Sam Beam lives exactly the way you want him to: In a sturdy, octagonal farmhouse on a chunky plot of land 20 miles southwest of Austin, Texas. From his driveway-- which overlooks the town of Dripping Springs, in so much as that town exists-- it's easy to be cowed by central Texas's barren, boundless hills, which roll right on into the sun. This is Willie Nelson country, perfectly immortalized by Johnny Cash in 1975: "There's lone star pearl and fried chicken and one big cloud of smoke/ Plug it in and turn it on and the music goes for broke, down at Drippin' Springs."
It's early on a Friday morning in the heady, overscheduled deeps of South by Southwest, and Austin is already crawling with coastal transplants. Beam's home is an antidote to the badge-bedlam of downtown, to the extent that it practically feels art-directed: I climb out of the car and head towards his doorway, stepping over a rusty red tricycle which has been parked, askew, on the edge of the pathway. A scrum of chickens bobbles out from under a bush. The sun is soft and forgiving, and it's tempting to read the landscape-- almost comically pastoral-- as a bold-type metaphor for Iron & Wine's bucolic folk music. Even the threat of scurrying tarantulas-- which appear infrequently, Beam assures-- can't crack this particular spell.
At some point in the next two weeks, Beam's wife will give birth to their fifth child. Already a father to four little girls, Beam is well-versed in the nuances of "High School Musical" and Taylor Swift. He promises that his daughters are uninterested in the fuss he kicks up in his home studio, but his humility is so knee-jerk and genuine-- a quick, sheepish smile, a glance at his feet-- that it's hard to imagine him acknowledging any audience at all.
Beam released The Creek Drank the Cradle, his debut LP as Iron & Wine, in the fall of 2002. Indie rock (which still felt like something of a genre) hadn't yet embraced folk music as its own, and music magazines (which still existed) were frantically heralding a "Return to Rock" as dictated by a handful of fussily dressed New York bands. Post-Shins, pre-Postal Service, Sub Pop was still the label that releasedBleach, and Beam's placement there-- facilitated by a series of fervent, fortuitous recommendations from Band of Horses' Ben Bridwell and YETI publisher and sometimes Pitchfork writer Mike McGonigal-- felt like something of an anomaly. Americana hadn't been fully commodified for the hipster set.
Now, eight years later, Beam is preparing to release his fourth full-length, Kiss Each Other Clean, a streamlined pop record that's about as far as he can drift from the minimalism of his debut. He recorded a good percentage of Kiss in Dripping Springs, and today we follow the short stone path to his studio, a light-filled space adjacent to his home. It's crammed with a cornucopia of stringed instruments; a small drafting table, where he's been sketching ideas for the album's cover art, sits to the side. A gold record, for a cover of "Such Great Heights"-- his contribution to 2004's Garden State soundtrack-- hangs in the bathroom (humbly, opposite the toilet). An orange ashtray is loaded with cigarette butts, betraying a steady penchant for hand-rolled American Spirits. Listening outside, we let the wind add its own odd, percussive bits.
With its groovy horns and falsetto-driven hooks, Kiss Each Other Clean more closely resembles the lush, gold-toned singer-songwriter records of the late 60s and early 70s-- Astral Weeks, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Time Life AM radio compilations-- than the acoustic, two-hands-and-a-guitar simplicity of his debut, which is starting to feel more like a red herring than a statement of intent. Whereas 2007'sThe Shepherd's Dog had a few nods to his early work ("Resurrection Fern", "Flightless Bird, American Mouth"), Kiss Each Other Clean is the kind of record you lodge in your car stereo, singing your way through every stoplight. "He's an emancipated punk and he can dance," Beam announces in "Me and Lazarus", and it just might be the most autobiographical bit here.
"The subject matter is a bit different-- the songs aren't intimate, romantic tunes like some of the older ones," Beam tells me later. "It's the difference between Blueand Court and Spark-- this is a Court and Spark record.
