Katie Crutchfield and MJ Lenderman had at least one deeply unexpected song choice at last night’s tour opener in Atlanta: A cover of Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas.”
With both singers playing acoustic, Crutchfield — who performs as Waxahatchee — took lead on the blockbuster country song, with Lenderman pitching in on harmony during the chorus. Though Langley’s song is currently the most popular song in the country and has topped the Hot 100 for much of the spring, it is a surprisingly traditionally structured and musically conservative song for a 2020s pop crossover.
Langley recently explained that the song, which was co-written with Miranda Lambert, started with Langley asking Lambert to confirm a fanciful story she’d heard about Lambert getting stopped by the police with animals in her car. “We were at this writers retreat, and I just asked,” Langley told Rolling Stone, “She had a dog in the back and a kangaroo in the passenger seat, and got pulled over. I said randomly, ‘I’m sure [the police officer] was like, She’s from Texas, I can tell.’”
Performed as a stripped down acoustic duet, it blended seamlessly into Crutchfield and Lenderman’s encore of alt-country covers (Lucinda Williams’ “Abandoned,” the Jayhawks’ “All the Right Reasons,” and Kathleen Edwards’ “Six O:Clock News”).
During the main set, Lendermand and Crutchfield traded off on each other’s songs, with Waxahatchee mostly sticking to her 2020’s catalogue and Lenderman alternating between tunes from Manning Fireworks and Boat Songs. The pair also performed “Angel Wings,” a song from their 2025 collaborative project Snocaps.
After making a name for herself in DIY indie rock circles in the 2010s, Waxahatchee has embraced a breezier, Lucinda Williams-inspired sound on her last few breakthrough records Saint Cloud and Tiger’s Blood. She dipped her feet further into country music on her 2022 album Plains, where she covered songs by the Chicks, Terry Allen, and Loretta Lynn on tour.
