I went to art school, wanting to be a painter and then I got into photography. Then it was movies, and I liked the images. One of the things that interested me in film was that I was communicating in images. That was something I did intuitively and could not even talk about until I started having to do interviews.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Movies Art Age

I live in Texas, man. It's hard to be a vegetarian down here.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Vegetarian Texas T

It's nice to play new songs, but it's nerve-wracking.

Samuel Ervin Beam

T Songs Song

Well, for me, I grew up in the Carolinas, and it's our mythology. Those are the characters that we learn about how to live life and moral lessons. It wasn't Zeus and Athena. It was Job and Jesus.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Life Car Zeus

I learned early on that you do yourself a disservice trying to replicate the record onstage every night. As a player, and for the audience I think, it's a mistake.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Age Yourself Yours

You can treat musicians like actors - you give them a roadmap but don't tell them what to do, and let their personal style or interpretation speak in the piece. And in both film and music, you create a space where people feel safe to do their best. You treat songs like scripts that can be interpreted a lot of different ways.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Space Music You

I feel like anytime you write about people in an honest way, you can find connections to any issue you would like.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Time You Write

A lot of the big-budget movies, craft-wise, are amazing, but have a boring story. And the indies have their idiosyncrasies.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Movies Amazing Wise

My folks had a lot of Motown records, so that was a kind of an early inspiration. I grew up on the radio really.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Up Town T

I always liked American Analog Set.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Ways Way T

My wife is a midwife, and there's only so many states where you can do that. Texas is a place where she can work.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Work You Wife

Religion is a huge part of our consciousness. I grew up in the Bible Belt, so it's our mythology. Those are the stories we learn as little kids at Sunday school. I'm not afraid to use the metaphors, because I think the stories are beautiful.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Religion Art Use

I was born in 1974, so I grew up listening to what was on the radio - my mom's car sounded like Fleetwood Mac, because that was what was on the radio.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Mom Car Wood

I don't want to single anyone out. I'll just say that there are a lot of not good band names out there.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Good Want Us

Sometimes I teach script writing.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Time Writing Tin

Like anyone who records music or writes a song, I thought, 'Wouldn't that be cool if someday I were able to do this for a living?' But it was such a fluke, and it really all took me by surprise and I just held on for dear life. I really wasn't prepared. I really went into it naively with no experience.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Music Life Experience

I listen to everything: noise, classical, jazz. I like lots of different types of food. There's no way you could get me to eat the same meal everyday, so why would I do the same with music?

Samuel Ervin Beam

Music Food You

I try to use a poetic language more than talk about my feelings, but it is married to the music.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Music Age Use

I like to keep working and keep changing. It's a hopeful, optimistic thing to think and sit about what you could do next. Maybe it's blind optimism.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Work Hope You

I certainly don't want to make the same record twice. That's no fun.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Want UN Twice

I like good melodies and a great song.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Great Good T

Me, I'm a lazy bum, so I don't shave.

Samuel Ervin Beam

I liked 'The Omen.'

Samuel Ervin Beam

Contradictions are fun.

Samuel Ervin Beam

I like to make things. When you make something, you work it and you work it until it's done, and then you say 'Look, here's what I made.'

Samuel Ervin Beam

At the end of the day, I can't sit down and write a song to sell.

Samuel Ervin Beam

I don't really make particularly abrasive music, but at the same time I wouldn't change something to make people like it.

Samuel Ervin Beam

I don't advertise what I do to my kids. I don't go around waving a flag. I'm sure they are proud, in a certain way. I'm not like 'hey kids - check this out.' No matter what they do, your dad is still your dad. Nothing is going to help you out in that regard. Dad is just not cool.

Samuel Ervin Beam

What's fascinating about facial hair? It's more fascinating that people shave it off every day.

Samuel Ervin Beam

When I put out a record I don't really like to do covers as much, but I don't mind playing them. I do them mostly for my friends. When a friend's like, 'Man I really like that song,' I go 'hahaha' and I go home and I record it.

Samuel Ervin Beam

As far as American directors, Terrence Malick is probably my very favorite.

Samuel Ervin Beam

I like Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, but some of the older ones it's hard for me to sit down with - when I sit down to read some poetry, I usually read more contemporary stuff.

Samuel Ervin Beam

I like writing in an illustrative, descriptive way. I prefer describing to rather than explaining. One, I rarely have anything to say. It's much more interesting for me to discover some meaning that you didn't know that you could create.

Samuel Ervin Beam

I'm not religious. But I grew up religious in the Bible Belt.

Samuel Ervin Beam

I was raised in the suburbs. I wasn't on a plantation or anything.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Back in '98 or so when I was in film school I was working on lighting for a movie in Georgia, out in the middle of nowhere at a gas station. Inside the gas station they had a bunch of old home remedies like castor oil, and one of them was a protein supplement called Beef, Iron & Wine. I just dropped the Beef part.

Samuel Ervin Beam

I recognized that a lot in my writing I'm trying to show both sides of the coin - the sour and sweet. Iron & Wine seemed to fit with that duality and I thought it would be more interesting to call the project that rather than use Sam Beam.

Samuel Ervin Beam

I like ones that pertain to the music they make. Talking Heads does that somehow. More often than not band names are just a quirky joke that doesn't really stay funny for very long. It's like Homer Simpson's barbershop quartet, the Be Sharps. At first you're like, 'That's funny!' Then you're like, 'It's not that funny.'

Samuel Ervin Beam

Anytime you go back and listen to old material, there's always the threat of being surprised.

Samuel Ervin Beam

It's a funny thing having a recording be part of your career. It means you can go back and revisit yourself, in a way most people don't.

Samuel Ervin Beam

You have high school photos and stuff, but to have a recording of your voice and your work from 20 years ago, it's a kick in the head to hear how you've changed and what you were interested in at the time and how it's either changed or stayed the same.

Samuel Ervin Beam

People always say, 'Why don't you play more sets in Texas?' and I say, 'Dude, why don't you come babysit?'

Samuel Ervin Beam

I'm very flattered the press wants to write about me.

Samuel Ervin Beam

I went to art school, wanting to be a painter and then I got into photography. Then it was movies, and I liked the images. One of the things that interested me in film was that I was communicating in images. That was something I did intuitively and could not even talk about until I started having to do interviews.

Samuel Ervin Beam

As a listener, I like shorter records, because you can really absorb the songs.

Samuel Ervin Beam

I try to write humanistic songs.

Samuel Ervin Beam

I love to sell records, but that's not what I'm into.

Samuel Ervin Beam

Oh yeah, I love Peter Gabriel's stuff. I mean, I even have the Genesis records. He's incredible.

Samuel Ervin Beam

I keep trying to make different records each time.

Samuel Ervin Beam

I don't sit and write records from start to finish. I write all the time, and when it's time to record you just look and see what songs you've got that could work together as a group thematically.

Samuel Ervin Beam

I don't like to be doing the same thing over and over again, so I keep trying other things.

Samuel Ervin Beam