NEW YORK, THE GRATEFUL DEAD, AND THE GAME SHOW NETWORK
With Langhorne Slim
photo courtesy of tradmusic.com
Langhorne Slim: I really hope there isn't a driving while talking on a cell phone law here [in Philadelphia ]. I just passed a cop, so if you don't hear anything, I probably just got pulled over.
Scoop Mendoza: How do people usually address you?
LS: Usually just Langhorne. I'm not real secretive about my real name, though. It's Sean Scolnick. My friends usually just call me Sean.
SM: Who are the members in your band and how did you find them?
LS: My friend, Paul (DeFiglia, drums) went to NYU and so did this bass player (Malachi DeLorenzo), and basically we just met up at Malachi's and I played them some of my songs, and we just hit it off from the beginning. I was looking for an upright bass player in New York to play the kind of music I was trying to play and get along with him very, very well. Musicians who are willing to devote so much time, maybe not make a whole lot of money in their life—they're hard to find. I met these two guys right away. It's worked for these two years so far.
SM: How do you explain to someone the style of music you play?
LS: I try very hard to avoid that. I just say—I don't really say anything. I get uptight and walk away. I don't know. I guess, country, blues, rock and roll. I say that and then you know, I guess some people call it Americana .
SM: Your album was extremely strong in WVFI's charts last fall. One of the elements I enjoyed was the instrumental interludes. Was there a whole lot of planning and development in the idea behind the interludes?
LS: Basically what we did was had so many songs—it was also my first album too—I had a lot of these older songs and a lot of these newer songs that basically we would just start recording. Say we would try to record, and we just weren't feeling it, then because there were these instruments lying around, it would just kinda be this natural thing. We would take a break, and I would do this little thing. (As he's driving) Oh, no turn on red. Whoops. Also I'm a very terrible piano player, and when I find a melody I really like, I get really proud of myself. I was dicking around and I liked the way the Hanshaw Shuffle sounded and then I toyed the idea with how a Daniel Johnson or Beck would have interludes, and in hip hop music all the time, Daniel Johnson getting yelled at by his mother, Beck doing a scenario, with those sort of things when it worked, it was really awesome. That was sort of my version of that. I wasn't getting yelled at by my mother or having a scenario. It was just nice to have a different kind of sound on there.
SM: You claim you love to dance. What is your favorite style of dancing and what was the best dance you ever had? Or… is the whole song just an innuendo?
LS: It's definitely an innuendo. Though I do love to dance, it's mainly just alone by myself, naked and drunk. But I saw a documentary on Jimmy Stewart, and he apparently was a serious playboy back in the day in Hollywood and the interviewer was asking some kind of question to try to get him be a little racy and name names of starlets that he had slept with, and he just looked at the guy, very classy, and said “I've met a lot of women in this business, and they were all great dancers, and I love to dance.”
SM: How long have you been a New Yorker and how much of the year are you usually there?
LS: I've lived in various places in New York for the last seven years, but as far as how many months, I don't even really know. At this point, I'm going to be away pretty much every month until November. At this point it hardly seems like I live there anymore. When I do go back, when we're not touring, I'm out in Philly with my family. I spend a lot of time there. In New York , there's more space for me. My girlfriend has a nice place where you can play the stereo late at night and not have problems. If you live in NY and you don't have a lot of money, I guess you love the city and all the shit it has to offer, but as far as comfort in terms of privacy, it's hard to come by. Even when I could be in NY, I am usually not [there].
SM: Are there a lot of New York musicians similar to your style?
LS: I think that there are a lot of guys and girls out there who are doing acoustic music and people who are very interested in taking from older, American music or Americana or blues-based music. There are some that I think are fairly similar as far as the shows as far as energy, jumping around while playing that form of music. I would hope there's not too many bands because that's bad for me.
I very much, for better or worse in my own little bubble, found it hard to break out of it all. As far as a lot of the things that happen—if there is a trend in music in NY, it can come and go, and I'm not aware of it until it's already gone or something like that. The bands that get popular, I think that they try to put things together so that it is sort of a trend. I think about it sometimes, but I don't know if people want to sound like another band. I don't think guys get together and say “Hey, we want to sound like Interpol” or “Yeah Yeah Yeahs” or something like that. It just happens.
