Langhorne Slim on his small-town roots, writing love songs and plans to be a good boy in 2010:
| Since the September release of his whimsical, romantic Be Set Free, acclaimed folk-rocker Langhorne Slim (nee Sean Scolnick) has been all across the continent, clocking in time on the road with his band the War Eagles, popping up on Letterman, and lending his song, “Worries,” to a national TV commercial.
Luckily, he’s getting the chance now to catch his breath in between a stint |
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in Europe and upcoming New Years Eve shows with his old friends the Avett Brothers. He met them about six years ago through fellow singer Nicole Atkins when he lived in New York City, where he first made his name as a young lad playing open mics in the East Village at haunts like the Sidewalk Cafe and the Bowery Poetry Club.
“At the time, it felt like New York was some kind of magical and free place — a place where the kind of shit that wouldn’t fly in a small suburban town would,” Slim says over the phone from his current home in California. “I think it was really good for me. There aren’t that many towns where you can be sitting in a restaurant and go to an open mic and get offered three shows the next week, or a tour in the next month. A lot of that stuff helped me get my music out.”
Slim ended up in New York after graduating from the Conservatory of Music at SUNY-Purchase, which he chose to attend after opting out of organic farming school in North Carolina (“my mom and I went down there and took a tour from a girl named Rainbow,” he remembers).
When he speaks of small suburban towns, he speaks from experience. He hails from Langhorne, Pennsylvania, a tiny town in Bucks County that’s only half a mile in size with a population of less than 2,000 people. It’s an archetypal place that not only partly inspired his professional moniker, but played a strong role in shaping his desire to pursue music.
“I was a bit isolated in the suburbs of Pennsylvania,” he explains, “and I felt like a lot of kids who felt like they didn’t fit into the regimented sort of public school system, so I spent quite a bit of time drawing and making up little stories, learning how to play guitar. I spent evenings writing songs. I think that its not so much fun at the time, when you feel like you don’t fit in. But maybe it’s good because it pushes you to find some sort of release creatively. At least it did for me.”
Indeed, a Langhorne Slim song has a warm, small-town, homey feel to it. There is a simplicity and an easiness to his music, particularly in regards to instrumentation; it’s lo-fi, straight-forward, acoustic guitar-driven. There’s an old-school country-western vibe about much of it — songs like “Diamonds and Gold” are ones you’d want to slow-dance to at a small town beer joint.
“I’m not sure if there are any other kind, but the songs I write are love songs,” says the bio on Slim’s Twitter page. When I ask him about this, he responds: “there are so many different kinds of love — there’s the romantic kind, then there’s the love of, say, seeing a pretty flower. It’s more about just being moved by things.”
This attitude is reflected in his vocals. Slim’s voice is it’s own instrument, it soars with emotion, feeling and sentimentality on every track, whether it’s the ebullient “Say Yes” or the heart-breaking “I Love You, But Goodbye” — a real weeper from his earlier repertoire.
Be Set Free was recorded in Portland with Chris Funk (who also produced The Decembrists) in a mere 11 days. He’ll be touring it more in the New Year and hopes to put out a live record of the album. As for other New Year’s resolutions?
“Just to be a better boy,” he says, laughing. “To give and receive a lot of love … and to be the biggest band in the world. What do you think about that?”