Adrianne Lenker

Adrianne Elizabeth Lenker (born July 9, 1991) is an American musician. She is the lead vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter of the band Big Thief. Early life[edit] Lenker was born in Indianapolis and was raised in a Christian cult until the age of four,[1][2] but primarily grew up in Minnesota. Her parents rented homes in Coon Rapids, Nisswa, and Bloomington, Minnesota, before settling down in Plymouth, Minnesota, where she lived for 10 years, excluding a brief time spent in Santa Cruz, California. She spent a summer traveling throughout the midwest and living out of a Ford cargo van.[3] Lenker wrote her first song at the age of eight, and recorded her first album at age 13.[3] Her other interests included studying martial arts, and she was the state karate champion three years in a row.[citation needed] She moved to Santa Cruz for a year and a half, living with a family friend and working at a local McDonalds. She dropped out of Santa Cruz High School halfway into her sophomore year, moved back to Plymouth, and got her GED at the age of 16.[3] She attended the Berklee College of Music on a scholarship provided by Susan Tedeschi of the Tedeschi Trucks Band.[4] Career[edit] Lenker in 2017 On February 28, 2006, when Lenker was 14, she released her first solo album, Stages of the Sun.[5] On January 9, 2014, Lenker released her second solo album, Hours Were the Birds.[6] On May 1, 2014, Lenker, together with future bandmate Buck Meek, released the LP records a-sides and b-sides.[7] In 2015, Lenker and Meek, alongside Max Oleartchik and James Krivchenia, formed the band Big Thief, whose first album was released in 2016.[8] Lenker released her third solo album, Abysskiss, on October 5, 2018.[9][10] On October 23, 2020, Lenker released her two most recent albums, Songs and Instrumentals.[11] Personal life[edit] Lenker met the future Big Thief co-founder Buck Meek at a concert when she lived in Boston, and then she encountered him again in a bodega the day she moved to New York.[12][8] The pair began to play together, and married when Lenker was 24.[12] They divorced in 2018, remaining in Big Thief as "deep friends".[12] In 2019, Lenker was in a relationship with the artist Indigo Sparke, and the two separated sometime in 2020.[12][13][14] While Lenker is comfortable with the label "queer", she has expressed a desire not to define her sexual orientation beyond that.[12] Her lyrics often contain discussions of gender and the gender binary. In an interview with The Brag, Lenker said of those lyrics, "I feel within myself a constant dialogue between my masculinity, my femininity and the part of me that is neither of those things. I'm just trying to talk about it because I feel like I'm something that is very ambiguous.