A double bill is doubly good when the co-headliners play a set together. 

So it went Jan. 25 when Langhorne Slim and Oliver Wood wrapped their shared solo-acoustic, and in Wood’s case solo-electric, too, show and tour with five songs “we wrote right before the tour.

“If they sound familiar, it’s just because we’re that good,” Slim said before the pair, both on acoustic guitars, harmonized on a loose rendition of Neil Young’s “Love is a Rose.” The duo professed their love for each other on the subsequent acoustic-blues arrangement of Bob Dylan’s “Buckets of Rain,” while tampering with the Bard’s lyrics. 

“Lay Me Down a Pallet on Your Floor” and “Rock Island Line,” with Wood on electric guitar and Slim sans axe, followed, before the gig ended with Leonard Cohen’s “Tonight Will be Fine.”

Which it had been. 

Said night began three hours earlier with Wood’s 11-song, 55-minute set drawing from Wood Brothers and solo albums with the Woods’ “Light and Sweet” and “Grab Ahold,” from Wood’s “sophomoric” (Oliver-speak for second) album, Fat Cat Silhouette being highlights. Wood also picked Tommy Johnson’s “Big Road Blues,” which found him yowling both at the mic and with the slide on his electric guitar. 

Wood kept the audience mostly quiet and also earned himself a standing ovation as he reveled at playing the “cool, little creepy place,” that is the Columbus Athenaeum’s Small Theatre. It’s situated in an old Masonic Temple, which was festooned with strings of white lights from ceiling to balcony rails and behind the performers on otherwise-spartan stage. 

“I hope before the night’s over, I can meet the grand master,” the denim-clad Wood said early on. “I think his name’s Langhorne Slim.” 

Where Wood walked on from backstage, Grand Master Slim, in gold-sequined jacket and cowboy hat, walked through the crowd to his place on stage. 

“Oliver said you guys are nice,” he said on arrival. “So, that’s good. … And I always like the last night of tour because I feel a little freaky.” 

Then, Slim got his freak on. 

“We’re livin’ in some fucked-up times,” he sung on the opening “WTF is Going On.” And where the audience was kind to Wood, it was ecstatic over Slim, singing along to “Changes” and “House of My Soul (You Light the Rooms),” which found him bouncing around the stage and egging on his audience into a sing- and dance-along party for 300. 

On stage and on his own, Slim is a joker and a storyteller who engages audiences in ways Todd Snider and John Craigie might. He was tender in talking about the birth of his son before playing the balladic “Song for Silver.” And Slim was self-deprecating and brutally honest before playing the abrasive “Panic Attack,” written in the throes of a titular breakdown. 

He went into the audience on “Song for Sid” and “Past Lives,” singing off-mic and allowing his guitar to lose amplification. For this performance was about the moment and the human connection – perfection was perhaps secondary, more likely tertiary.

Strangely, that playful tack ensured things worked out perfectly.