her own as Waxahatchee. That was over a decade ago, and while Crutchfield says she never knew the road would lead her here, after six critically acclaimed albums, she’s never felt more confident in herself as an artist.
While her sound has evolved from lo-fi folk to lush alt-tinged country, her voice has always remained the same: honest and close, poetic with Southern lilting.
After years of being sober and stable in Kansas City, which followed years of sacrificing herself to her work and the road, Crutchfield released Tigers Blood, a project dedicated to revisiting her wins and losses, arriving at revelations and not holding them back.
Written mostly on tour toward the end of 2022, the album saw Crutchfield and producer Brad Cook hunker down at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas. Initially, MJ Lenderman came to play electric guitar and sing on lead single “Right Back To It.” But as soon as they tracked it, Cook told Lenderman he had to stay for the rest of the album. And he did.
Artist bio: MJ Lenderman
MJ Lederman is a basketball zealot from North Carolina (and a former two guard who once dropped 10 threes in a game) and the offspring of music-loving parents who were going to Bonnaroo when he was a baby. The second-to-youngest in a family of six, he was a childhood altar boy who went to Catholic school until he begged to go to public school so he could join the music program.
Guitar Hero changed his life, leading to obsessions with Jimi Hendrix and The Smashing Pumpkins. He began recording himself on his mom's laptop in fifth grade after discovering My Morning Jacket's roughshod early works, those lo-fi transmissions serving as some DIY semaphore. The lyrics started to come when he was a teenager.
No one paid too much attention when he recorded Boat Songs, his third album released under MJ Lenderman. Before he cut it, he was a 20-year-old guitarist working at an ice cream shop in his mountain hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. But it became one of that year's biggest breakthroughs.
You could say the same about 2024 follow-up album Manning Fireworks, a remarkable development in his story as an incisive singer-songwriter whose propensity for humor points to some uneasy, disorienting darkness. The instant classic of an LP still contained frank introspection and observation while finding the intersection of wit and sadness. But there's a new sincerity, too, as Lenderman lets listeners clearly see the world through his warped lens, perhaps for the first time.
