Langhorne Slim w. Dean Johnson: Evanston Folk Fest Aftershow

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When the festival ends at 8:30pm each night, the music doesnt stop. Well be bringing the festivities indoors for after shows at SPACE and Cahn Auditorium featuring full sets from some true legends. ______Please Note: There is a delivery delay on all ticket orders until approximately two weeks prior to the show.______Langhorne Slim didnt write a song for more than a year. A battle with clinical anxiety disorder and prescription drug abuse, which came to a head in 2019, had dimmed the light within. The man who once seemed to ooze spontaneity was now creatively adrift, stumbling along in the fog.In December, he entered a program and, for the first time in a long time, a path toward healing began to emerge. He began to see that inner peace was possible, even with the world outside raging.A few months later, in February, a tornado came and decimated East Nashville, his adopted hometown. Covid-19 took root just days later, changing lives forever. In the early days of his recovery, a different reality was beginning to take shape, both within and without. New worlds were being born; old worlds were dying.Knowing he was struggling to write songs and make sense of it all, Slim was finally able to flesh out a throwaway ditty one afternoon. His close friend Mike then suggested he try penning a song a day. Slim didnt like the idea, but he gave it a shot.To his surprise, the songs came. In a flurry of stream-of-consciousness writing, the new tunes tumbled out, one after another, like little starbursts of joy, gifts from the gods you might say. Slim was tuning out the noise and finding beauty in the madness of a world coming undone. Over the course of a couple of months from March to May, Slim penned more than twenty that were certified keepers. Out of this bumper crop came the songs that make up his new album, Strawberry Mansion, which is being released this winter on Dualtone Records.I wasnt sitting on the songs and I wasnt overthinking them, Slim says of the writing process of those months. Something cracked open with the slowing down and the stillness of quarantine.After finishing a song, whether he liked the tune or not, hed call Mike, a videographer, and theyd record it and post it to Instagram. It was a form of therapy, he now realizes. There was nothing precious about the process and it was a bonding thing between me and Mike as much as anything else, Slim says. It also gave me a release and maybe some potential form of healing, and was an opportunity to not always listen to the shitty thoughts in my head. I wasnt ever thinking that I was writing songs for a new record.

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