Looking like none other than history’s John Brown, with his long grey beard and wild hair, returning to Virginia to raise cane, the artist known as Iron & Wine actually has a smooth and intellectually frisky approach to his music.
In his fine show with I’m with Her on a steamy night at Wolf Trap, Sam Beam, who goes by the name Iron & Wine, brings a chamber folk backing to his striking songs. Instead of retribution, he brought a benediction to open with the repeated chorus of “God, give us love in the time that we have” from a 20-year-old song “On Your Wings.”
Religion would come up occasionally as he went along, but was overtaken by rural scenes and memory, singing of cornfield crows, baling wire, and autumn leaves. There’s a specificity in his songs, and unexpected philosophical turns. As such, there’s a playfulness, too, using a vocabulary unique in his particular realm of alt folk.
The sound was enhanced considerably by his band, with Beth Goodfellow’s tasty touch on drums, Katie Ernst on bass and backing vocals, Rob Burger on keyboards and Lauren Baba on violin. They all worked under some duress, due to the 80-degree temperatures after sunset with ample humidity. “You guys have to get your A.C. fixed, man,” Beam deadpanned.
He had a not-so-new album to promote—last year’s Light Verse, but only played a handful of songs from it. Otherwise, he sprinkled in three songs from his 2007 The Shepherd’s Dog and one each from a half dozen others. This was the rare tour named after and perhaps built around a new single, “Robin’s Egg,” which he recorded with the summer show’s co-headliner, I’m With Her.
That thoughtful, tuneful trio of individual talents on their own—Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins—won a Grammy for their first collaboration and are out promoting their second. Wild and Clear and Blue was released in May and they gave a good showcase for it, playing all but two of its 11 tracks.
Though written together, the songs tend to feature one of them more prominently as needed. Some would begin simply like “Standing on the Fault Line,” only to swell with the strength and beauty of their combined voices. It was likely that half the Wolf Trap crowd (or more) came for their keening sounds and decent musicianship. But many were still finding seats when they began their set before the sun had gone down.
Amusingly, they wore matching jumpsuits embossed with their name (in robin’s egg blue) that make them look like they were just off some other summer job. From the beginning, they gained attention for well-chosen cover songs—their knowing version of John Hiatt’s great “Crossing Muddy Waters” was their first single, and it got big acclaim live, as did a version of Joni Mitchell’s “Carey” a couple of songs later, with each women taking a verse.
And if it felt like the 14-song set was short, there was a highlight later, when after Iron & Wine’s own satisfying 12-song set, they combined forces for another half dozen songs—not only the collaborative single “Robin’s Egg,” but two earlier I’m With Her songs, “Overland” and the hit “Call My Name” and a couple from Iron & Wine, who began the encore set solo for the only time of the night with “God Made the Automobile.”
The two acts joined forces on Waxahatchee’s “Right Back to It,” which was originally recorded as a duet with MJ Lenderman. And the male-female voices worked well, too, on Iron & Wine’s “All in Good Time,” which had Fiona Apple doing the female voice on his recording.
I wondered about the I’m With Her fans who left during the Iron & Wine set only to miss the rich combination of the two that closed an evening that was well worth all the mugginess.
