When Langhorne Slim played an afternoon showcase at the Americana Music Festival this past September in Nashville, he had the audience in the palm of his hand with just an acoustic guitar and some emotionally delivered songs. At one point, his microphone cut out and he wandered into the crowd to sing directly in their faces. It was the type of intimate yet bristling with energy performing style that Slim — born Sean Scolnick — has built a career on. But for his new album The Dreamin’ Kind, he allowed himself to dial up both the amps and the bombast.
Out Friday, The Dreamin’ Kind is Langhorne Slim going electric.
“In many ways,” he tells Rolling Stone of the plugged-in pivot during an appearance on the Nashville Now podcast. “A dream that I’ve had for a long time that is coming true with this record.”
Slim manifested that dream with the help of two bona fide rock & roll stars: Greta Van Fleet bassist Jake Kiszka, who produced the album and played bass, piano, and synth, and Greta drummer Danny Wagner who handled percussion. With a heavy-hitting rhythm section behind him, Slim was empowered to let loose on songs like the euphoric “Rock N Roll,” the big-star aspirations of “Dream Come True,” and “On Fire,” a danceable jam that opens with a voicemail from the artist’s grandmother.
Yet Slim didn’t seek out Kiszka and Wagner: Rather, they found him. After catching one of his gigs at the Basement in Nashville, they approached Slim to come and jam. He politely declined.
“I said, ‘Oh, that sounds lovely, but I’m a little tired.’ Because I’m not used to going and writing and just playing with other people,” Slim says. “I’ve had my same band for many, many years, and I’ve written songs with a few close friends, but I was a little bit like ehh.”
Kiszka was persistent.
“Sam, in his beautiful, enthusiastic way, kept texting: ‘I think you should come over,’” says Slim, who ultimately relented. “We had fun… And then we just became very, very good friends. Daniel and Sam are just wizards of music, of enthusiasm. They’re just inspired. They got the fire, baby. I’m very grateful that they had the time and the desire to make the record with me.”
The collaboration awoke something dormant in Slim, specifically the intense feeling that live music can often summon. It’s an experience he’s had a few times in his past, from watching his cousin’s punk band rehearse in a basement in New Jersey, to the first time hearing Otis Redding on the radio.
“I would write this riff that I wouldn’t normally for some of my other albums or songs, take it over to Sam’s place, and we’d get excited and call Danny over,” he says. “[We’d] plug in a guitar, play it loudly, and have these two badasses just jam it out.
“We were basically like a garage-rock band, just coming together through admiration of each other’s offerings, and just for fun,” he continues. “And that’s how it started. I think that’s something that Sam saw in me — he knew that I loved all kinds of music, and maybe there were certain flavors that I still wanted to taste that I hadn’t gotten to yet. He offered me some new ice cream, and we ate.”
But while The Dreamin’ Kind decidedly rocks, Slim, who made his bones with mainly acoustic songs, says it remains a record of folk songs. “I still think of this music as folk music — if folk music is music for the people,” he says. “All the good raw shit is folk music in that sense.”
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by senior music editor Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Lainey Wilson, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Kings of Leon, Breland, Bryan Andrews, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Ink, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, and Clever.
