MJ Lenderman - Ghost of Your Guitar Solo

Asheville native Jake Lenderman, guitarist in Wednesday, made this ten-song collection entirely on his own—written and recorded during a rapid-fire, prolific period in early 2020. Songs emerged quickly, often taking shape in a single day, drawing on loose jam sessions and lyrical freestyles that coalesced into something raw and immediate. The process was inspired in part by a David Berman writing exercise: scribbling 20 disconnected lines a day and salvaging the strongest for future use.

What came out sounds like country music frayed at the edges—played by a noisy punk band in a house full of roommates. There’s grit in the recordings, with an unvarnished quality that mirrors the lives of the characters being sung about. While retaining moments of vulnerability and pain, these songs stretch beyond internal reflection. Lenderman brings a novelist’s sensibility to the material, balancing bleakness with gallows humor, and pointing to Southern writers like Harry Crews and Larry Brown as touchstones.

Themes of excess, burnout, and emotional unraveling live alongside moments of sly absurdity, turning self-loathing into something oddly celebratory. This is an album that embraces contradiction—unpolished, impulsive, and filled with a strange kind of grace.

Label: Dear Life Records
Format: LP