In his review for Allmusic, music critic Richie Unterberger wrote "The support crew is a bit tentative; it's evident that they hadn't played much with Hardin, and in places the tempo comes close to breaking down.

It's still a good, effective performance; Hardin is in good voice (a condition which apparently couldn't be readily counted on, even in his early days), and on the songs that had already been released on his first two albums, the arrangements vary from the recorded versions in interesting fashions.

"[1] However, according to vibraphonist Mike Mainieri, the musicians had played with Hardin extensively: In fact, Bernhardt, Donald and I moved up to Woodstock to be next to the talented poet and singer-songwriter and rehearsed with him constantly.

In musical terms, one never knew if Tim was going to add one bar or two to a phrase or skip a beat, or completely miss a verse or a chorus.

On this particular night at Town Hall, Tim was in terrible shape and what seemed like hesitancy on the part of us 'jazz' musicians was the result of us having to guess when he would strike the next chord or suddenly move to another section of the song.