Iron & Wine

“All our dreamers lose to the light” - from “Angels Go Home”

When the pandemic began, and the world shut down, so did the process of creating for Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam. In its place was a domesticity that the singer hadn’t felt in a long time, and although it was filled with many rewards, making music was not one of them. Reflecting on that time, Beam notes:

“I feel blessed and grateful that I and most of my friends and family made it through the pandemic relatively unscathed compared to so many others, but it completely paralyzed the songwriter in me. While so many artists, fortunately, found inspiration in the chaos, I was the opposite and withered with the constant background noise of uncertainty and fear. The last thing I wanted to write about was COVID, and yet every moment I sat with my pen, it lingered around the edges and wouldn’t leave. I struggled to focus until I gave up, and this lasted for over two years.”

The journey back began with a recording session in Memphis to record a handful of Lori McKenna tracks for the EP Lori with friend and producer Matt Ross-Spang.

“Recording has always been my favorite, and that session was an attempt to reconnect with what I love most about making music. I could finally feel the blood coming back into the body and the creative muscles beginning to relax and move again.”

Soon a series of short tours were booked entitled “Back to Basics,” which, out of necessity, were solo acoustic shows in smaller venues. They had an unspoken weight to them for Beam and the audiences alike, and also an incredible sense of relief for finally sharing art together and being back to work! A larger tour with Andrew Bird followed in the summer of ’22, and Beam was inspired even more by the excitement of collaborating with Andrew and his band and the warmth of musical friends.

“By the time I got home, the paralysis had officially passed, and I was finishing lyrics and booking studio time for what would become Light Verse!”

As Beam began to assemble the musicians he wanted for his record, one common thread arose- they all lived in Los Angeles!  Outside of his own pedigree, the decision to work with engineer and mixer Dave Way at his studio Waystation high up in Laurel Canyon was a logical step based on recommendations from two of the joining players on the record. An additional session would also take place at Silent Zoo Studio, where a 24-piece orchestra would lay claim to a handful of songs, helping prepare them for lift-off.  

“I’ve met and played with so many talented musicians from Los Angeles over the years but never recorded there, and this felt like the perfect time to try. Tyler Chester plays all the keyboards, Sebastian Steinberg plays the bass, David Garza guitar and slide and stuff, Griffin Goldsmith, Beth Goodfellow, and Kyle Crane all play drums here and there, and Paul Cartwright plays many various sizes of violin and mandolin and wrote some wonderful string arrangements for the orchestra! Even Fiona Apple was kind and generous enough to lend us her voice (that miracle that sounds like both a sacrifice and a weapon at the same time) to a duet called “All In Good Time.”

Beam lyrically once again takes focus on a series of both fictional and personal insights, filled with desperate characters and wide-eyed optimists, offering promise and a dose of heartache, tears and laughter, life and love. Taking stock in the album’s title, he jokes, “Light verse is a form of poetry about playful themes that often uses nonsense and wordplay, and it’s my first official Iron & Wine comedy album!…. Just kidding….”

While true this may be Iron & Wine’s most playful record, Beam says the title mostly reflects the way the songs were born with joy after the heaviness and anxiety of the pandemic. Where recent records like Beast Epic or Weed Garden gave air to the disquiet of middle-aged frailty and brokenness, these songs trade that for the focus acceptance can bring. Moment by moment, they delight in being pointed or silly (or both) and attempt beauty over prettiness.

Light Verse arrives April 26th, and it’s Iron & Wine’s seventh full-length overall and fifth for Sub Pop Records. Fashioned as an album that should be taken as a whole, it sounds lovingly handmade and self-assured as a secret handshake. Track by track, its equal parts elegy, kaleidoscope, truth, and dare.

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I'm With Her

With the 2014 formation of I’m With Her, singer/songwriters Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sara Watkins introduced an essential new force into the world of folk music: a close-knit alliance of highly esteemed musicians, each graced with a deep understanding of folk tradition and unbridled passion for expanding its possibilities. Since delivering their critically lauded debut See You Around and standalone singles like “Call My Name” (winner of the 2020 Grammy for Best American Roots Song), the trio have routinely taken time out from their individual careers to dream up songs together—eventually arriving at a new album exploring themes of ancestry, lineage, and the collective human experience. On their long-awaited sophomore LP Wild and Clear and Blue, I’m With Her now bring their luminous harmonies to a soul-searching body of work about reaching into the past, navigating a chaotic present, and bravely moving forward into the unknown.

