by Kim Black
Though the low-volume singer-songwriter known as Iron & Wine has called many places in the South home — Virginia, the Carolinas, Texas, Tallahassee — it was in Miami that a crucial part of his origin story unfolded. By day Sam Beam was teaching cinematography and film history at the former International Fine Arts College. At night, at home, he wrote and recorded the music that would become his 2002 debut album, The Creek Drank the Cradle.
The peaceful, easy feeling that suffused the album’s eleven tracks was the product of a demo, but the recordings as they were felt fully formed to the indie record label Sub Pop, and quickly film education’s loss became music lovers’ gain.
Perhaps Iron & Wine’s largest dose of fame during his two decades-plus music career came when his cover of The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” popped up in the beloved 2004 flick, Garden State, where its morose tone mirrored the alienation of the movie’s two young protagonists. Fitting for a cinema scholar, Iron & Wine’s songs have appeared in over two dozen other films and TV shows soundtracking everything from Twilight to Friday Night Lights.
Iron & Wine will bring his guitar and tunes for first South Florida show since 2017 is part of the Light Verse Tour named after his newest full-length album. ”I’m kinda mining the territory of the early ’70s, where the folk writers were playing with jazz musicians,” Beam told Grammy.com in an interview last year, crediting Van Morrison’s acclaimed Astral Weeks album as an inspiration.
The work on Light Verse started in Memphis and then headed west, where reinforcements included a line-up of top-flight L.A. musicians, a 24-piece orchestra, and Fiona Apple as a duet partner. Beam’s recording rounds also took him to the ‘60s-‘70s music mecca of Laurel Canyon. It’s a far cry, and a long way in years and miles, from The Creek Drank the Cradle, but Light Verse sounds just as quiet even with all the extra production.
Iron & Wine, with Jobi Riccio opening, performs 7pm Monday, April 14 at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach. ironandwine.com ~ David Rolland
