Dinosaur Jr brought their Where You Been 30th anniversary celebration to California this week, with a show at The Sound in Del Mar on Wednesday (12/4), followed by the first of two nights at The Bellwether in LA last night (12/5). In addition to performing the album, they brought out some surprise guests, including indie rock guy of the year MJ Lenderman (who’s been playing with all his heroes lately, also including Drive-By Truckers) to sing guest lead vocals on the You’re Living All Over Me classic “In A Jar,” their old friend Mike Watt for a cover of The Stooges‘ “TV Eye,” and Starcrawler singer Arrow de Wilde for the classic Bug opener “Freak Scene.” Watch videos of all three guest appearances in Dinosaur Jr’s Instagram stories and see a clip of MJ Lenderman below.
In the latest issue of the free BrooklynVegan digital magazine, MJ Lenderman talked about the influence of Dinosaur Jr’s Farm, which was the first album of theirs that he heard. “That one’s stuck with me in a major way,” he said. “Just like the blend of country rock but just as loud as you can do it. And it’s super catchy; the vocal melodies are amazing, and the guitar playing is obviously top notch.” It’s not hard to hear Dino’s influence on Lenderman’s own music, and it probably comes as no surprise that he sounded great singing with them.
MJ Lenderman and his increasingly-frequent collaborator Waxahatchee also released a cover of a song by their shared hero Lucinda Williams this week. Lenderman has lots of his own tour dates coming up, including a three-night run at Brooklyn Steel in April with Joanna Sternberg on night one (4/28), This Is Lorelei on night two (4/29), and Nap Eyes on night three (4/30).
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