"Brian [Deck, Beam's longtime producer] and I had a really specific conversation about this early on-- I wanted it to sound like an early Elton John record, where the vocals are mixed high, and the sounds are a lot more dry. It's not all room sound-y. Everything is super dry, so when you use reverb you hear it. I've been into those records forever, but for some reason, this was the time to apply it," he explained. "I just wanted to make it fun. When I think of those records, I think about being a kid and I think of fun. You know what I mean? You could sing a tune, and it wasn't about 'Am I supposed to like this? What development in music is this?' It just had a melody and you could sing it."
Beam's ambition ultimately demanded a broader canvas-- his arrangements are well-balanced and, on occasion, breathtakingly complex-- and with each subsequent release, he's inched a little further away from the campfire trappings of his debut. But he never sacrificed any honesty (his songs aren't strictly confessional, but he sings more candidly about sex, death, and love than almost anyone else), and the protectiveness people feel towards his work is remarkable. Still, the specter of those songs has hung heavy for Beam; it inadvertently prefaces everything else he does. "As a listener, I want to push myself," he says. "At the end of the day, I know that ever since the Beatles brought in musique concrète, I'm not going to flip anyone's lid-- it's not deep pressure, but you push yourself to do something you haven't done. I hope people like [the new record]. I think some people will dig it and some people will wish it was The Creek Drank the Cradle. And that's cool. I wish they would come along with me, but I'm glad they enjoyed that one record."
Outside, "Your Fake Name Is Good Enough For Me", Kiss Each Other Clean's closing track, is lurching towards its mesmeric final groove. The song is a dissonant, shifty epic, reminiscent, at times, of the hill country blues songs of North Mississippi, building on a rhythmic pulse so steady it's disorienting. "This is when we'll lose them," Beam laughs, flicking a cigarette. His vocals grow tougher and more forceful with each new declaration: "We will become the tooth and the tongue, we will become the target and the gun," the track threatens. "We will become both now and then, we will become again and again," he sings. Crammed with errant skronks, distorted guitars, and brash melodic shifts, the song eschews the tenderness and ease of Beam's earlier work. But its endgame-- Beam's endgame-- is still hope. As a lyricist, he can be wistful and angry, but he is almost always optimistic.
Although Beam's songs-- particularly the older ones-- are crammed with southern imagery (bougainvillea seeds, shaking preachers, snakes in the creek bed), he's hesitant to participate in the region's mythology. "I was raised in the suburbs. I wasn't on a plantation or anything," he laughs. He grew up listening to an assortment of sounds. "It was impossible to get away from country music down there, and my parents both loved Motown music, 60s soul stuff," he explains. "I was born in 1974, so I grew up listening to what was on the radio-- my mom's car sounded like Fleetwood Mac, because that was what was on the radio. When I was old enough to start being defined by music, it was skate-punk and shit that was on the radio in the 80s, like the Cure. R.E.M. was a big deal, because it was our band-- it was southern music that wasn't Lynyrd Skynyrd. It was cool, it was strange, but it felt like where we were from."
Religion is another recurring lyrical theme for Beam, although he tends to employ it as a jumping off point, a shortcut: "I'm not religious," he says. "But I grew up religious in the Bible Belt. I use it because they're common stories. Even if it's not a Christian thing, religion is a part of all of our lives, whether we like it or not."
Of all the things Beam sings about (the South, nature, religion, sex, body parts) his most pervasive theme-- the thing he circles back to most frequently, the thing that seeps into each meticulously crafted couplet-- is the passage of time. ("It's kind of a big thing," he jokes.) In "Tree By the River", Beam isolates the bittersweet, vaguely melancholic way adults all think about adolescence: "Maryanne, do you remember/ The tree by the river/ When we were seventeen?... Time isn't kind or unkind, you liked to say/ But I wonder to who and what it is you're saying today." For Beam, this is the big, stupid joke of being alive and, especially, of being in love: We change, we die, we leave each other all alone.
In "Naked As We Came", from his second record (the aptly titled Our Endless Numbered Days), Beam clarifies that excruciating moment: "One of us will die inside these arms, eyes wide open, naked as we came/ One will spread our ashes around the yard," he sings. It's an inevitability most people prefer not to engage, but Beam presses it again and again and again: "God, give us love in the time that we have," he begs in "On Your Wings." It's just about all anyone can ask for.
