“I drink so much and have sex with lots of girls.” Langhorne Slim was mocking me. I’d tried to get him to say something embarrassing to open up. He was just so subdued. “I’m low-key in this conversation,” he said, but not all the time.

Flash forward two and a half hours later, and Slim (real name Sean Scolnick) had jumped to the rafters of IOTA, a small club in Arlington, VA, and was doing pull-ups to the loud cheers of a packed crowd. That’s the least of it. On stage he was a maniac—totally immersed in his music and charismatically in charge of the room.

Perhaps it was the shot of Jameson whiskey he slammed immediately prior to performing?

Whatever the explanation, Chris Matthews might have felt a thrill going up his leg. Although Langhorne Slim and the War Eagles (the band’s full name) are nominally a folk-rock outfit, the first song carried a punk beat. Slim danced, pranced, and strummed his guitar vertically, culminating the song with a drawn-out scream. Finally, drummer and producer Malachi DeLorenzo stood up and slammed his set with his brushes to reinforce the last few chords.

It’s easy to see why the band was recently called up to do David Letterman—the call Slim “has been waiting for [his] whole life.” He was happy, he said, his family could watch the performance because it’s a palpable measure of his musical success.

The band released its second album this month with a release party in New York City, where Slim until recently called home. The self-titled LP is more polished than the first but sometimes lags. The amateur exuberance of 2005’s When the Sun Goes Down is more satisfying.

Slim may not be Eric Clapton—he had trouble tuning his guitar onstage, which a fan said had happened before—but he is a hell of a performer and a smart songwriter. As for the songs, “sometimes I get lucky and I sit down and a song will just come out,” he said. “It’s almost—you know I feel guilty for saying I wrote it. It doesn’t feel that that’s really the case.”

If you’re wondering, he did graduate from the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College in New York City. But there was something far from studied at IOTA—a manic energy that turned ordinary songs exciting.

The band was certainly part of the equation. Paul Defiglia’s thumping upright bass was as entertaining to watch as to listen to because of his frenzied fingering, and drummer-producer Malachi DeLorenzo could hardly make it through a song sitting. Slim’s solo songs—during which DeLorenzo jokingly mouthed Slim’s love-song lyrics to Defiglia as they smoked—weren’t nearly as fun.

But who is Langhorne Slim? What explains his demeanor onstage vs. off?

He moved from New York City to California five months ago to live with his girlfriend Jessie, who he’s been with a year and a half. He has two dogs and enjoys the yard of his house as opposed to an urban environment. He drinks-before and during his performance at IOTA-but doesn’t party hard.

He wore tight red corduroy pants, beat up black boots, and his now trademark hat with an arrow sticking out. It was an “indie” look that didn’t quite match what came out. Slim smoked-a lot. I asked him about the war in Iraq (”we’re in pretty deep now”) and he required a cigarette to speak on the matter. Jessie gets on his case about it, he said.

Where was this suburban Langhorne Slim when he told the crowd they were a bunch of “sexy mother*******”? Or when he sang “I’m not an ordinary man / I wanna be extraordinary”?

Slim describes sometimes coming off stage thinking, “holy shit that just happened.” He compared the experience to an athlete in the midst of competition, not actively thinking about what’s happening but instead just experiencing it.

However he does it, it’s a whole lot of fun to watch.