Me, I'm a lazy bum, so I don't shave.
— Samuel Ervin Beam
Yeah, I've always liked Barbara Crane's stuff.
All my songs usually borrow from my own life but pull from fantasy or other people's stories that you hear, or something you read. It's fun as a writer to pull from all those different places, and to connect them. But also, I don't have an interesting enough life to strictly pull from that.
I like to make fun records. Contrary to popular belief.
Whenever you're ready to go and have studio time, that's when we start to record.
I try to use a poetic language more than talk about my feelings, but it is married to the music.
Music is one of those things that if you play it safe, it can be incredibly boring.
I don't like to be doing the same thing over and over again, so I keep trying other things.
Oh yeah, I love Peter Gabriel's stuff. I mean, I even have the Genesis records. He's incredible.
I try to write humanistic songs.
I went to art school, wanting to be a painter and then I got into photography. Then it was movies, and I liked the images. One of the things that interested me in film was that I was communicating in images. That was something I did intuitively and could not even talk about until I started having to do interviews.
People always say, 'Why don't you play more sets in Texas?' and I say, 'Dude, why don't you come babysit?'
Anytime you go back and listen to old material, there's always the threat of being surprised.
I recognized that a lot in my writing I'm trying to show both sides of the coin - the sour and sweet. Iron & Wine seemed to fit with that duality and I thought it would be more interesting to call the project that rather than use Sam Beam.
I was raised in the suburbs. I wasn't on a plantation or anything.
I like writing in an illustrative, descriptive way. I prefer describing to rather than explaining. One, I rarely have anything to say. It's much more interesting for me to discover some meaning that you didn't know that you could create.
As far as American directors, Terrence Malick is probably my very favorite.
What's fascinating about facial hair? It's more fascinating that people shave it off every day.
Contradictions are fun.
I certainly don't want to make the same record twice. That's no fun.
Making sad music, it's not for me. I don't find that interesting.
I would love to be able to do the pace that people used to do decades ago, where you'd make a record a year, or something was wrong with you.
I am not interested in political writing, because it's limited in its scope. I try to write general, human kinds of songs, which suggest more than they explain. You can take a lot of different meanings, but hopefully everyone feels some kind of recognition.
Like anyone who records music or writes a song, I thought, 'Wouldn't that be cool if someday I were able to do this for a living?' But it was such a fluke, and it really all took me by surprise and I just held on for dear life. I really wasn't prepared. I really went into it naively with no experience.
I don't sit and write records from start to finish. I write all the time, and when it's time to record you just look and see what songs you've got that could work together as a group thematically.
I like good melodies and a great song.
At the end of the day, I can't sit down and write a song to sell.
I'm very flattered the press wants to write about me.
You have high school photos and stuff, but to have a recording of your voice and your work from 20 years ago, it's a kick in the head to hear how you've changed and what you were interested in at the time and how it's either changed or stayed the same.
I don't want to single anyone out. I'll just say that there are a lot of not good band names out there.
Back in '98 or so when I was in film school I was working on lighting for a movie in Georgia, out in the middle of nowhere at a gas station. Inside the gas station they had a bunch of old home remedies like castor oil, and one of them was a protein supplement called Beef, Iron & Wine. I just dropped the Beef part.
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.'
Sometimes I teach script writing.
When I put out a record I don't really like to do covers as much, but I don't mind playing them. I do them mostly for my friends. When a friend's like, 'Man I really like that song,' I go 'hahaha' and I go home and I record it.
I've always liked string sections. I'm a sucker for melody, so it's fun to have strings add more layer of melody in the arrangement.
I remember 'The Shepherd's Dog' record being not necessarily a political record, but a reaction to socio-political situations in America. And it didn't manifest itself as protest or propaganda songs, but there's a lot of surreal imagery that was born out of really me being surprised Bush got re-elected in '04.
I don't necessarily enjoy playing concerts, although that has gotten more fun with a band. But the one thing I always have enjoyed is making records and being in that creative environment. And that has become a lot more enjoyable having other people involved.
I change things each time we go into making a record, like the personnel playing on it, the types of music.
Religion is a huge part of our consciousness. I grew up in the Bible Belt, so it's our mythology. Those are the stories we learn as little kids at Sunday school. I'm not afraid to use the metaphors, because I think the stories are beautiful.
I learn something with each record and take that into the next one.
You can't predict what people are going to like. You have to stay true to your enthusiasm and obsessions.
I keep trying to make different records each time.
I love to sell records, but that's not what I'm into.
As a listener, I like shorter records, because you can really absorb the songs.
I always liked American Analog Set.
It's a funny thing having a recording be part of your career. It means you can go back and revisit yourself, in a way most people don't.
I like ones that pertain to the music they make. Talking Heads does that somehow. More often than not band names are just a quirky joke that doesn't really stay funny for very long. It's like Homer Simpson's barbershop quartet, the Be Sharps. At first you're like, 'That's funny!' Then you're like, 'It's not that funny.'
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.
I'm not religious. But I grew up religious in the Bible Belt.
I like Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, but some of the older ones it's hard for me to sit down with - when I sit down to read some poetry, I usually read more contemporary stuff.
