Iron & Wine

Sam Beam of Iron & Wine goes record shopping at Amoeba Hollywood in this "What's In My Bag?" episode. The singer-songwriter shares how Lindsey Buckingham's guitar picking and John Prine's songwriting helped shape his sound; talks about some of his favorite films, including La Strada & Paper Moon; and reflects on the similarities between filmmaking and music-making. Iron & Wine's new album Hen's Teeth is out now via Sub Pop.

Iron & Wine's picks:
• New Order - Power, Corruption & Lies (LP)
• The English Beat - The Beat At The BBC (LP)
• Fleetwood Mac - Tusk (LP)
• Joan Armatrading - Joan Armatrading (LP)
• Belle & Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister (LP)
• Fiona Apple - Fetch The Bolt Cutters (LP)
• Laura Nyro and Labelle - Gonna Take A Miracle (LP)
• Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender (LP)
• John Prine - The John Prine Anthology - Great Days (CD)
• Federico Fellini - La Strada (DVD)
• Ousmane Sembène - Three Revolutionary Films by Ousmane Sembène (BLU-RAY)
• Peter Bogdanovich - Paper Moon (DVD)

Featured Artist: Iron & Wine

Editor: Brendt Rioux
Executive Producer: Rachael McGovern
Producer/Director: Craig Miller
Assistant Director: Derich Heath
Cameras: Derich Heath
Audio Recorded by: Patrick Emswiler
Assistant Editor: Patrick Emswiler

Watch Iron & Wine's "What's In My Bag?" episode on Amoeba.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Hey everybody, Sam Bean from Iron and Wine. I'm at Amoeba in Hollywood. I'm gonna tell you what's in my bag. What do we got in here? One of my favorite bands ever, New Order, that was my band when I was a boy, a young lad. One of my best friends, his dad, he was in grad school at the university close to where I grew up, and so he was hip to all the you know the new music. Because usually you hear New Order on the radio in Columbia, South Carolina, he said, you guys, this music sucks. You need to listen to this. And so we all were like, okay, well, what do what do we listen to? New Order was one. The other band that he gave me at the time was The Beat. I've never seen this one live at the BBC. They were so incredible, and I also was like a gateway drug to reggae music for me. Twist and crawl is probably my favorite. So hot. Late 80s Zambine. That was what was in his walk, man, all day. Then a little bit later, I had heard this band on the radio. You know, they're pretty popular in the day. I had missed this one, you know, because most of us did. In the 90s, when I was in college, I didn't have any money, so you would go to the record store to get vinyl for a dollar. That was one that I got for a dollar, and the first track over and over just blew my mind because it's so gorgeous. Honestly, my whole guitar picking style came from copying Lindsay Buckingham and just sort of went from there. So they're a huge band for me. Joe and Armor Training, this record I had to get this on vinyl. So great.

SPEAKER_09 3:14

Shift the word from your hair, but then again, cheaper. Travel in your heart instead, then you fall down to the ground, down to the ground.

SPEAKER_05 3:27

I've come to her recently. I mean, I knew who she was, but you know, sometimes you spend more time with records later. Or they hit you later in your life in a different way. The songs kind of blossom, they start in this sort of fragile place and they just build and build it in momentum. She's just amazing. She's it's so unique, her like style of um where to come at a song from. It's so intuitive and unique, it's just incredible.

SPEAKER_09 3:51

Sing me the other low song, but this time with a middle dedication. Sing it, sing and sing it, sing it. You know that's what I love.

SPEAKER_05 4:04

I just made a record with and Jimmy Lee. His voice sounds almost exactly like it. It's incredible. Never had this one on vinyl?

SPEAKER_10 4:24

Oh, I'll settle down with some old story about a boy who's just like me. Thought there was love in everything, and everyone you're so naive.