In a departure from the stripped-back intimacy of See You Around—a 2018 release that turned up on

best-of-the-year lists from the likes of the New York Times—Wild and Clear and Blue centers on a far more elaborate sound informed by the trio’s intensified sense of musical kinship. All multi-Grammy-winners with deep roots in the folk scene, Watkins, Jarosz, and O’Donovan first discovered their near-telepathic chemistry during an impromptu performance at the 2014 Telluride Bluegrass Festival, then co-founded I’m With Her and began touring extensively and performing at acclaimed festivals across the globe.

Produced by Josh Kaufman—a member of Bonny Light Horseman and multi-instrumentalist/songwriter/arranger/producer who’s worked with Bob Weir and The

National—Wild and Clear and Blue ultimately adds a bold new urgency to their delicate entangling of lived-in narrative, fable-like storytelling, and nuanced reflection on cycles of life.

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Ken Pomeroy

Ken Pomeroy will break your heart. She’ll do it with a single line––sometimes, just one word. The pain begins as an empathetic ache. Then, as Pomeroy sings her stories, you begin to see yourself in her hurt and hope. And you realize: We’re in this together.

Pomeroy’s outstretched hand to the wounded manifests as startlingly good songs. Her soprano is comforting––almost sweet––but perhaps most powerful delivering a devastating line. A deft guitarist, she opts for beds of rootsy strings that can soothe or haunt. But it’s her writing that really shines and stings. “Writing was and is the only way I can fully express an emotion and feel like I got it out,” she says. “I feel like once I get it out into a song, I don’t have to worry about it anymore. If it’s a traumatic thing that happened, I kind of act as if it’s gone.” Pomeroy creates a wild but safe space of her own––a space that, like 22-year-old Pomeroy herself, is brutally honest, proudly Native American, and undeniably brilliant.

People have noticed. Pomeroy’s “Wall of Death” made its way onto the Twisters soundtrack, while Hulu’s Reservation Dogs featured her soul-mining gem, “Cicadas.” Tour dates with Lukas Nelson, Iron & Wine, American Aquarium, John Moreland, Kaitlin Butts, and more followed. “A lot of really cool things are happening, but it hasn’t set in. I haven’t had time to bask in it,” Pomeroy says. “Even when I started playing music, I never thought, ‘I’m a musician. I chose this life.’ I feel like something way above me pointed at me and said, ‘Okay, here’s your path.’ And I’ve just been following it kind of blindly ever since.”

Raised in Moore, Oklahoma, Pomeroy is Cherokee. Her mamaw gave her the name ᎤᏍᏗ ᏀᏯ ᏓᎶᏂᎨ ᎤᏍᏗᎦ, which means “Little Wolf with Yellow Hair.” Pomeroy started writing songs at 11 years old. She remembers why––and in signature Pomeroy fashion, it’s somehow disorienting and charming, all at once. “I think I wanted to be a songwriter because of John Denver,” she says. “I heard ‘Jet Plane” when I was like 6, and I became infatuated with it. My stepmom burned a CD of just that song playing 18 times in a row, and I listened to that for years. That type of music was new to me. I didn’t know you could feel a certain way listening to music. And ever since then, I’ve wanted to do that for other people.”

Pomeroy weaves patterns of self-reflection and self-realization into her writing. “Coyote,” featuring fellow Oklahoma songwriting stalwart John Moreland, is a vulnerable admission that sometimes, she has herself to blame. In Native stories, a coyote can be a troubling omen––and one with which Pomeroy often identifies. The vignettes serve as a moving example of embracing tradition, extending it, and making it personal. “Growing up Native, there are a lot of signs and works that include animals. Most every tale includes an animal somehow,” Pomeroy says. “I think that was just subconsciously ingrained in me.”

That’s the entire point for Pomeroy––and why she’ll keep writing. She is chasing that sublime satisfaction that only comes with capturing a moment or a feeling that otherwise is gone forever. “I want people to hear my songs and think, ‘Wow, I went through something similar, or this line reminds me of something that happened in my life. Someone else feels it, and I’m not alone.’” Pomeroy sighs. “That’s what I want: People not feeling alone.”