Iron & Wine: Navigating the High School Reunion of My Music Career

Long before the world fell in love with the music of Iron & Wine, and even before he knew that he wanted a career in music, Sam Beam knew that he loved making things. His parents, who didn’t necessarily understand their artsy kid but wanted to support him, kept Sam well-supplied in drawing paper and art supplies so that his imagination could run free. Sam knew that he was different from other kids but that didn’t bother him. In his early days of making music, Sam obsessively honed his skills as a producer so that he could present the most polished songs possible. It wasn’t until later that he realized that live performance was just as important a part of his craft. Following his own curiosity has enabled Sam to remain intellectually energized throughout two decades of touring and releasing music.

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One thing you might not know about Iron & Wine is that he has worked with the same manager for his entire career. When he met Howard Greynolds, Sam’s music career was just beginning to take off. Howard quickly proved that he cared more about the music than about getting money and credit. Their relationship has deepened and evolved over the years as Iron & Wine has become one of the most beloved singer-songwriters in folk music, and the music industry has reinvented itself in the age of streaming.

Iron & Wine is notoriously private and mysterious, but that might be about to change with the release of Who Can See Forever, a meditative documentary. The project started as a concert film but the director, Josh Sliffe, was able to convince Sam to sit for a series of interviews reflecting on his life, his work, parenthood, creativity, craft, and legacy. Those conversations find Sam looking back but mostly looking forward with curiosity and acceptance.


Photo Credit: Josh Wool

Calexico and Iron & Wine Reunite for ‘Years to Burn’

Sam Beam and Joey Burns are just a few feet apart, but they can hardly hear each other. Sitting in nearby booths at a café in Washington, DC, they’re on a conference call – an old-school party line that, for all our technological advances since the invention of the telephone, isn’t working very well. As they discuss their lush, lovely new collaborative album, titled Years to Burn, they speak uncertainly, tentatively, as though testing the ground for landmines. Burns, chief singer and songwriter for the band Calexico, has to repeat himself for Beam, the man behind Iron & Wine.

This is the exact opposite of how they normally work. The sessions for Years to Burn, their first album together in nearly fifteen years, was defined by its easy, fluid communication, or sometimes by the lack of any need for communication at all. Beam’s puzzle-box lyrics reveal deeper meaning with each close listen, while Calexico’s lush accompaniment is grounded in, but not constrained by Latin American traditions as well as straightforward country rock.

The result is a record that takes more risks and yields more rewards than their strong 2005 EP, In the Reins, toggling between the dusty R&B of opener “What Heaven’s Left” to the stomping country-folk of “Father Mountain” to the Spanish-language lullaby that opens the multi-part epic “The Bitter Suite.”

“The sound we made together,” says Beam, “wasn’t about planning or conceptualizing or anything like that. We tried not to get too heavy about it. I’m always interested to hear the ideas they come up with. That’s where the joy is for me.”

Both Calexico and Iron & Wine are indie lifers, each act boasting long careers and sprawling, ambitiously diverse catalogs. Perhaps the secret to their longevity is their openness to new perspectives, new voices — in short, to collaborations like Years to Burn. What follows isn’t the precise conversation they had with the Bluegrass Situation, which was prevented by faulty technology. Instead, after speaking to them separately, their responses have been edited into something like an imagined conversation, a loose oral history of their lively new album as well as an exploration of their close collaboration.

BGS: It’s been nearly fifteen years since you released In the Reins. What made this moment a good time to follow it up?

Joey Burns: It was scheduling!

Sam Beam: “Why are we doing it now?” Is that the question? I can’t speak for Joey and John [Convertino, Calexico drummer and co-founder, who is sitting in the same café], but I always wanted to work with them again. It wasn’t a matter of us not wanting to or not having a good reason. We’d just gotten busy. We’re two different working bands, so it wasn’t very often that our schedules lined up. Finally we had to say, hey, if we don’t just make the time, if we don’t put it on the calendar, it’s never going to happen.

You recorded the album in Nashville. Why there?

SB: I’ve never recorded there before, but we’ve ended up being there a lot. We have a lot of friends who live there, so it was nice to finally work there.

JB: We did a couple of songs back in 2003 with Mark Nevers, but that was it. This time we worked at Sound Emporium with Matt Ross-Spang. Matt’s the master. And he’s got some badass hair, too. The man has got serious style.

SB: The last time we recorded, we didn’t really know each other. We learned each other through that process and from touring that record for a while. I felt like this recording session was about what we learned about each other as musicians touring on the road, although it’s hard to even compare the two sessions because they were so dramatically different.

What can you tell me about “The Bitter Suite,” which is the most elaborate arrangement on the record but also the centerpiece of Years to Burn?

