As far as American directors, Terrence Malick is probably my very favorite.
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.
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.
I'm not religious. But I grew up religious in the Bible Belt.
I was raised in the suburbs. I wasn't on a plantation or anything.
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.
Anytime you go back and listen to old material, there's always the threat of being surprised.
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.
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.'
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.
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.
People always say, 'Why don't you play more sets in Texas?' and I say, 'Dude, why don't you come babysit?'
I always liked American Analog Set.
I'm very flattered the press wants to write about me.
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.
As a listener, I like shorter records, because you can really absorb the songs.
I try to write humanistic songs.
I love to sell records, but that's not what I'm into.
Oh yeah, I love Peter Gabriel's stuff. I mean, I even have the Genesis records. He's incredible.
I keep trying to make different records each time.
