An Interview with Langhorne Slim: Falling Hard

Langhorne Slim’s latest album, Lost at Last, Volume 1, is a real gem. It came out in November last year and it’s been a steady companion for me ever since. The harmonies with Casey Jane Reece-Kaigler are captivating and the whole record captures a very loose and open feeling that is missing from so many studio productions. Slim is cruising through the northeast next week, with two shows at The Parlor Room and a stop at 3S in Portsmouth. We got to chat about this last album, being inspired by friends and musical heroes, and that feeling you can only get from live music. You know what that’s about. Read on.

 

RLR: I feel like one of the advantages of recording in the way you did is that the songs remain open enough for them to keep evolving as you bring them on the road. Are there songs on this album that you’ve found new corners or touchpoints in them as you’ve shared them with audiences?

LS: That always happens. You work on these records obsessively and in the process, of course, you’re listening to mixes and it’s your whole life. And then when it’s done and released, I kind of don’t go back to it. Occasionally, I will hear a song or revisit a record and it sounds totally different than how I do it now. I’ve never held songs back. Perhaps if you’re Beyoncé or something, maybe you have to do that; I don’t know how that works, but for me, I spend most of my life on the road and when I have a new song, it’s usually what I’m most excited to play and feels the freshest. The songs take new shapes and forms as you play them on the road–and that’s good, because it would get boring if shit stayed the same, you know?

RLR: You said in the past you would road-test new songs, but you didn’t with these ones. How do you think that might have impacted your approach once in the studio?

LS: Yes and no. I didn’t do that with these, with a band. It’s some of the same band [I normally play with] and the Twain who was involved and Paul DeFiglia, who played with The Avett Brothers for many years, but started playing with me when we formed our band. So they weren’t road-tested songs with a band that I was out on the road with, showing these tunes to.

Some of them were songs that I crammed, as I tend to do, because right before I make a record, I always feel like I don’t have enough material and try to write a bunch before that. But some of the songs were tunes written within the months or year leading into it and that I was playing on the road.

 

 But the idea was that it would be more free formed, more kind of how you would play with a group of friends in your living room or sitting on the porch, when you’re just showing people the songs. In my opinion, if we’re making mistakes in art or music, it is trying to perfect things. What makes some of the old records that we all love so special and so unique is that they didn’t have a million takes. Less is more quite often. Maybe it depends on the type of music, but for what I play, there’s a lot more magic in keeping it raw and keeping it not-perfect.

RLR: I heard Joe Pug say at one point that the road to hell is paved with albums free of technical mistakes.

LS: I would agree. They’re not mistakes, that’s the thing. We play music and are moved by it because there’s a sense of wildness, and, dare I say, freedom, about it, and it is possible to suck the life out of that. I’m sure I’ve fallen victim or done that myself. But at this point, I’m lucky that I get to surround myself with incredible musicians who inspire me. I don’t write charts or whatever for them to play. We try to keep it as freeform and improvisational…as three or four chord folks songs can be. I mean, I’m not Sun Ra over here. [Laughs]

RLR: Reading up on the making of this album, there was a “let’s get in a room and press record” approach to these songs, and you mentioned earlier this kind of obsessive state when you’re engaged in recording. It seems like one of the preconditions for that working is having a really high level of trust with the other folks making the record–I would love to know more about that process and how you handled things like listening back or trying different approaches as you were making the album.

LS: It’s different for every record, and it’s different at different points in the process. When I say working on it obsessively, I think everybody does that. If this is what you do, it is your whole life.

I work a lot on my own. On this record and previous record, I would go to upstate New York to work on songs that I knew I liked, but I couldn’t put all the pieces together. And Kenny [Siegal] has been an incredible creative collaborator and soul brother in that sense. That guy is just so turned on and tuned in with music, where I’m struggling, he’s just like, “Bro!’ (Because he’s from Staten Island), “Just do this!” I’ve never collaborated with anyone in the writing; perhaps there’s ego or something else involved. But after you get past that, I’ve found that 99% of the time, when Kenny says, “Bro, just fucking do that,” he nails it.

As far as the actual recording, most of it was done in 10 days in Stinson Beach, at this amazing studio. We were put up by dear friends in San Francisco for a week to practice the songs and to prepare. And that’s kind of the amount I wanted to be prepared; I didn’t want to be overprepared. My idea was to get this group of friends together in a living room and push record and put the thing out. But it turned into much bigger project in the end, so I took it to New Orleans, and to upstate New York, and Los Angeles. I got some different people to do some overdubbing. And then Malachi [DeLorenzo], who has been my longtime friend and drummer, he mixed it and put it together, along with our friend Jeremy Black, out in Oakland.

RLR: The thread of being “lost” or feeling somewhat at odds with things is strong on this album, but there’s also a strong sense of comfort with that feeling and real confidence in many of the songs. How does that description land with you?