JB: The simple answer is, I said to Sam, why don’t we take part of a verse of “Tennessee Train,” translate it into Spanish, and let Jacob [Valenzuela, Calexico trumpeter and vocalist] have a go at it? And we just kept on experimenting, to see what kind of direction the music would take. Then we were like, why don’t we just do some kind of groove? Because at that point there was no song yet that had a groove. So why don’t we bring that back into mix and see what happens? That song just because a variation on a theme. Sam, you came up with the title…

SB: That idea came from Sebastian [Steinberg, Iron & Wine bassist], who is always saying funny things. It’s a sober-sounding track. It’s bittersweet. So we took music that was the product of serendipity of something that happened in the studio, and we gave it a silly title. But it wasn’t planned. We just went in with these songs and tried to keep an open mind. When you’re in a room with people who have good ideas, you have to keep your ears open. But it was all just something that seemed fun at that moment.

I wish I could say there was some design to “The Bitter Suite.” There’s this thing in poetry where your brain really tries hard to make connections and make sense of things in a certain way. You put two lines together and you can dismiss them, but you can put three lines together and your brain will go nuts trying to figure out how they connect. I felt like that song was something along those lines: Let’s put together different sounds and different structures, let’s vamp on different chords and different feels, and let’s see what happens when you put them all together.

How much of the album was conceived that way?

JB: It was all completely intuitive. We received some demos from Sam a week before we met in Nashville, and I knew from experience that those demos were not necessarily set in stone. They’re just reference points. I think we were all open to them being malleable and adaptable. Plus we only had four or five days max booked for studio time. That was it. Those parameters forced us to do as much homework as we could, but also it forced us to be as open to what kinds of possibilities there could be.

If we’d had another two, three days, who knows what would have happened? But I had a lot of fun working within that framework. We didn’t invite others in, and we didn’t send track out to the other members of Calexico. It was just six musicians in the studio, the six who will go on tour. The only person outside that ensemble who played on the record was Paul Niehaus on pedal steel.

SB: Since we were only in the studio for a few days, all the decisions had to be made pretty quickly. I like that. I have a tendency to overthink things, especially if I don’t put a time limit on myself. So the album is a snapshot of what we were doing on the fly rather than the ultimate example of creative expression.

JB: Everyone is pretty comfortable behind their own instrument, so we got great sounds in that short period of time. When you start adding more layers or textures, that’s where things can sound congested… or they can sound even better. It can be tricky. Most of the record was done live. Sam’s really quite a phenomenal musician, so a lot of the basic tracks are first takes, then we added some overdubs, then we were done.

Sam, were you writing songs with these guys in mind?

SB: Not really. I finished some stuff for this. You end up with so many bits and bobs laying around that don’t fit into other songs, and they’re perfect for this kind of project. Folk-rock melodies are good for this sort of pairing, so I moved the more country-ish songs to the top of the pile. The one thing I did want to do was … bring in a finished script, one that has plenty of room for interpretation, because that was the only way to get finished in the amount of time we’re talking about.

Were there any songs that changed more than others during that process?

SB: The one we worked on the longest was the opening track, “What Heaven’s Left.” It’s really the only one where I had a more specific idea of what I wanted to get at, but I didn’t know how to communicate it. That’s why it was more difficult; I had something specific that I wanted to achieve. But even that one had lots of room, especially that full-band crunch at the end. We thought it should go longer, so we just decided to play longer and see what happened. The ending became a whole separate thing, just letting the ideas take hold and not limiting yourself and capturing what you’re feeling.

JB: That was one of those things where we had recorded the song and then listened back, and it must have been Sam who said, what if we just kept on playing? It feels like the song ends too soon. Then Jacob arrived; he came on day three. So we thought, why not just add him to the outro? I really enjoyed that moment, and it’s one of my favorite songs on the record.

SB: The guys in Calexico are very sensitive listeners, not just in terms of the music but the point of the song: What’s happening here? What are we trying to communicate? That’s something you don’t always get to talk about. Also, they like to rock the fuck out as often as possible. I trust them enough that even if we get into some kind of argument, they’re going to be feeling it just as much as me, so I should at least listen to them.

Were there any disagreements?

SB: No, we didn’t really have time! Everybody was being really supportive. There was never a shortage of ideas, so it was just a matter of how to politely say we need to concentrate on this or that if we’re going to get anything done.

JB: This was one of those instances where the music really reflects your inner voice. Every turn we took just seemed to come about naturally and effortlessly. I think we all expected we’d probably walk away with another EP, like In the Reins, which would have been great, but we wound up having such a good time and getting through the songs quickly enough that we came up with something much bigger and more experimental.


