Langhorne Slim needed a mythology.
Slim, who will perform at the Iron Horse Music Hall tomorrow, entered into a precedent when he started playing his blue-infused folk rock, popular form of a genre rooted in tall-tales and anonymously-penned ballads of grossly over exaggerated feats of strength.
A mythology is mandatory.
There were more stories for how Leadbelly got his name than there were songs in his repertoire. Woody Guthrie's biography is as entertaining as the ballads he wrote - spur of the moment - that can be found by the scores in the Library of Congress. Bob Dylan hijacked the first name of a Welsh poet and lied to anyone who asked him about it for decades.
But in an age where legal names can be found on the internet and the life of the ramblin' man must be buttressed by a couple grand in gas money, a mythology is hard to come by.
Sometimes you have to do it yourself.
"I was patiently waiting for somebody to give me a nickname that I thought suited me," Slim told NPR in May. "The truth of it is, when I was young, I really wanted to be a black blues singer, and it's taken me up to 27 [years] to realize that's not gonna' happen for me."
Slim, formerly Sean Scolnick, named himself after his hometown in Pennsylvania.
"I just thought it just sounded cool and sort of fit in the tradition of the music I was listening to at the time," he said.
His songs are often peopled with folksy love interests like "Mary" (who is "sweeter than corn on the cob") and "Loretta Lee Jones," - often pursued by first-person wanderlusts with a tendency to overindulge.
"I packed a picnic lacking seriously on food/had more wine than I knew what with to do," he sings in "Restless," off his self-titled album released this April.
Slim's music also focuses more on the simpler pleasures in life. In "Diamonds and Gold" also off "Restless," he warns, "you can have all the diamonds/and all the gold/but someday you're still gonna' get old/gotta learn to get happy along the way."
But Slim told the Nashville Scene in September that his message applies more to himself than anyone else.
"I'm not preaching to anybody, I'm talking to myself," he said. "That's really for me to figure out to be in the moment a little bit more, and appreciate what's going on when it's going on."
Slim and the War Eagles will be stopping off in Northampton before embarking on a European tour at the end of October, promoting the April release of his self-titled album, which was actually recorded in 2006 and slated for release the following year. Unfortunately for Slim, his label, V2 Records, folded before the release and the album was put off until he could find a new label.
Slim found a home in New York-based Kemado Records and released his eponymous album this year.
The energetic folk singer has crafted an image as folksy as his pseudonym. His upper-arm is adorned with a nautical anchor and his trademark pork-pie hat would seem glued to his head if it didn't have a tendency to fall off when he hammers too vigorously at his acoustic guitar.
It's all a part of the mythology.
He plays hard. He breaks strings. He sings about booze and lost lovers and being on the road. The War Eagles smoke cigarettes during and between songs.
And their instruments look as battered as Slim's boots.
Slim will bring his mythology and the War Eagles, which consists of Paul Defiglia on the upright bass and Malachi DeLorenzo on drums, to Northampton tomorrow. Slim and the War Eagles will be headlining a show with indie-blues band the Heartless Bastards and the all-female folk trio Those Darlins.
Langhorne Slim and the War Eagles will play at the Iron Horse Music Hall at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10 in advance and $12 at the door.
S.P. Sullivan can be reached at spsulliv@dailycollegian.com.
Be the first to comment on this article!