Iron & Wine
Thursday, April 14, Orange Peel

The press on Sam Beam — the lo-fi Florida folkie who plays as Iron & Wine — suggests that, above all else, he is fuzzy and improbable. Fuzzy I’ll give you: with a full beard, soft voice, and a gentle demeanor, he’s as fuzzy as anyone in the critical limelight (unless you count Elmo). And I can see improbable too: three years ago, the South Carolina-bred, Miami-based family man and film professor was recording hush-a-bye 4-tracks in his bedroom; now, he’s a minor celebrity whose buzz long ago passed out of the underground stage and into the pages of Spin, Harp, and No Depression.

Listen to his music, though, and it doesn’t seem so improbable: his earthy melodies have broad appeal, straddling the creative border between indie and Americana. What’s indie? Those ethereal, hummable, low-key, lo-fi meditations on life and love, all of it writ quiet and abstract, drawing inevitable Nick Drake comparisons. What’s Americana? The acoustic slide and hard-won vulnerability of his classic guitar-and-a-bared-soul late-night front-porch songwriting. What’s unique? That soft urgent voice, singing songs his press release likens to “the crushed whispers of a blessed man.”

It was a good enough package, at any rate, to draw the interest of Seattle’s Sub Pop records, who laid hands on some of Beam’s early 4-tracks and called him out of the blue to ask for more. Beam obliged with more than 40 songs, and in 2002 Sub Pop released 12 of them as The Creek Drank the Cradle. The critical response was quick and gushing — many called it the best release of the year — and Sub Pop followed up with the ‘03 EP The Sea & the Rhythm and ‘04’s full-length Our Endless Numbered Days. Both were well-received, and the cult of Iron & Wine only grew.

Now comes a second EP titled Woman King, a six-song rumination on Woman as “idol, monarch, warrior, saint, lover, and enemy.” The theme is in some ways accidental — the songs were culled from a much larger batch of Beam originals — but in other ways it is not. Beam clearly maintains a healthy reverence for the women in his life, and has acknowledged previously that most of his songs are love letters to his wife. Beam’s lyrics are still opaque and his whispers still crushed, but Iron & Wine fans will notice that he is working with a bigger toolbox than when he first broke in. It’s no longer just a man and his guitar, singing softly while the kids sleep in the next room: now he’s got studio help, and drums and banjos and pianos too. He’s kept his quiet urgency, but there’s a bit more flourish to these songs. Some may want the lowest of the lo-fi Beams back; others may wish he’d broaden his sound still more. For now, Beam seems content to walk a middle path, tinkering enough with his sound to avoid turning stale, but not so much as to risk dilution. It’s a good call, and a good album too.

Tickets are $15 and the show starts at 9 p.m. Opening are Seattle’s Band of Horses, who recently signed with Sub Pop and are described in one review as “beautiful drone-pop.” Call 828.225.5851 for more info.

Chris Scruggs
Friday, April 15, Jack of the Wood

I don’t have much room, but I can tell you this: Chris Scruggs is a Nashville playa, a banjo and guitar-slinger who was pegged to join BR5-49 when bassist Jay McDowell and frontman Gary Bennett left the band. (You can hear his work on BR5-49’s Tangled in the Pines.) At the ripe old age of 22, he’s left BR5-49 to pursue solo work and “kick ass in every key.” He’s also the grandson of Earl Scruggs. You can see how thick the blood is at the Jack on Friday night. Ask him to kick a little ass in A-flat.

This show starts around 9:30. Call 828.252.5445 for cover charge.

Also Playing in Asheville

• Larry Keel, Emerald Lounge, 4/15

• New Monsoon w/ That 1 Guy, Stella Blue, 4/15

• Steep Canyon Rangers, Asheville High, 4/16

• Chuck Brodsky, Grey Eagle, 4/16

• Damian Marley, Orange Peel, 4/17

• Magnolia Electric Company, Grey Eagle, 4/18

• The Dead Kenny Gs, Stella Blue, 4/19

• Zap Mama and Cee-Lo, Orange Peel, 4/19

Three Good Things

1. Modern Medicine

2. Screw Anchors

3. Petite Syrah

They Said It

“Critics . . . are notoriously irascible, tendentious, bad-tempered observers who like nothing more than settling old scores, indulging eccentric prejudices, and using someone else’s [art] as an occasion to riff on their own obsessions.”

— Book critic Adam Gopnik, writing in The New Yorker