Interview: Play it Again Sam Beam

Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam is a busy man these days. But then again, he always was. Five solo albums and too many EPs to mention – including an acclaimed mini-album with Calexico – not to mention numerous TV and film soundtracks, have kept him in the public eye. “I like to keep working,” says Beam, on the phone from his Carolina home. “I like to be busy and I’m always thinking about the next record.”
His last album was a collaboration with Band of Horse’s Ben Bridwell and saw the likeminded pair team up for a collection of eclectic covers. His latest project is a duets album with Californian singer-songwriter Jesca Hoop. Love Letter For Fire is a quietly stunning collection of alt.country tunes that should keep long time fans more than happy.
“I’ve been carrying the idea of doing something like this around for years,” Beam explains. “I like story songs and I like how the narrative gets expanded a bit when there are two voices involved. You know, instead of a monologue it’s like a conversation within a song. So, anytime I came up with a melody that lent itself to that sort of thing, I’d just put it in a pigeonhole, all dog-eared, with the idea keeping it for when the time came.”
That “time” came when someone suggested he work with Hoop, who incredibly, got her start in music when she found herself working as a nanny for Tom Waits. “I didn’t really know her music but when I discovered it, it just seemed like a perfect match,” reflects Beam. “There were people who might have been better writing partners, but I think our voices work well and that’s the most important element on a project like this.”
Did he have a template for what he had in mind? A classic duets album from the past perhaps? “It sounds really silly but what I had in mind was some sort of mish-mash like George [Jones] and Tammy [Wynette] singing ‘Islands In The Stream’, backed up by The Band (laughs). But it sounds nothing like that, of course. It’s not a record that’ll slap you in the face. You have to reach out and shake hands with it and get to know it for a little while.”
Was there a possibility that it would be a collection of covers or standards, as is typical in duets albums? Something like Billy Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones’ recent Everly Brothers tribute, for example? “No, I think it was always going to be new songs,” says Beam. “Covers and that kind of stuff are what the concerts are for. But we’ve been playing around with a few covers actually, like the song Peter Gabriel did with Kate Bush, ‘Don’t Give Up’. It’s a difficult song to do but only if you try to do it like them.”
Given that the duo aren’t romantically involved, does that mean they have to contrive a close working relationship? “Some voices do it naturally and I hope we do too,” replies Sam. “But we’ve all had different experiences and you bring those to the project. It’s not like we have just one song to do it on, we can cover the whole expanse of emotions on the album.”
Some of the songs, like ‘Bright Lights and Goodbyes’ and ‘Kiss Me Quick’, are sung in harmony, while others see the duo taking separate parts. “Yeah, sometimes we’d trade off verses and chop things up, and other times we’d just sing the thing together. The idea is to usually toss the ball around in the song, but whatever your conceptual idea, sometimes you just have to bend to what works.”
Hoop and Beam are taking to the road with the album, and have a date lined up for Dublin’s Olympia later in the summer, a show Sam is keenly anticipating.
“It’s one of my very favourite venues in the world,” he enthuses. “I love playing live more and more as I go on actually. I was never really a performer, which sounds strange. It wasn’t what I got into it for. I like writing and recording but performing was something I had to learn to do. I love it now. I love travelling. I’ve been practising my ass off for this tour. It’ll be nice to have a partner onstage to share the spotlight. We’ll both be doing some of our older songs, and we’ll do a few covers as well.”
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Love Letter For Fire is out now on Sub Pop. Sam Beam and Jesca Hoop play Dublin's Olympia Theatre on August 30.