It certainly could go that other way, but I'm just not aware of it. Certainly I've sat down and thought about writing a song like somebody, but I guess I've always been attracted to the music of people that are now dead.
SM: Who plays the banjo on your album?
LS: That's Charles Butler, who I met at Purchase College . My friend and I liked similar kinds of music and I said I would love to play this, but I don't know if there's that many banjo players in New York that are interested in bluegrass kind of rock and roll, and he said actually there is a guy that's a really good banjo as he said that, the door opened, and this particular guy opened the door and was walking down the hall. So this friend of mine introduced me to him, and he's played with me. When we did our show in Nashville , he played with us. Sometimes I have a melody in my head that I've written, I'll hum or whistle or sing or something and see if it works in the song, but a guy like him, he is so good technically and also creatively, too. I just tell him, “Do whatever the hell you want.”
SM: Have you ever owned an electric guitar?
LS: I started on an acoustic guitar, and then I got an electric, but it became clear to me, that I used to just think that I would never play with other people. I didn't think I was finding people I could get along with or would be serious, so I got into a lot of one-man and guitar kind of music blues and country stuff. I owned an electric guitar, and then I spray-painted it and broke it. It's a bad idea to spray-paint an electric pickup. I've been planning on getting a new one though.
5 CLICHÉ INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:
SM: What CDs are you listening to?
LS: It's mainly cassette tapes because we're touring in a Toyota Camry, but Canned Heat Greatest Hits which is f*cking great, just got some Bill Monroe said that guy was the greatest banjo player I'd ever heard. Hobart Smith. We got Van Zant's live tape.
SM: What would you like people to get out of listening to your music?
LS: The meaning of life. No, just hopefully enjoyment is the only thing I'd want people to—I try to write music that you would feel good listening to or dance or something that
SM: What do you enjoy when you're not playing or writing? Any interesting hobbies?
LS: I've got to find one. I really don't have one, other than music, I have not figured it out. I think everyone needs more than one thing going on. I was thinking about needlepoint a few years ago. I don't think I'm actually going to take that up. I'm still trying to figure it out.
SM: Do you have any books to recommend for summer reading?
LS: I read a couple David Sedaris books “Me Talk Pretty Someday.” My girlfriend recommended it. I read half of it, and then I was reading it too slowly and then she took it. “Devil in the White City ” by Erik Larson. It's in Chicago with this crazy serial killer from the World's Fair, and I guess it all really happened.
SM: Do you have a favorite game show?
LS: Oh, I like a lot of them, but I used to really like Press Your Luck. I watched it with my great grandmother. I've been watching… it took me a while to figure out what's going on, but that one with Howie Mandell?
SM: Deal or No Deal?
LS: Yeah, and they keep playing this one episode over and over again, with this fairly flamboyant guy. But he did that show a favor, he wound up winning a ton of money.
My grandfather's getting into one that I can't remember, I think there's actually a channel now where they just show game shows.
SM: Game Show Network?
LS: Yeah, there's this one on there where people reach in and grab balls—well…
SM: Lingo with Chuck Woolery?
LS: Yeah, I think that's it.
SM: So at the end of your set in St. Louis , you played a Grateful Dead cover—
LS: Wait, I did?
SM: Yeah, you said your last song, “I Will,” was a Dead Cover, and I didn't think it was.
LS: Ah, sometimes I say things that aren't really funny to be deceptive. With that crowd, I thought maybe if I mentioned the name Grateful Dead I'd get kind of a boo-and-hiss reaction. But no, that's not a Grateful Dead cover, I was just messing around.
SM: I was going to say—because my uncle toured with them, and I asked him about it, told him some of the lyrics, and he didn't think that was a Dead song.
LS: Wait, wait, wait. Your uncle was in the Grateful Dead—that's unbelievable.
SM: No, I just made that up. I had to get you back.
LS: Ah, but you got me really excited. I like the Grateful Dead. I think they get a bad rap. I'm not a big fan of a lot of their jam stuff, but I like them. For a long time I didn't like the Grateful Dead. I think I said that in that crowd too [in St. Louis], because me and my friends got their greatest hits at this truck stop just recently, and so many people in my experience don't like the Grateful Dead. But I just thought that in that crowd, people would maybe boo and hiss.