1962
Farm boy, digging a long line of peas….weeding, ever weeding. Small hands digging into dirt and turning, pulling a weed and packing, pull and pack. In his hand he rubs a stone but not a stone. He pulls and turns. It is flat. A coin. Thumbs wear at the dirt and reveal “1861”. The frame of a woman’s face. A half-penny of Nova Scotia…..in a West Paris farm field….he runs to the farmhouse, wondering …..
2011
Blue light…. and a singer walks into it…..hands-clapping……the boy lifted from the man…..phrase over phrase, a catechism…..”a boy with a coin he found in the weeds”…. “God left the ground to circle the world”…..”a girl with a bird she found in the snow and threw off her gown and that’s how she knows”…..“a boy with a coin/he crammed in his jeans/and making a wish/he tossed in the sea/he brought to a town where all of us burned/when god left the ground and circled the earth”……
Iron and Wine at the State Theater in Portland, Sam Beam at the center of the stage, cadence/singing “Boy With A Coin” and hurtling me through decades. Orson Welles as a slim man, young and bearded this time, …young and at his creative peak….turning to the mic as if it was Halloween, 1939…aided by hand-picked players….. around him, talented and ready ….“I hope you don’t mind if we f*ck with the music”….Puck is on the stage and Shakespeare, he’s in the alley.
Almost half the songs played are completely unknown by me….some from an LP called “Our Eternal Numbered Days” (yes… on order) as well as what seems to be a bootleg obscurity from 2005….still, I’m forward in my seat, watching the magic of a loose band drawn tight. A horn section? At an acoustic concert? Yup. Again, as in The Low Anthem, the small stones of a song built upon. Not unlike what Dylan did with the Budokan concerts. But frankly with arrangements that didn’t reek of Vegas. There has been discussion of this in critical circles, but for me on this night, it all works. Maybe it’s because I’m already in strange territory, what with so many songs unfamiliar. Sam can do what he wants, he’s got a free hand and he’s using it. I don’t know what to expect in this song or that. As Mello so ably texts during the concert, homage and reflection on influences flow from guitar to drums, organ and horns. The band is so happy to be here, and Sam Beam steers them gently, like Welles must have done with the Mercury Players. “Do your best to serve the text”. The arrangement is that there is no arrangement. It’s a fluid interplay, with space given and time allowed. Not unlike jazz, “you get the next four bars, go for it”. There are some parts that are “punched in”…..bookmarks that tell the musicians where they are, but generally there’s a free feel to the space, extends into the audience. We are part of the story of the night. Not mere recipients of “entertainment”. Beyond audience.
Obviously, as memory serves us well, the songs that affected me most were the familiar. “Song of the Shepherd Dog”, “House By the Sea”, “Tree By the River”. But also the never-to-be-radio-broadcast “Monkeys Uptown”, which is one of the best songs from the latest CD, but has unfortunately appropriate language issues. “Tree By the River” was the tune I waited for. It’s goofy and fun and sad at the same time…..perfect. Reminded me of Douglas Coupland’s minimalist novel “Life After God”
Two songs floored me. One was “Walking Far From Home”….which opens the latest CD…..a sort of Lord Randall/Hard Rain…..except in this case there is no refrain, no touchstone chorus that will circle the visions and bring them to sense. It is just one disassociated blast of insight/vision after another. None with any connective tissue between them. Like PTSD and other random access onslaughts, the brain tries to make sense out of the senseless….. and is rendered impotent, a mere receptor of random horror. Like watching TV news with someone else controlling the channels. Does anyone remember Clockwork Orange?
The second intensity was “Free Until They Cut Me Down”, Sam’s pliant, plaintive “take me home” as whispered by a deadly lover. You can hear the rope, coiling. This version honestly better than the original. Yes…. I want the bootleg….
“Need to Hear Agains”…..”Love and Some Verses”, “Sunset Soon Forgotten”, “Fever Dream”, “Summers in Savannah”, “Big Burned Hand”…..
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