“It’s beautiful to see you all,” Langhorne Slim told the shoulder-to-shoulder packed house at Ardmore Music Hall for today’s Free at Noon on the road. “I didn’t suspect we were fortunate enough we’d get to do this thing again — and I’m not sure I took it for granted before! I bet I did on occasion. Over the last couple years, it’s never been as sweet, and I consider this to be a divine dancefloor we’re all gathered on today.”
Slim was not exactly concise today in his banter with the crowd — at the mid-set point, he told a “short story long” tale about embracing therapy as a way to heal from the COVID blues and existential anxiety, talking for over five minutes before introducing “Panic Attack” — but it was honest, authentic, and from the heart — just like his music.
Starting out the show with a yelp and “It’s good to be home,” Langhorne Slim’s solo acoustic Free At Noon showcased last year’s Strawberry Mansion, from the contemplative “Morning Prayer” to the turbulent “Mighty Soul,” which zeroes in on Nashville’s double traumas of 2020 — “first a tornado, then a plague.”
As the set continued, Slim got pensive about the state of the world in the 2020s on “Changes,” then made a moving dedication to elders lost over the past two years on “Song For Sid,” which was performed off mic and impassioned. Closing the set was the uplifting, roaring cry from the belly of the beast, “The Way We Move.”
Listen to the entire concert below. Langhorne Slim plays another sold out set at Ardmore Music Hall tonight.