Perhaps it's merely a matter of home-state pride, but I've long held the belief that good things come from Pennsylvania. Gene Kelly, Bill Cosby, Joan Jett, Jeff Goldblum, Hershey's Chocolate, Heinz Ketchup, Yuengling Beer, Martin Guitars — all good and all from PA. Another to add to the list: Langhorne Slim, who took the name of his small, Eastern Pennsylvania hometown as part of his moniker. Slim (born Sean Scolnick) and his band, The Law, played at the Crowbar on Monday night.
I'd seen Slim and his band when they came through Tampa last September, so while I knew I wasn't going to be disappointed in my decision to stay up late on a Monday night, I was worried that the show would fall short of the previous time. Having had no expectations, the September show had been a revelation. I had always enjoyed Slim's albums; I listened to them while riding my bike through the orange groves in Central Florida, so they held in them those hazy, humid, fragrant mornings. Live, Slim had picked the oranges, put them in a satin pillowcase, and beat me over the head with them — in the best of ways. This is what I had hoped for at the show Monday night: to feel as stunned as I felt the first time.
Al Torchia and the Tattered Saints opened the show. Some bands wear their influences on their sleeves. Torchia et al. wore entire suits of theirs — namely, Bruce Springsteen. I expected to see a little red bandanna hanging out of Torchia's back pocket as he whirled and kicked his way across the stage with his Fender Telecaster. Like The Boss, Torchia and the Saints delivered radio-friendly, American-made arena rock: music for long summers in the Florida sun with a never-ending case of ice-cold PBR and lots of girls in skimpy stars-and-stripes bathing suits.
A little after 10 p.m., the Law took to the stage in front of a densely packed audience. Slim followed shortly after and strapped on his acoustic guitar. In weathered army boots, an unbuttoned red vest and his signature feathered derby hat, the lanky singer looked like several different eras of Bob Dylan smashed into one. But then he began to sing in his sometimes soaring, sometimes plaintive voice, he was distinctly himself. No one else sounds like Slim.
Wikipedia refers to his music as "Alternative Country" — perhaps because of the extensive use of David More's frenetic banjo, Malachi DeLorenzo's rollicking drums and Jeff Ratner's twangy upright bass — but more than anything, what I heard was gospel-infused soul borne out of late night visits to Southern churches or hours spent in dusty attics, drinking gin and listening to old, warped records. If Torchia's music was American-made, Slim's was (to borrow slightly from Flannery O'Connor) American-haunted, fraught with the usual tropes of the American down-trodden: lost love, the open road, the looming understanding that no one gets out of here alive.
His are not jovial songs bursting with glitter or sunshine, but Slim is a performer not to be weighted down by his words or his past. His whoops, foot-stomps and gyrations, the light-footed leaps up onto his guitar amp, the playful improvisations about his microphone going limp in the middle of a song showed a man fully in the moment, not fretting over what happened yesterday or a year ago, a man recognizing that yes, sometimes life sucks, but it can be a hell of a lot of fun, too. And he was determined to make sure we were all there having fun with him, asking us to sing and clap along as he scooted across the stage. Throughout several songs, Slim reached out into the audience, high-fiving and clasping onto random hands, as though to prove that he meant it when he sang, "If you got worries, then you're like me. Don't worry now, I won't desert you." During the encore, Slim handed his guitar to his guitar tech, hopped off the stage and wove through the audience as he finished his last song.
Leaving the show, did I feel as stricken as I had back in September? Sadly, no. As with most things, the first time, being novel, is the most special. However, if Langhorne Slim and the Law come back to Tampa in another six months or so, I'll be there with my dancing shoes on.
This article appears in Mar 15-21, 2012.