Tale of the Tapes: Iron & Wine and Ben Bridwell
“Do you think we should have called the project Salmon and Garfuckel?” High above the mid-afternoon din of Park Avenue, on a sunny terrace that can assuage all concerns, Ben Bridwell is still debating the finer points of his latest musical endeavor. The frontman of Band Of Horses turns to his collaborator, Sam Beam—better known as Iron & Wine to fans of emotive folk-pop—and waits for a response, eyes crinkling behind his dark Ray-Bans.
Beam doesn’t miss a beat. “Probably. But there’s still time to fix it.”
It’s not hard to imagine these two rallying in a studio setting; they have the quick banter and warm, backslapping charisma of true cohorts. As it happens, their creative chemistry is just a byproduct of parallel lives; though they recently paired up for their first-ever joint project, Sing into My Mouth, they’ve been friends for decades, and they even have each other to thank for their career-making record deals.
“We went to the same elementary school, grew up in the same town. His older brother is one of my best friends, but we didn’t know each other at first,” recalls Beam. “We started to run into each other and—because we had a common interest in music—we started talking. When we moved to different places, we would send each other CDs and tapes of music that we’d been listening to and that we were making ourselves. When Ben was in a band in the Seattle area called Carissa’s Wierd and they were speaking to Sub Pop about putting out some music, he gave them my music and they called me. He’s the whole reason I have a music career.”
Bridwell adds: “We’re ingrained in each other’s musical DNA now. After [Carissa’s Wierd] broke up, Sam came out to play some shows and my new band, Band Of Horses, and opened up for them. One of our first shows was opening for Sam. The Sub Pop people were there and got interested in us so, really, we got each other signed to Sub Pop.”
Sing into My Mouth, out July 17 (Black Cricket/Brown Records via Caroline), is an equally fraternal affair: a collection of 12 cover songs of such divergent origins as Bonnie Raitt, Talking Heads and Spiritualized. Recorded over the course of one week last summer at Echo Mountain Recording Studios in Asheville, N.C., the album is a fond appraisal of the music that galvanized Bridwell and Beam to create their own rootsy fare, and reinterprets these tunes with warmhearted experimentalism— familiar songs are uprooted as newly melancholic or barnburning, with the two men swapping lead vocals and wending their harmonies around sharp string parts. Essentially, as the duo sees it, the record is a new installment of the tape exchange club that they’ve maintained for so many years.
“That was the basis of our friendship, sharing music that we liked, so it was really easy to start this process of choosing which songs we wanted to do,” says Beam brightly, grinning slightly as he gazes over the Gansevoort Park Avenue hotel balcony. (The enormous beard, a full-stop identifier of Iron & Wine, is indeed resplendent in person.) “It’s so fun to go into the studio with a quiver full of great tunes. You don’t have to worry: ‘Does this work?’ You know they do. It’s a different kind of energy to walk in the door with. You want to do right by a tune that you have so much respect for but, if you do it with love, it’s gonna work, some way or another.” “These were songs we’d always loved and songs one of us introduced to the other,”
Bridwell continues. “A few were songs that I really liked— and wanted to cover—but they never sounded right in my band. So that was really exciting to get to reimagine a song like that, and watch the musicians that Sam plays with just destroy within a couple takes.”
In support of the release of Sing into My Mouth (so named after a line from the album’s opener, “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” by Talking Heads), Iron & Wine and Bridwell will perform at the vaunted Newport Folk Festival, as well as embark on a joint headlining tour squeezed between their day gigs. (Beam is currently working on a duets album with the singer-songwriter Jesca Hoop, and Bridwell is mixing the next record for Band Of Horses.) The disarmingly friendly duo—both married fathers with several daughters apiece—is still not sure which songs they’ll reimagine live; aside from the album cuts, they plan to wrangle new versions of each other’s original fare. Still, they’re adamant that each song on the record has emotional resonance with both of them.
So why did these specific compositions make the cut? We’ll let the gents explain. Here are a few stories behind some of the songs they selected:
“Ab’s Song” (The Marshall Tucker Band)
Bridwell: I have an old cover of Sam doing that from a decade prior. That was on the walk home [from the studio] one night. Someone was like: “What about that song? Let’s do that tomorrow, OK?”
Beam: There were only three or four chords. That’s probably why I felt comfortable playing it back then.
Bridwell: The first version had better harmonies. [Laughter.] I love that song.
