See + Hear: Laundromatinee live session | Newport Folk Festival recording

Catching Up With... Langhorne Slim
PasteMagazine.com * September 29, 2009
by Emily Riemer

Langhorne Slim got his start touring with eclectic novelty band the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players. To this day, he is deeply loyal to the group that gave him his start, but Slim has more than forged his own path since then.

This past summer, he toured with Josh Ritter and his band, including an appearance at Lollapalooza and a couple East Coast folk festivals. Unfazed by these seemingly incongruous bookings, Langhorne admits he is at his best when playing live. But with his latest album Be Set Free (out today on Kemado) he is the proudest he's ever been of his singing and of this album, which offers a smoother, more refined take on his banjo-picking, alt-bluegrass sound.

When he caught up with Paste, he discussed Kanye West and Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards, his love of smaller venues and bigger crowds at his shows, and the trials and tribulations of writing the bubble-gum pop hit of the summer:

Paste: How's it going?

Langhorne Slim: I think that Beyonce had a big night last night [at the VMAs] and Lady GaGa had a big night last night. I think next year it's my turn.

Paste: I think that's fair. I like your song, "Say Yes." Can you put "Say Yes" up for the VMAs?

Slim: Well, that's what we're gonna work on this year. You gotta keep it going. Did you watch the VMAs last night?

Paste: I watched the Kanye West debacle.

Slim: Yeah, what is this guy doing?

Paste: I don't know. Why are they even letting him on the stage?

Slim: I don't think they do. I think that he's Kanye West. I think the dude is probably insanely talented.

Paste: Yeah. He is talented, of course, but surely these backstage people are seeing him coming and they know what's about to happen.

Slim: You might be right. It's caused controversy. I mean, we're talking about it right now... What we wouldn't normally be talking about. So I'm sure it's good for the show and everything like that. I mean, the girl won. There are other ways of saying I don't think she should have won. That's why I don't watch these shows anymore. I don't think most of these people should be winning. It's not that I don't like them as human beings, it's just that a lot of the popular kind of stuff isn't always my favorite kind of stuff.

Paste: Well, you get to MTV, and that'll be good.

Slim: I just want to have the big summer hit. Kanye's been calling me to do a song and now I think I'm just going to have to say no because he's been a little disrespectful to that young woman.

Paste: Speaking of TV appearances, you were on David Letterman a year and a half ago and it got you a lot of attention. You are a great live performer and you do shows that get a lot of buzz. But I was curious how that compares to a TV audience, also live but very different, and if that changes the situation.

Slim: It is live. But it's a totally different sort of thing. It's people there to see this whole show that is a very famous show. And in our case, last year, there might have been three to five people who knew who we were in the audience. And I have a feeling that was my mom, and [our] family and friends. So it changes. And also, just to be honest with you, it's scary. I've been waiting for that call my whole life that I can remember. And, yet, when I got it... I felt like we were ready, but I was still really nervous.

I think that the way they have it set up when you get there, it does have such a casual vibe to it, that it makes it easier to just do your thing. Everybody on the set, I mean, we didn't get to meet David Letterman or anything, but everybody else [are] total pros. They do it every day, sometimes two times. They do it a million times.

Everybody was super-sweet to us, and just like, "Get out there and do your thing." I feel like the song that we did was kind of a mellower song so that was one side of what we do. One kind of song that I write. I would love to do [laughs] like a freak out song to show the different sides of what we do...And be less nervous, and have more fun with it. 'Cuz that's really what all this is about but it's hard to keep it in mind all the time.

Paste: Well, I've watched David Letterman a lot, and when he came out after you played, he seemed to have genuinely liked it. You can tell when a late-night talk show host is thinking, "Ok, I don't know why we booked these people." But he seemed to get into it and was impressed, and you certainly got a good reaction to that appearance.

Slim: Other people have said that as well. I was so... kind of like... in the moment. I couldn't really tell what was going on. But other people had said that who worked on the show. It's always nice. It's the same as when a sound guy comes up to you in a club and says, "I'm here every night for the last 30 years. I really, really loved your show." I mean, that means a lot because these people are doing these things for their jobs.

Paste: You performed at Lollapalooza in Chicago this past August. I was wondering how you feel about a big fest like that as opposed to a smaller bar or a club.

Slim: Oh, I like 'em both. Lollapalooza worked out great for us. When it works in your favor and you're playing for a few thousand people, I don't know how many people were watching us, a thousand or more, and everybody is throwing down, I really like that. You know, if it's 50 people throwing down, I really like that. When we come through towns and there's 25 people there, and they're having a good time at the show, that's a beautiful feeling. But still, I want it, next time through, to be more people. When I have an opportunity to, hopefully, shine in these bigger events, then that's very exciting.

Paste: Compare Newport Folk Festival to Lolla.