SPEAKER_05 4:36

Incredible band. Stuart can write circles around so many people. His songs are so creative and cool, and a great sense of melody. Love. Somebody named Fiona Apple made an incredible record that made me want to go record. We share some band members, gotta confess. But this record and the one she did before made me want to go record with Dave Way at his studio. So I gotta give a shout out to Miss Apple. This record is so creative and just raw sounding. You know, they kind of made it during the pandemic and started with beating on pans, and you know, she had to hang out a couple few chords here and there and just built it from scratch in this really collective, fun, raw way. It's really interesting music making. Just an uncontrollable force. Her voice, it goes wherever it wants to, it's wild, it's beautiful, you know, it's fragile, it's powerful. It's almost like she's just improvising the entire time, and the band has to figure out how to follow. I think she had a big influence on a lot of people that I didn't understand until I dug into her records, you know. Just amazing. I also want to give a shout-out to this record. I've never had this one on vinyl, and I think this is a magical record. Some of these songs are so funny and beautiful and just magic.

SPEAKER_07 7:17

Oh my love! Oh, it was a funny little thing. It was a funny, funny little thing.

SPEAKER_05 7:40

Just this sort of balance between childishness and also craft.

SPEAKER_07 7:45

And the love we hold and the love we spurn will never grow cold, no, only tax in turn.

SPEAKER_05 7:58

I saw this on the shelf and I had to pick it up. This blew my mind. I think I got this around the time that I was starting to write songs. It kind of gave me a map. Don't stop to count the years.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

Sweet songs never last too long. Broken radios.

SPEAKER_05 8:20

I came to songwriting with lots of heroes. You know, all the word people. Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, you know, Leonard Coney like all the word people. But I didn't really know his music, but I had heard like a song or two, and a friend had given me some stuff, and I absorbed this thing so intensely.

SPEAKER_02 8:35

You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there wrapped up in a tramp of your very own chain of song.

SPEAKER_05 8:44

You know, on the turn of a dime, you'll be laughing, but also like, oh my god, that's intense. I still rip off his songs like all the time. M and Townsman's Ant. I was a huge um Cowboy Junkies fan, you know, when they came with that aesthetic, which is like, oh my god, you can do these country songs, but in this real spacious, beautiful way. But they were covering some Townsman's Ant songs, and I had never heard of him. So, you know, back in the day you kind of had to do your wormhole that way. I found a Townsman's Ant record, and I've been ripping those off forever, too.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Where to live to fly all alone high. So shake the dust off of your wings and the sleep out of your eyes.

SPEAKER_05 9:26

But I also need to dig into some movies. I always come here for the movies as well. You guys have so many great, great movies. My favorite movie ever, it's a Fellini movie called The Strata about some circus performers after World War II, which you know, Italy was a hard place to be in. They bring joy and they bring sorrow. Poetic and powerful, just a real life journey, it's incredible. Heard about this guy recently, Usmani Zimbeni, watched some Senegalese African cinema. I watched some of his movies. They are an incredible window into another culture in another time. I just think it's really powerful. Also one of my faves, Paperman. Just because a man meets a woman in a barroom don't mean he's your pa. Eat your Coney Island.

SPEAKER_07 10:58

I want my money.

unknown 11:00

But I don't have it.

SPEAKER_05 11:04

Clever, sweet, funny. I think it's better than Bogdanovich's last picture show, but you know, if you want to argue about it, I'll I'll I'll do it.

SPEAKER_04 11:22

A little birdie told me that you went to film school.

SPEAKER_05 11:25

I did, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:26

What was that experience like?

SPEAKER_05 11:27

It was interesting. You know, I went out uh after film school and worked in a bunch of different mostly commercial, but some movies and independent movies and it's prohibitively expensive for cre for creative types. So I in my spare time I was doing music and uh one thing just took over the other. I never really thought about it, but um making records is a lot like making films where you have you know a song as a take and you're trying to cast the right musicians to give the scene the best life or the most interesting life you can. For better or for worse, I'm a band with one permanent member, so I get to recast my band every time I make a record. And it's been interesting how similar it is to working on movies. Even like giving direction, you try not to tell them what to play to sort of give them a frame for how to express themselves. It's incredible. Music can also absorb like all types of expression, like there's nothing you can't express with music. So there's been a lot of crossover that I didn't expect, I'd never thought about. Thanks for bringing me to the store. I love this store so much. I used to go to the old location, and me and my friends, we would come to play shows here, my the whole band, we would land, come straight to here, spend all our money, and then go to the gig and sound check. I mean, we would do that first. We have priorities straight.

SPEAKER_04 12:46

That's amazing. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_05 12:48

Thank you, thank you. Thanks for being here.