The next time I see Beam, eight months later, he and his seven-piece touring band-- which includes three-fourths of Califone (Jim Becker, Ben Massarella, and Joe Adamik), singer Rosie Thomas (she's sitting in for his sister, Sarah, who's home with a new baby), keyboardist Nick Luca (of Calexico), saxophonist Stuart Bogie (of Antibalas), and bassist Matt Lux-- are halfway through a week of pre-tour rehearsals at Clava Studios in Chicago.
The studio-- founded by Brian Deck-- is on an unremarkable corner in a quiet neighborhood near the White Sox stadium. Inside, in a pale green room littered with Turkish kilims and faded copies of Tape Op, Beam is a gentle bandleader, affable and forgiving. He's become an infinitely more confident vocalist, and here, his singing is loud, steady and clear. In between songs, he lodges faux-requests to his manager, Spinal Tap-style ("Howard, hear me out-- first thing, and this should be easy, is we need a unicorn on stage"), and he's obviously energized by re-workings of old material, including a jazzy, meandering iteration of "Sodom, South Georgia". When someone reminds him about a potential clarinet solo for "Bird Stealing Bread", one of Creek's most beloved folk songs, he grins wildly. "Oh hell yeah," he says. The spirit is collaborative-- "I don't like hiring people just to tell them what to play," Beam says later.
Later that night, we meet for drinks at the Pump Room, a storied Gold Coast restaurant in the grand lobby of the Ambassador East hotel (past patrons include Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Humphrey Bogart, and Lauren Bacall). We sit at its big, gleaming bar. Beam is sweet and shy, the kind of guy who doesn't take naturally to pontificating about his motivations; he'd much rather talk about movies or books or what you've been doing lately. But he is also whip-smart and surprisingly funny, not without a dark and distinctly southern charm. He was raised in Chapin, South Carolina, and studied film at Virginia Commonwealth before relocating to Miami to teach cinematography at a community college. He's mischievous in a way that belies his geographical path.
Since we last spoke, Beam's acquired another daughter, a new house in Texas, and a different record label; shortly after SXSW, he amicably split with Sub Pop for its parent company, Warner Bros. Records. "A couple labels approached us and said they were interested-- we weren't necessarily looking," he shrugs. "But we thought about it and it seemed like a good idea. It's not like Sub Pop was doing anything wrong-- they're some of my best friends-- but I think change is good."
Beam, who has frequently licensed songs to commercials and films, is largely unconcerned about repercussions within his fan base. The days of hollering "sell out," we agree, are mostly over. "I think people in the industry care. And people who define themselves by what kind of music they listen to care. But most people can tell the difference between people who are making records to be famous, and people who make records because that's what they like doing," he says. "It's the same shit, whether you put it out yourself, or on an independent label, or on a big label. It doesn't matter."
Beam and his band are about to ship out for a short two-week tour, and while he can be an engaging performer, he insists that it's not the crux of his art. "I like to make things. When you make something, you work it and you work it until it's done, and then you say 'Look, here's what I made.' With performance, it took me a long to get into the idea that the act is what's fun about it," he says. "I'm never gonna be like 'I can't go on!'-- I'm gonna do it, but I've had to learn to enjoy it, and some days are better than others."
The next morning, the band decides to reconvene at Clava for one last rehearsal. Riding back to the studio on the El, I scan the faces of headphone-wearing twentysomethings for sleepy squints of recognition, but Beam-- despite sporting a thick beard that feels practically iconic-- is unnoticed, an airport Sci-Fi paperback stuffed in his jacket pocket, his hands folded in his lap. Beam is an unassuming presence, here and everywhere, but maybe that's why he's able to keep singing these songs: Kiss Each Other Clean isn't a folk record, exactly, but Beam is still a folksinger, and he's still telling our stories. - amanda petrusich.
nick luca is out on tour with iron & wine now.
