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Potent brew
By Anthony Carew
December 5, 2003



Sam Beam is a bushy-bearded Southerner who
teaches cinematography and spends most of his
time with his wife and kids. While at home, he
also writes songs on a battered acoustic guitar
and records them on a rudimentary four-track
machine. Beam's songs are quiet and unassuming,
to match his temperament, but somewhere amid the
lo-fi tape-hiss and his gentle harmonies he's
struck a certain kind of magic. His two records
for the Sub Pop label have found Beam - under the
name Iron & Wine - being hailed as a new beacon
of Americana songwriting.


Beam says he likes to write songs about "places
that I grew up, people that I knew, my family",
and his tunes are littered with images that evoke
the rural landscapes - creeks, mountains,
beaches, streams, woods - to give his art the
gravity of the land on which it was born.


"Going back home to visit my parents, the
landscape - both the cultural landscape and the
geography - is a big influence," he says.


He adds: "I try to tell a little story each time,
whether it's pretty specifically or kinda
vaguely. It's funny - with songs, the vaguer you
get the more interesting it seems, (while) with
films it's exactly the opposite.


"You try to find the points in your life that,
y'know, that kind of speak of you in the larger
picture - the specific details in your life that
speak of you in a more universal way. It's not
like I sit down and think about all the moments
in my life that meant something to me. They just
sort of sneak in constantly when you get in that
mood."


Beam started writing songs in earnest when he
first got his four-track recorder six years ago.
Before that, he'd long been playing self-taught
guitar, but it was only when he could hear
himself on playback that he started to learn the
art of songcraft. It would seem his quiet songs
were just a product of his personality, but his,
initial reason for writing at such a low volume
was circumstantial.


"I had roommates at the time, so I couldn't
really jam out too loud," he says with a chuckle.
"It really was born out of that. I mean, it was
stuff that I was interested in playing anyway. I
was interested in writing songs that were a
little more introspective. And when I started
recording, I realised that when I played, it
sounded better the more simple I took it."


Once he was signed by Sub Pop - who released an
album of his four-track recordings, The Creek
Drank the Cradle, in 2002, followed by the recent
The Sea & the Rhythm EP - Beam had to then take
his fragile folk songs on to the stage.


"Some of my early shows were rough," he
confesses. "I could hear people down the front
talking about the most mundane stuff  -  y'know,
talking about their grocery lists. I can hear
everything when I'm playing."


Sam Beam, aka Iron & Wine, plays with the Shins
at the Corner Hotel, Richmond, on Wednesday
night.




This story was found at:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/04/1070351707359.html