Writers, as much as they may like to profess otherwise, often spend their creative lives obsessing over a single set of ideas. For US singer-songwriter Sam Beam – better known as Iron and Wine – it’s the lands of his childhood that continue to be a well-spring of analogy.
“I feel like as a writer it’s important to know specifically where your stories take place. The places and people that I write about, no matter how much autobiographical or fantasy material there is, are generally written in a specific place, usually the south-east, and the south-east is pretty, well, like most of America, pretty religious.”
Beam now identifies firmly as an agnostic, yet he continues to revere the Abrahamic storytelling tradition that coloured his South Carolina upbringing.
“It shaped me as a person. The stories I learned growing up about morality and how to think of characters metaphorically. It’s also a big fuckin’ part of the culture,” he says. “As much as we try to hide it, it’s still both a huge inspiration and dividing fuckin’ device for people. I realised lately too how much hymns played a part forming the things that tickle my music brain.”
Beam’s personal musical education was defiantly unhindered by his pious youth.
“We played all punk rock,” he says. “Punk rock was fun because that’s what it was all about – I never took a lesson, I didn’t know what I was doing, but if someone showed me a power chord we could play songs; we could get together and have a community. Growing up in South Carolina, country music was never far away, and my parents were all into ‘60s R&B, Motown and stuff. I think the first song I ever learnt to play was ‘Wish You Were Here’.”
With an inalienable knack for articulating the melancholy, joyous and divine, Beam’s output as Iron and Wine runs at a Dylan-esque pace. His eight full-length records delve into the R&B flecked and soul-infused harmonic possibility of Americana folk. Storytelling has always defined his trade; Beam was working as a cinematography lecturer when his intimate, lo-fi 2002 debut The Creek Drank The Cradle was picked up by Sub-Pop. His hobbyist approach to songwriting became a full-time obsession, yet Beam says his infatuation with the written word was a latent desire waiting to be realised.
“Just that space, that hanging, timeless space, was always really beautiful to me. The relationship between words where they are this raw material that can be used in really fascinating ways is beautiful.”
Beam’s poeticisms bypass the political activism performed by his folk forbearers, yet he claims to be far from apolitical.
“I’m not afraid of being divisive, I just don’t find it interesting. I’m constantly looking at the news and I’m also constantly frustrated by it. There’s no public policy that makes me want to write a song. I feel like I’m treading in this water that goes underneath that kind of stuff. A little more base desires and emotions, that’s just where I like to swim when I’m writing songs.”
Beam’s path certainly seems far from the end of its winding course, letting slip he may not be quite done with his former cinematic life.
“I’ve always held on to the desire to make movies. Hopefully, I will pretty soon. I’m trying to clear the calendar to do it. It might put Iron and Wine on hold.”
Don’t expect a reverse Joaquin Phoenix reinvention though – his musical blackboard of projects is still full with overlapping chalk.
“I’ve been talking to the Calexico boys about doing another project, so I think that will probably be next. We’re getting ready to put some stuff that didn’t get released from the Beast Epic sessions too. I’ve been enjoying playing with string section live, so maybe there’s a chamber-esque thing coming up. Who knows.”