Photo credit: Piper Ferguson

3×3: Ira Wolf on Gillian Welch, Getting Magical, and Grossing Out

Artist: Ira Wolf
Hometown: Missoula, MT
Latest Album: The Closest Thing to Home
Personal Nicknames: N/A

What song do you wish you had written?

“I Can’t Make You Love Me”

Who would be in your dream songwriter round?

Gillian Welch, Ben Gibbard, Sam Beam, Gregory Alan Isakov

If you could only listen to one artist’s discography for the rest of your life, whose would you choose?

Gillian Welch or Iron & Wine

 

You belong among the wildflowers, You belong where you feel free~

A post shared by Ira Wolf (@irawolfmusic) on

How often do you do laundry?

Every few weeks, or whenever it’s offered on the road.

What was the last movie that you really loved?

Inside Out. It gives me all the feels, and I cry every time.

If you could re-live one year of your life, which would it be and why?

So far 2017 has been the most magical. I traveled to some of my favorite places in the world, spent time with people I care the most for, and recorded my dream album in Nashville.

What’s your go-to comfort food?

Kraft Mac n Cheese with tuna. I promise it’s not gross.

Kombucha — love it or hate it?

Hate it. After seeing a bunch of friends make their own, I’ll never get over the sight of the mother.

Mustard or mayo?

Mustard. Spicy, preferably.


Photo credit: Dennis Webber

Iron & Wine: Let Go the Reins

As far as voices go, Sam Beam has one of the more distinctive vehicles within indie folk. It’s been hailed as “intimate,” “unadorned,” and — interestingly — “limited,” the latter description coming from an earlier observation he shared with The New York Times in 2013. If Beam saw his instrument as constrained, that might have something to do with the now-infamous story about his first album as Iron & Wine, 2002’s The Creek Drank the Cradle. He recorded it in a hushed basement setting so as not to disturb his slumbering daughters overhead, constructing a degree of restriction that set the stage for a voice stronger because of such boundaries.

Beam’s curiosity about other, fuller sounds and musical genres eventually meant a need — if not a desire — to push his voice in bigger ways. His 2007 album, The Shepherd’s Dog, featured a full band and sped past the quietly recorded acoustic style on which he established his name. Each subsequent album thereafter endeavored to further that exploration, featuring instrumentation that included — at turns — horns, strings, and other layers. But as those songs and their arrangements required larger and louder realizations, so, too, did his voice. In between moments where the music supported his capability and capacity as a singer existed those where he stretched and strained beyond his established limitations.

With his new album, Beast Epic (his first since returning to Sub Pop), Beam has hit upon more than a few realizations, least of which is that his voice isn’t so much limited as it is abiding by its own restrictions. Call it a glass half-full perspective. “It’s really only comfortable in certain types of things,” he quietly explains. “You can do anything around my voice, but it’s kind of this elemental force. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but it’s grumpy; it doesn’t want to move. That’s something I learned to stop fighting and enjoy.”

He arrived at that understanding through the two projects that fell in between his proper Iron & Wine releases: 2015’s Sing into My Mouth with Band of Horses’ Ben Bridwell, and 2016’s Love Letter for Fire with Jesca Hoop. “She let me enjoy my voice again,” he says about his creative collaboration with Hoop. “It’s been asked to play roles in a lot of different songs, but the partnership with her and the one with Ben let me enjoy my voice for what it does and not what it’s trying to be outside of that.” Beam keeps to his dusky, whisper-like revelations on Beast Epic, but finds moments to loose his vocal capability and showcase its constrained magnitude. In “Bitter Truth,” a song chock full of exactly what its title purports, he climbs to an emotional apex — a kind of curbed exasperation — before sliding back down into his trademark resigned sigh. In “Song in Stone,” he holds on to syllables, allowing his voice to shape the words rather than the other way around. Throughout the album, his vocal confidence and the resulting coziness have never felt so palpable.

As assured as his voice now sounds, the songs on Beast Epic pang forth with questions. Getting older has brought perspective and wisdom and all those traits that supposedly come with age, but there’s still room to screw up, and Beam remains almost painfully aware of that potential across the album’s 11 tracks. “You never stop learning. You never stop fucking up. You never stop wanting,” he says. The album looks at mistakes both committed and experienced, wondering aloud about the forces that bring people together and push them apart again. “It’s a middle age kind of record, where you’re still surprised to be dealing with the same things in life — getting hit with the same blows and, also, finding the same hope around the corner,” he explains. “[The songs] are unprotected and a bit fragile, but also broken, but also hopeful, looking to be redeemed, which I think is important. Looking to do the right thing, or looking for what the right thing is.”

