Iron & Wine
Bottom of the Hill
March 24, 2003

Review by Jake Thomas

I saw Mr. Sam Beam only a month or two ago opening for the Shins' James Mercer. It was an all acoustic, singer-songwriter type of night, and a damn good one. At the end of his set, Sam said he'd be back with a full band at the end of March, and he wasn't lying. This time the solo artist split off like a salamander's tail into five pieces: two drummers, one which also played bass and xylophone, the other also played guitar; a guitar-slide guitar-banjo dude; a female back-up singer; and finally, Sam himself on guitar and vocals. I was a little apprehensive about hearing rocked-out versions of all my favorite
Iron & Wine songs, but luckily they didn't tow that line for the entire show. Some songs were a little rocked out, others just slightly accented by Sam's fellow musicians, and some were pretty much just like the originals. The back-up female vocals were amazing, as was everything else really. I especially enjoyed the xylophone playing by the drummer and the occasional plinkity-plinks of the banjo strings, but then again, I'm a sucker for both of these instruments. They pretty much played all of Iron & Wine's dabut album 'The Creek Drank the Cradle', in addition to a lot of stuff that I had never heard, all of which I enjoyed. Hopefully Subpop or someone else will make all of the unreleased material that he accumulated for his first album
available in some form (apparently he had two albums worth of material finished, and Subpop pared it down to one), be it MP3s, another CD, a series of EPs... I don't really care how they do it, just do it! This was a fantastic show by one of my new favorites, and hopefully he'll keep coming back and playing for us as long as he continues selling out shows.

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Check out our previous Sam Beam review:
Review - Febuary 8th, 2003 @ Bottom of the Hill


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