A guide to Nashville with Langhorne Slim in Nashville, Tennessee
Singer-songwriter Langhorne Slim is a rare act. He’s a rock ‘n’ roller with cowboy boots, a blues man with raw emotion, always leaving his soul on stage. His acoustic sets are just as electrifying as his boot-stomping, folk-rock dance anthems. Originally from Langhorne, PA, he now lives in Nasvhille, TN and more often than not he’s traveling with his band as Langhorne Slim & The Law.
Over a phone interview, Langhorne told us how he found a home in Nashville and what it’s like to spend more time on tour than in his own house.
Tell us about Nashville. What’s it like to live there? Nashville has a kind of energy that I haven’t found anywhere else. I find it to be a very creative place, and a loving and supportive town. A lot of people here do in one form or another what I do so I feel it’s a common ground of deep souls. It’s inspiring and you feel understood.
Where are some of your favorite places to tour? My favorite places are where the shows are the best that night. That could be in New York on one tour and Wyoming on another. I would say it’s unpredictable.
What has surprised you the most about touring? It’s when I think if it’s going to be a good or bad show that I’m the most surprised. When I don’t have any expectation and I just deliver the best that I can, that is when people seem to react in a similar manner. People seem to have a similar experience when they are connected, when they are moved. At this point I just try to get to the core of that and deliver an honest performance.
Photo credit: @imjakegiles, via @langhorneslim
What’s your favorite way to interact with fans, before, during and after the show? Through the music, playing the show and connecting with the audience through performance.
What has been the most surreal moment in your career so far? I live very much day by day. I don’t have one surreal moment to speak about. Show by show when you talk to people and you feel like they’re connecting deeply to the music, that’s a powerful and surreal and humbling thing. We’ve had opportunities to play on Conan O’Brien, which I’ve watched since I was a little kid, and hang out with him and he’s played with the band and that’s been surreal and exciting. It continues to be surreal all the time, getting to travel and play music for a living and meet and talk to different people.
Langhorne Slim on Conan O’Brien via @langhorneslim
How do you get oriented in a new city? I don’t. I wander around. I’ve been to a lot of places but I’ve seen very little of those places. When you tour the way that I have which is by car and van, you drive most of the day, show up at the place, I look for the closest vegetarian place to eat or a thrift store, and then I go play the concert. So I would say as far as geographically speaking, I’ve been disoriented most of my life. I’ve tried to find different ways to orient my energy so that I can feel somewhat at home or grounded wherever I am.
When you’re on tour, what do you miss the most about your city? My house. And I miss people, connecting with people that I love. I found more of a concentration of that in Nashville than I have in another places. I moved to that town for the people and for the “one-a-kind-ness” of love that I’ve found there much more than I did for say, restaurants, bars or shops.
Which bands/artists are you listening to these days? James Wallace and the Naked Light. Twain. Daniel Romano. Those are some artists that we’ve been able to tour with lately that I’m a big fan of.
Band photo by Joel Sadler. Nashville photos by Alex Hart Ciaramitaro.