He doesn’t have the answers at the ready, but his ongoing search provides for some potent imagery. Beam’s poetic wordplay has always danced around specific meanings, creating robust pictures that allow listeners to do the work of interpretation rather than laying it bare like other confessional songwriters might. Don’t be fooled: Beam is as confessional as they come, but he cloaks his revelations so they’re not so easily parsed out. “I’ve never really worried about [revealing too much], because I don’t really feel that the public has any idea about who I am,” he laughs. “I think people assume the songs are more about me than some of them are, and don’t know when I’m being more revealing. I always sorta held those cards close. Most of them are saying, ‘I wish I had given more love when I didn’t.’ Those kinds of confessions are easy and important for me.”

That Beast Epic sounds closer to earlier Iron & Wine fare is the circuitous route result of marrying his earlier hushed-whisper stylings with the full band arrangements he began exploring in The Shepherd’s Dog. Then, too, there’s the touch of whimsy that distinguishes his latest effort. Working with Hoop allowed Beam to tap into his playful side. To put it mildly, he’s got a wicked sense of humor, but that doesn’t surface throughout his lyricism so much as through his persona on stage. When Beam and Hoop toured together for Love Letters for Fire, their witty repartee interspersed the affective affair with a much-needed comedic release. But he hasn’t found a way to inject that sense of levity into his often-brooding lyricism. “Beyond the music, I feel like the jokes are part of my everyday, and they come and go,” he says. “When I sit down to write a song, I want to make something that lasts. Even if it’s off the cuff, I want it to be that you can’t laugh off. Maybe it’s because I find it easy to laugh everything off.” He pauses, before adding, “It’s so strange because there are so many songwriters that I like that are really funny, but for some reason it doesn’t play into what I do.”

Beam’s levity shines forth from the album’s instrumentation and arrangements, which yield a greater sense of playfulness than in albums past. Describing the recording process in Beast Epic’s press release, he wrote, “We spent about two weeks recording and mixing and mostly laughing at rhe Loft in Chicago.” That laughter arises in many different tracks, but most assuredly on “About a Bruise.” Beam contrasts the song’s heavy-handed lyrics (like “Tenderness to you was only talk about a bruise”) with a flurry of plucky, rhythmically driven additions like piano, harp, and more. Then there’s the carefree “woo-hoo-hoo” he unleashes shortly after the midway mark. It bubbles forth almost unconsciously. “I like to have fun. The music can be kinda heavy,” he chuckles, self-deprecatingly. “I think it’s important to have some balance.”

It’s not that Beam has cauterized whatever exploratory impulse drove his earlier albums, but that, with Beast Epic, he’s been able to take all the many and sometimes seemingly disparate parts of his career and piece together a project that feels mature, assured, even while echoing with questions. “This one was more about taking the journey so far and presenting everything that I’d learned in a really relaxed way,” he says. “I just sorta let go of the reins, and this is what came out.”


Lede illustration by Cat Ferraz.

‘Sing Into My Mouth’

This an enjoyable set of 12 covers brought to fruition by Sam Beam, the guy who is Iron & Wine, and Ben Bridwell, one of the driving forces behind Band of Horses. It’s titled after a line in the Talking Heads’ song, “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody),” the tune the pair chose to open the album. Beam and Bridwell distill the essential elements of the song — it’s very lightness being — down to it’s core, then rebuild it with a sense of ease and youthfulness akin to the '60s folk songs we heard from the likes of Melanie and Peter, Paul & Mary.

They dug deep into the rock and roll canon to find “Done This One Before,” a tune originally released by Ronnie Lane in 1974 as the B-side to his first single, “How Come.” There’s a bit of Nashville Skyline in their arrangement, laced with rambling piano and accentuated with flourishes of steel guitar. Beam and Bridwell harmonize beautifully on Paul Siebel’s “Anyday Woman” (best known from Bonnie Raitt’s cover) and make nice work of John Cale’s “You Know More Than I Know,” presenting it against a backdrop of cascading pianos and lightly tempered harmonies.

The pair don’t hesitate to experiment a little, as with the reverberating vocals on Cale’s “Magnolia” and freeform bass clarinet lines on El Perro Del Mar’s “God Knows (You Gotta Give to Get).” Those choices don’t always serve the songs to their fullest — they tend to distract from the inherent beauty of the words and melodies — but there’s enough restraint in the mix to keep them from getting too heavy-hearted.

When all is said and done, the eras and areas from which these songs come — Nashville in the '60s, LA in the '70s, New York in the '80s — remain at the core of these recordings. Beam and Bridwell stay honorable to the originals, sift them through unqiue musical personalities and make a record that's pretty enjoyable.