Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker Brings ‘Dragon Eyes’ to Late Night Ahead of Grammys

Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief hit The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon Thursday to perform “Dragon Eyes” from her recent solo album Songs.

Lenker kept the performance simple, strumming an acoustic guitar alone in front of a wall of windows. Big Thief is currently up for two Grammys at Sunday’s ceremony: Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance for “Not,” off their 2019 album Two Hands.

The singer-songwriter dropped two albums back in October, Songs and Instrumentals, her third and fourth solo records. She wrote and recorded the songs in a remote cabin in April of 2020 after Big Thief’s tour was canceled due to the pandemic.

“As I settled into the cabin over the course of a month, I grew really connected to the space itself,” she wrote in a statement. “The one-room cabin felt like the inside of an acoustic guitar — it was such a joy to hear the notes reverberate in the space. I had a handful of songs that I was planning on recording, but by the time Phil arrived I was on a whole new level of heartsick, and the songs were flying through my ears. I was basically lying in the dirt half the time. We went with the flow. A lot of the focus was on getting nourishment from our meals. We cooked directly on the woodstove, and we went on walks to the creek every day to bathe.”

“I’m grateful that this music has come into existence,” she added. “These songs have helped me heal. I hope that at least in some small way this music can be a friend to you.”