One of the first things an artist reckons with during a breakout moment is where next to look for inspiration. “It used to be fishing,” Leon Majcen tells me. “Recently, that has transitioned into being on the road, meeting new people and having new experiences”
This was mid-September at a dive bar on Music Row in Nashville, where Majcen was in town shaking hands and playing showcases during Americanafest — an annual gauntlet for up-and-comers like Majcen even when they are not on the verge of releasing a signature record. As it was, he was weeks away from dropping Makin’ a Livin’ (Not a Killin’), the third album in 18 months for the 26-year-old Florida native. Released back in October, the 12-track record is heavy on the rewards and perils of the touring required to make a dent in the collective country music conscience.
“It’s the last three years,” Majcen tells Rolling Stone. “It kind of perfectly sums up my life since I dedicated it to being on the road.”
For most of this year, Majcen (pronounced “might sin”) has seen increasingly prominent payoffs to that dedication. In November alone, he played the first two arena shows of his career, opening for the Turnpike Troubadours at the Petersen Events Center in Pittsburgh and Wolstein Center in Cleveland, with a sold-out show at the Anthem in Washington, D.C., sandwiched in between.
“I’ve been listening to Turnpike since I was a teenager,” Majcen says of that run. “Getting to open for them was nothing short of an honor. There’s a lot of ups and downs you face getting out on the road, but nights like those make all the blood, sweat, and miles worth it.”
Compare his full-band set at the 6,000-capacity Anthem with his previous booking in D.C. — an acoustic set on New Year’s Eve 2024 opening for blues singer Eddie 9V at Pearl Street Brewing, which holds 300 — for an illustration of just how significant this year has been for him.
The day after his Turnpike run finished, Majcen drove from Cleveland to Salt Lake City, where he spent a week on tour with Margo Price. He has also shared bills with Sam Barber and American Aquarium this year.
“Now that I’m playing with a band and things are leveling up a bit, we’re feeling like we’re a unit,” Majcen says. “Everybody’s doing their job, and honestly, we’re just putting on a good show. Seeing people enjoying themselves and singing the songs has been happening more and more recently. It’s still kind of hard for me to grasp, so I’m just trying to be present and have a level head about it.”
Majcen was born in the Czech Republic, and his parents were Bosnian refugees. They moved to Clearwater, Florida, when Majcen was two. Majcen says he grew up on his father’s favorite artists — the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and Kris Kristofferson. At age 9, he got a guitar for Christmas. At 10, he wrote his first song, and at 11, he played at an open mic for the first time. He went to college at NYU, but he was a misfit in New York and returned to Florida after two years (he did eventually graduate via remote education during the pandemic). “I got a lot of songs out of it,” Majcen says of his time in New York.
Back in Florida, he wrote and recorded his debut LP, 2023’s Back ’Till I’m Gone. That was followed by a move to Nashville, where Majcen played songwriter nights and built a following. He signed on with Evan Honer’s Cloverdale Records project, allowing Majcen to maintain control over his catalog while encouraging his high-volume approach to writing and recording, mirroring that of Honer. Makin’ a Livin’ (Not a Killin’) is Majcen’s second full-length record of 2025 after Better Days was released in April.
Majcen wrote all 12 tracks on the album. The title track is particularly illustrative of the importance of the road to his songwriting. He sings, “I’m a little bit stoned, a lotta bit broke/And always a town behind,” over a swinging country melody, making it clear that he’s trying to absorb all he can while also being squarely in the middle of a major career rise.
“It has definitely grown into something that I didn’t think it was gonna grow into,” he says. “There’s a lot of instances where, if you’re not in the headspace looking for inspiration, or you might have a conversation with somebody that, for a guy who is in that headspace, it would have gotten a song — whatever conversation you may have had with a stranger at a bar or at a show. But, when you’re not there, you just see it as another mundane thing. All my favorite songwriters — John Prine, Townes, Guy Clark, Chris Knight, too — they were able to pull good shit out of those things.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose book (Almost) Almost Famous will be released April 1 via Back Lounge Publishing.
