Beam was raised outside Columbia, South Carolina, United States where his father worked in land management and his mother was a schoolteacher. He graduated from the Florida State University Film School with an MFA degree. Until the first Iron & Wine album, Beam’s main source of income was as a professor of film and cinematography at the University of Miami and Miami International University of Art & Design. He had been writing songs for over seven years before a friend lent him a four-track recorder. His friends handed out copies of demos that he had made, and the owner of Sub Pop Records personally contacted Beam and proposed a deal. Beam released his first album, The Creek Drank the Cradle, on the Sub Pop label in 2002; Beam wrote, performed, recorded, and produced every track on the album by himself at a studio in his home. The album features acoustic guitars, banjo, and slide guitar; its music has been compared, variously, to that of Nick Drake, Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Young, Elliott Smith, and Ralph Stanley. In 2003 The Sea & the Rhythm was released, an EP collecting other home-recorded tracks along the same lines as those on the debut. Beam’s second album, Our Endless Numbered Days (2004), was recorded in a professional studio with a significant increase in fidelity. The focus still lies on acoustic material, but the inclusion of other band members gives rise to a very different sound. Beam released an EP titled Woman King in February 2005, and the EP In the Reins, a collaboration with Calexico was released in September 2005. This joint work mostly features new full-band versions of previously recorded Iron and Wine rarities. One of his most famous songs is a cover, which was featured on a commercial for M&M’s candies and in the 2004 film “Garden State” (and on its popular soundtrack), of “Such Great Heights” by The Postal Service. His most recent full-length album, The Shepherd’s Dog, was released on September 25, 2007. It contains the single “Boy With a Coin”. http://www.ironandwine.com/ |
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