Iron & Wine's Gentle Songs Find Luck With Sub Pop

Sam Beam is a songwriter, not an industry dude. If history had played out any differently, Beam's songs never would have reached many people's ears. As the Iron & Wine main man tells it, when he was first starting out, he was so clueless about the music industry, he had to buy a sort of Dummies Guide To Independent Records to jumpstart his career.

"I hadn't pursued the idea of a career in music at all," Beam admits in his easygoing drawl. "I hadn't courted any labels or anything, but I had gone as far as to get a book on releasing independent records so I thought about maybe doing it myself. I just bought this book but hadn't really done anything serious. So, it was a total surprise when Sub Pop called me."

That was about two years ago and now Beam, who is essentially the heart, soul and voice of Iron & Wine, finds himself being revered as one of the most refreshing, talented songwriters to emerge this decade. You'd like to hope that a voice as gifted as his wouldn't have remained hidden from the world forever, but it's scary to think if it weren't for a little bit of luck and timing Beam's music might still only be one of Florida's hidden everglade treasures.

"A friend of mine from back home in Carolina moved to Seattle and had a band called Carissa's Weird, and they were talking to Sub Pop about putting out a 7-inch," says Beam. "He put my stuff in their ears and they called me. It was totally out of the blue, honestly. It was a big shock. One, that someone was calling me to put my stuff out and the other that it was that label in particular."

The first product of Beam's partnership with Sup Pop was his masterpiece, 2002's The Creek Drank The Cradle, a record that literally came out of nowhere to capture the unsuspecting attention of music critics and fans of lo-fi, indie-coustic folk pop. The bedroom intimacy of the record's songs showcased Beam's greatest strength — his golden voice. There is an air of honesty that makes it so easy to want to listen to him sing all day and all night.

"Maybe it seems honest, but very few of my songs are actually about my life," says Beam. "I always find a way to relate them to my life but very few are autobiographical. It seems honest but maybe it's just the songs' clarity or a different way to write. I would like to say that my writing is a more honest way of writing, but it's hard for me to agree with that."

Still, Iron & Wine songs seem so stark and real it's hard to believe they haven't been culled from the most tender of Beam's memories. On his latest album, Our Endless Numbered Days, Beam's lyrics are as personal and fragile as ever.

"I think it's just the writing style that I enjoy," he says. "Not limiting yourself to dialogue and using description of action as dialogue instead. It just makes things more visual. You describe a scenario when you describe an emotion. I think it just makes more sense because you've painted a context. Instead of saying, 'I feel bad,' and just adding adjectives and making it, 'I feel REALLY bad,' you describe other things that hint toward the terms your trying to get across."

That Beam excels at turning his songs into tiny, visual masterpieces should come as no surprise when you discover he's taught cinematography at a local college for the past four years. Or at least he used to.

"I usually teach a lot more but I quit last week," Beams says matter-of-factly. "I finally quit. The music seems to be going pretty well right now, so I figured why not spend a little extra time and put in a little bit more to my music?"