Concert Review: MJ Lenderman & The Wind (DPAC)

BY DREW DRAIN

The last time I saw MJ Lenderman live before his DPAC debut, it was a sweaty Friday evening set at Hopscotch, the same day Manning Fireworks dropped. I remember being excited, maybe even giddy, about hearing the new songs in a festival setting, watching a hometown favorite step into his moment. But that day, I also got the phone call that my dad’s life was coming to an end. I left Raleigh for West Virginia almost immediately, where I spent my father’s final days with him. In the blur of that time, Manning Fireworks became a soundtrack for grief, love, memory, and home. Seeing Lenderman take the stage at DPAC, now months later, carried the weight of all that. It wasn’t just a concert; it was a return, and a reckoning.

Opening the night was Rosali, whose quiet power filled the cavernous room with remarkable ease. Her set didn’t rush or reach for anything cheap. It was deliberate, patient and heavy. Backed by her band, she delivered songs that sat somewhere between folk incantation and electric prayer, offering just enough grit to keep things from floating away. In a venue built for Broadway musicals and traveling comedy tours, Rosali made the space feel like a front porch in a thunderstorm.

Then came MJ Lenderman & The Wind, walking onstage to the kind of applause that feels less like cheering and more like welcome-home applause. Lenderman has always carried a slacker charm. His voice teeters between tuneful and torn, his guitar tone is permanently half-drunk. At DPAC, he sounded massive. It’s the kind of growth you hope for from an artist you’ve followed in clubs and converted warehouse spaces: bigger but not slicker, louder but no less human.

Lenderman and his band moved through a set heavy on Manning Fireworks but peppered with older songs that hit like memory triggers including “TLC Cage Match,” “You Have Bought Yourself a Boat,” and “I Ate Too Much at the Fair.” Each one was greeted like an old friend.

The emotional centerpiece, for me, was “Manning Fireworks." Played under a gentle wash of blue light, it became something hushed and aching. For a few minutes, the 2,700-seat theater shrank to the size of a hospital room. I thought about my dad. I thought about driving through the mountains with that song leaking through the speakers, the world ending and continuing at once.

By the time they closed with “Knockin,” the crowd was on its feet, and not in the polite DPAC kind of way. People were shouting lyrics, clapping off-time, trying to hold on to a moment they knew was rare. This wasn’t a band filling a booking gap on a summer tour. This was a hometown hero playing one of the biggest rooms of his life, and somehow making it feel like a backyard show.

It was a show that held grief and joy in the same breath. It reminded me that music doesn’t fix things, but it does hold them, echo them, give them shape. That’s what this night did. It gave shape to something I didn’t know I still needed to feel.

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DREW DRAIN

Andrew (Drew) Drain is originally from Point Pleasant, WV, and he now resides in Chapel Hill, NC with his daughter. Drew works as a financial risk management professional to pay the bills, but his real passion is photography. He started taking photos of his daughter playing soccer as a way to resist the urge to coach her from the sidelines. Time behind the camera developed into a love for photography that he has paired with his love for sports and live music. Follow Drew’s Instagram, @Drew.Drain.Photo or his MaxPreps galleries, to check out more of his work or contact him if you need photos of your favorite athlete or performer.

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