Beam: It’s a sweet one. That song really paints the sentiment of a lot of what we do. Even a song I did called “Naked As We Came” has echoes of the sentiment from that tune: talking to someone beyond the grave or speaking of your relationship with those terms. It’s sat with me as a template.
“The Straight and Narrow” (Spiritualized)
Bridwell: I’ve always loved that song. Living in rainy Seattle for 10 years, it was easy to veer toward more melancholy tunes. I just fell in love with that band out of nowhere. That song always stuck with me. It was maudlin for me.
Beam: It’s such a surrender. This is the type of song where he’s confessing some- thing, like some weakness. It’s always beautiful to hear, especially the way you deliver it—I thought it was really brave.
Bridwell: I lived that story, dog.
“This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” (Talking Heads)
Beam: I brought that one. I always liked that tune. I had no idea what we were gonna do with it, but I think I was just strumming around with it—this little fingerpicking thing I usually do. Everyone pretty much knew it, so I didn’t have to teach it. Everyone just sort of fell in and knew the architecture of the tune.
Bridwell: It was immediate on first playback: “That sounds awesome.”
“Done This One Before” (Ronnie Lane)
Bridwell: I’ve been in love with that song for forever. I’m a huge Ronnie Lane fan and that was one of those instances of trying to do it with the band I’m in. I was going, “Oh, it sounds like Band Of Horses trying to cover Ronnie Lane, hookeedoo!” [Laughs.] I was so, so excited to get another crack at that one. Then Rob Berger, who plays keys and does a lot of arranging, got this pedal. We recorded in Asheville, where the Moog synthesizer company is based, and we went down to the factory and [bought gear]. Rob plugs his in—this cool Moog fuzz distortion—and plays the Wurlitzer solo on that, which sounds like Billy Preston. It took a whole new life on that song. That’s one of my favorites.
Beam: It has attitude.
“Any Day Woman” (Bonnie Raitt)
Beam: That’s on her first record. It’s been one of my favorites forever. She didn’t write that song, but she just destroys it. It’s such a pretty song. You go in with good songs like that and you can try, but it’s hard to fuck them up.
Bridwell: That’s a case of us sharing music before we really knew we were gonna do this project, before we really knew what it was going to be.
“Coyote, My Little Brother” (Pete Seeger)
Bridwell: For Pete’s 90th birthday, we did this thing at Madison Square Garden for PBS, and all these people were playing. Bob Ezrin, who did The Wall, was producing this revue. It was like, here comes Warren Haynes, here comes Bruce [Springsteen]— just a line of really great musicians. [Band Of Horses] were the little kids, the whippersnappers who also somehow got invited. I remember when we got the note that they were interested in having us come up, I was like: “I’m gonna buy every Pete Seeger record. I’m gonna get to choose the song we do! There’s no way they’re gonna tell us which one!” So that was me just not knowing how these things work. I went through Pete Seeger’s catalog and this one immediately stuck out to me. It was forever ago. Of course, we ended up doing another song—I never would’ve imagined that the call was actually, “Hey, you and Roger McGuinn are gonna do ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ for your first Madison Square Garden appearance.” [Laughs.] But I’ve always loved this song. I’ve covered it on solo dates I did, mostly because you get to sing the word “strychnine.” I can’t think of too many songs where you get to sing that. It’s also a warning about the environment and man’s impact, so I always find it poignant and a bit sad.
“God Knows (You Gotta Give to Get)” (El Perro del Mar)
Beam: I remember when that one came out. It’s so catchy, but it’s interesting—I thought the lyrics were so contradictory to the melody. But that’s fun. Irony is fun. But I was wondering what would happen if you twisted it, made it into a confession. So we made it strange. [Laughs.]
Bridwell: Strange, a bit spooky at times, but really sweet.
“Bulletproof Soul” (Sade)
Bridwell: I didn’t even know that one.
Beam: I remember sitting with your dad; we would just drink beers and listen to Sade at your dad’s house. This must have been in the early aughts, late ‘90s. I always thought she was amazing.
Bridwell: I was covering “By Your Side” before. I love that song, I think I’d sent you a demo once we started talking about songs— I did such a piss-poor job of it. Thank God because I’m sure “By Your Side” has been covered so many times. It was awesome for me to hear a song that I wasn’t familiar with, and that might be my favorite song on this album. It’s so dense and creepy at times—just dark. I adore that song.