LS: It doesn’t sound on or off. However it hits the listener is pretty much fine by me. I’m just trying to make the best records I can, put ‘em out, and keep moving forward. Maybe it’s because this group of songs is the newest, but I think it’s my favorite of the records I’ve done. It came together with the right people and in a cohesive way that felt very true to me. And that’s really all I’m searching for, is the real raw deal. I mean, I’m never totally comfortable, and I don’t think any artistic person ever is, which is why we feel a need to create. So it’s more about embracing the beauty and the terror that we all experience in this place.  

RLR: I love the image of the rooms in the house of my soul. It sounded familiar to me and I found two examples, from Saint Augustine and Khalil Gibran. So, if it’s OK, I’ll read a bit of this Khalil Gibran poem, “Song of The Soul,” and get your reaction to it.

 

In the depth of my soul there is

A wordless song–a song that lives

In the seed of my heart.

It refuses to melt with ink on

Parchment; it engulfs my affection

In a transparent cloak and flows,

But not upon my lips.

How can I sing it? I fear it may

Mingle with earthly ether;

To whom shall I sing it? It dwells

In the house of my soul, in fear of

Harsh ears.

 

LS: Wow. It gave me the chills.

RLR: The Saint Augustine piece is darker…

LS: My song and the place where it was born was more of the place of the poem you just read. One of my friends who was recording it misunderstood the line, or I wasn’t singing it clear, and late at night in the studio, he took me aside as was like, “I just don’t know about that song: ‘you lock the rooms to the house of my soul.’ He’d heard it in this very dark, sad way.

And for me what it was hearing those words coming out of my mouth to a person when I was in a courting phase. It had been a while for me since I had felt those sort of feelings. If I fall, I fall pretty hard, and go for it, and that can be beautiful and terrible, depending on the situation. But with this person, they were sort of perplexed about how I could be expressing these feelings so quickly. To them, I described it as, “You know how it feels like there are these rooms in your soul and sometimes you’re sort of oblivious to it, or the lights have gone out, or the door has shut, or there’s no music or energy in them. And when you walk in the room or when I see you, you light the rooms to the house of my soul.” And then I thought to myself, “Well, fuck. If I don’t get the girl, that’s going to be a good line for a song.” Just that feeling is so incredibly powerful.

 

 RLR: I feel like you’ve used this idea to talk about music too.

LS: When I say I fall hard, I’m not talking about romance, I’m talking about love in a more general sense. And music, romantic love, it all taps into the same sort of unsayable, unearthly kind of energy that was also in that poem. It’s of a higher plane and I don’t pretend to understand it and sometimes I kind of roll my eyes when I read interviews with people who talk like they do understand it. Maybe they do, but how do we know where that need or creative energy comes from? I personally think we’re more vessels for it and for love than we control it or possess it. It’s more just being present and embracing it when it comes, whether it be in music or friendship or love or cooking or writing or whatever moves someone.

RLR: You dedicate “Funny Feeling” to Junior Kimbrough and Ted Hawkins, and reference Junior’s song “Meet Me In The City,” in the song. These are two really different musicians–how did you come to their music and what is its impact on you?

LS: Different from each other?

RLR: Yeah.

LS: It doesn’t strike me that way. Both are incredibly soulful and badass and raw and powerful. That’s why I love Wu Tang Clan as much I love Minor Threat as much as I love Leadbelly or Woody Guthrie. It’s all punk rock to me. The impetus to that tune was I was driving around late at night and I actually didn’t know that Kimbrough tune. I was a little late to Junior Kimbrough where Ted Hawkins has been in my life for a long time and is completely underrated and one of the all-time greats. But there was this late night blues radio show on and I heard “Meet Me in the City”. Probably dangerously, I put my phone out to hear who it was. That melody and the line stuck with me and I tried to emulate that. It’s not really how I play guitar, but it’s a style that I love. I used the line, I used the melody, and put my own words and story to it. But it also seemed reflective of something I love about Ted Hawkins’s music, where he’ll throw in a minor chord where some people wouldn’t, and the song is very major and upbeat, but there’s also this sorrow and sadness; joy and optimism as well. A lot of my favorite music [does that]–John Prine is a great example–where you could be laughing and crying at the same time. I’m always listening to a lot of Ted Hawkins and that was my attempt to marry the two with my own white Jewish boy contribution.

 

 RLR: The first time I saw you live was at The Sinclair and I was struck by your ability to draw the audience in; and what I said to my friend afterward was: he’s a soul singer.

LS: I appreciate that. For me, I thrive greatly on connection in the performance. When there is a big barrier between myself and the audience, you know, a fifty foot high stage, it’s more difficult to tap into that. Whether it’s 50 people or 5,000 people, and there is a real unified connection and everybody sort of forgets, at least for that hour and half, whatever nonsense we’re worried about: that feeling for me is among the highest levels of transcendence.

If you’ve seen Langhorne live before, you know the story. If you haven’t, you don’t want to miss out. You can check out tour dates here.