Sam Beam does not strike you as someone who’d accidentally write a dad joke into a record. And yet, there it is—on Years to Burn, the second collaborative LP between Iron & Wine and Calexico—three interconnected songs now dubbed The Bitter Suite, because upright bassist Sebastian Steinberg leaned into the mic after a take and groaned the title like a bad lounge singer. Beam, grinning, left it in.
“Sometimes serendipity blesses you or bites you in the ass,” Beam shrugs. “However you want to take it.”
It’s been 14 years since the two outfits released In the Reins, a dusty, sepia-toned set of songs that played like a lost southwestern classic. “Back then, we just showed up at the studio and shook hands,” Beam remembers. “We didn’t know each other. It was basically a blind date with microphones.” Since then, they’ve played enough shows together to become a functioning band—enough, at least, to make Years to Burn sound more like jazz-fueled alchemy than a polite roots reunion.
This time, the idea of a collaborative record came from Joey Burns. “Joey was adamant about making a full-length record,” Beam says. “I was picturing a little EP, like last time. But hey, fair play.”
So instead of brevity, they stretched. Beam brought a song (Tennessee Train) that Burns and co. expanded into a triptych, with translations into Spanish, long instrumental passages, and room for improvisation. “You open your mind to what could happen,” Beam says. “It’s like, you don’t even know what the thing is yet. That’s the magic.”
That openness also filtered into the songwriting credits. “Midnight Sun” was written by Burns, with Beam adding lines and textures. “I get tired of monologuing all the time,” Beam jokes. “I love seeing what direction someone else wants to go and then producing them a little bit, even if they don’t know I’m doing it.”
Thematically, Years to Burn is soaked in reflections on time, aging, and the general weirdness of being alive in your forties. “We write about grown-up stuff,” Beam says. “It’s not some cinematic throughline, just… broad reflection. Life is hard, awesome, and scary as shit.”
That would also describe revisiting Our Endless Numbered Days, the 2004 Iron & Wine album that just got the deluxe treatment. “It’s like seeing a picture of yourself you forgot existed,” he says of listening back to the demos. “Some things I remembered. Some I didn’t. But it was fun. Like time travel. Or a really slow acid trip.”
Naked as We Came, the quiet little song that became one of Iron & Wine’s biggest, is on there, of course. “I’ve definitely played it more than the others,” Beam admits. “It’s like a dream you keep forgetting. But I’m blessed to have it.” Recently, he performed it with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, arranged by David Campbell. “We technicolored the hell out of it,” he laughs.
That orchestral show might see a release someday, depending on how many more of them they do. For now, though, Beam is knee-deep in the Calexico tour, which runs July through November, and then maybe—maybe—he’ll figure out what comes next solo.
“I’m always writing,” he says. “But right now, I’m just trying to survive this moment.”
Also: don’t hold your breath for a third Iron & Wine/Calexico album. “Maybe in another 14 years,” Beam deadpans. “We try to find strong prime numbers.”
Listen to the interview above and check out the videos below.