Slim: We did [Newport Folk Festival] and we did Philly Folk Festival. They're really contained where Lollapalooza is in Grant Park, which feels terribly massive.

Paste: Yeah. It is gigantic. It takes half an hour to walk from one end to the other.

Slim: Right. And a festival like Newport, which, it was our first time getting invited to do that, is very contained on beautiful grounds right by the water and it's very kind of family... To me, it was a Paste/NPR kind of [thing]. You know what I mean?

Paste: Yeah. NPR did cover it too.

Slim: Right, right. It's a certain kind of a vibe, whereas Lollapalooza... well, I know Paste was there. It's just a different kind of thing. One thing I preferred about Newport is that the lineup this year was ridiculous. Just really, really good. And you can see a lot more. You can see a lot at Lollapalooza, but if I have too many things in my mind that I want to go do, I just [want to] go back to the hotel room and go to sleep or something. Newport, you can look at the list, it's not that many bands or that many performers, and you can see most everybody.

Paste: But it is a testament to you too because you do straddle these genres and you're playing a folk festival with families and you're playing Lolla, which is what it is.

Slim: Yeah, we can do that. I think a lot of bands probably can do that, but it's just... I hope we don't fit into one kind of a thing. I never want that to be the case.

Paste: Moving on to Be Set Free, what do you want people to know about this album as it's coming out?

Slim: I think it's a stronger record than the ones we've done in the past. I was just trying to write better songs and be more comfortable in the studio. The biggest thing for me, when I got into the studio, was to try to be a better singer on this record than I've been on the other ones. It's a different thing. Singing in front of an audience, and singing in front of a producer, and an engineer, and a few of your other closest friends. You're in the studio for hours and hours and hours. So, I think it's a different kind of talent that I've been a little slow to grasp. I think I sang a lot better on this record. I hope that anyone who follows us would agree. But overall, all that we want, and I think what any band wants is just to continue to grow and get better. I mean, I wrote songs throughout the year, I was living in Northern California and writing for this record and just getting out to Portland and doing it. This needs to be the best record we've ever done. Because every time you do it, that's the driving thing.

Paste: So you really think it's easier to sing in front of a live audience than it is to sing in a studio?

Slim: I personally do, yeah. Because, for me, I feel like I'm more comfortable in front of a live audience. This time I felt pretty good in the studio. But yeah, there's something about a live audience that brings something out in me, that is difficult to bring out... to find it within myself in the studio. At the same time, I think they're two different art forms and they don't have to be. I think we're going to do a live record this year. So hopefully, that will show what we do live to people who don't see us live but just want to hear records. I think you can experiment, and dig into these songs, in ways that you can't necessarily at a live show and in the studio. And so it's challenging and exciting to do that. I don't know why I feel at home on stage in front of people but I do. I feel good in that setting.

Paste: Is there any one thing you want people to know going forward or anything you want to say about the work you're doing?

Slim: Yeah. We're actually in Milwaukee right now, rehearsing for everything that's coming up. Rehearsing with our new keyboard player. And that's been really exciting. I think anybody that's come out to see us live in the past will be happily surprised with where the show is going. And musically, I think what our new keyboard player is adding is going to be very exciting for us and for anybody else who's following us.

Paste: What is your life like on the tour? Do you enjoy it?

Slim: Yeah, sure. I love it. This is something we haven't done before. What we're about to do is, I think, a week and a half or two weeks of just promo shows. Which is just in-stores at record stores and live performances and interviews on the radio in different towns. So that'll be a new experience. So I'll tell you whether I like that afterwards 'cause I don't know yet. I hopefully will. And then, when you have a little bit of time off, which, we try not to have too much, you itch to get back out there. And then when you're out there for a couple of months... It's sort of the first time in my life that when I have two weeks off I can sort of sit. So that's been a new thing in my life, that I could do that. But now I've been doing that for a little bit so I'm ready to start working again.

Paste: How do you travel on the tour?

Slim: I heard that Paste is going to get us a bus... No, we have a nice, maroonish-purple van that we travel around in.

Paste: You appeared with Josh Ritter this past summer, right?

Slim: Yeah, we did that with [Ritter and his band], which was really a whole lot of fun. Sam Kassirer, who's Josh's keyboard player, is one of my best friends and produced our last record, and played on our last record, and played on this record, and we've gotten to be really friendly with the rest of those guys too.

Paste: Any plans to get back together with the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players?

Slim: We did a show with Jason in Brooklyn not that long ago, I think it was our last, bigger New York show. Maybe last year. I would love to do that. They were the first people that took me on the road with them. [We] used to play a lot, at a place called the Sidewalk Cafe in East Village in New York. So, they had seen me play and were like, "Yeah, you can come out, do some shows, come out on tour." So, it gave me my first real experience for what I do for my life. They've been incredible friends, and I can't really say enough about those guys.