Sam Beam went to Brooklyn to record new album

AUSTIN, Texas - The prevailing image of Sam Beam, who makes music as Iron & Wine, is of an abundantly bearded man alone on stage with a guitar, whispering songs to take your breath away.

That's how Beam made his entrance back in 2002 with his hushed debut, The Creek Drank the Cradle. And it's not too far off the tableau before us on a gorgeous March afternoon at the South by Southwest music festival, as shadows play upon the songwriter, and he stands under the outstretched arms of an enormous oak on the idyllic grounds of the Hotel Saint Cecilia.

On this day, when he's sharing a bill with freak-folk avatar Devendra Banhart, Beam outwardly seems the prototypical neo-hippie solo singer-songwriter. He charms the crowd with easygoing, funnier-than-you-might-think stage patter and is at ease fulfilling fans' requests for songs from his ample catalog.

Listen to his new Iron & Wine album, Ghost on Ghost (Nonesuch ***), which comes out Tuesday, however, and a different image emerges.

Beam, who will perform a sold-out show May 15 at Union Transfer, decided against making the album in his home studio outside Austin, where he lives with his wife and five daughters. Instead, he and multi-instrumentalist Rob Burger and producer Brian Deck went to Brooklyn, N.Y. There, Beam recorded his most fleshed-out set of songs yet, accompanied by players including Bob Dylan bassist Tony Garnier and ace drummer Brian Blade, plus full horn and string sections.

"I wanted to make something sophisticated," Beam says, letting out a self-deprecating laugh. "The strings on some of those old R&B records and torch songs can be incredibly beautiful. I enjoy that. I sat in the booth like Sinatra and just sang. I felt spoiled rotten, to be honest."

Ghost on Ghost's lusher instrumentation is a natural progression for Beam, an art-school grad and former film teacher, who began turning his musical avocation into a career with The Creek Drank the Cradle.

But the arrangements don't get in the way of Beam's knack for intimate communication. The song "Winter Prayers," in which he sings, "Your confidence leaves you like smoke falls out her red mouth," shares close-kept secrets as strings and female vocals soften the narrator's fall. The moody toe-tapper "Lover's Revolution" works a loping, smoky, club groove before turning up the heat in a big-band jazz jam.

Beam grew up in South Carolina and went to art school at Virginia Commonwealth University before getting his master's in film studies at Florida State. Music had always been a hobby. "When I got out of film school and I was living alone, I had a lot of spare time, and the songs kind of took over."

While on a film shoot in 1998 in Georgia, Beam looked in a gas station window and saw a protein supplement called "Beef, Iron and Wine." He didn't buy it, but took the latter two-thirds as his stage name, figuring it neatly nodded to the sweet and sour duality of his music.

When he plays Union Transfer, Beam will have the biggest version yet of Iron & Wine, 14 instruments in all. "Nobody can say that I don't do it for the love of music," he says with a laugh. "Because I won't make a dime."

At SXSW, Beam seems an island of calm, advising manic conferencegoers to take a break rather than run themselves ragged. When it's suggested that he appears well-grounded amid all the folderol, he says: "You should see me at home - then you wouldn't think I'm so together."

He adds, "I take it seriously. I don't do it for the lifestyle. I like creative work." He likens the songwriter-bandleader's role to that of a writer-director, while stressing the indie nature of his enterprise. "It's more of a [John] Cassavetes crew than a Joel Schumacher crew."

If his music career was born of having too much time on his hands, the 38-year-old dad now finds he has very little. "I have a routine, and I apply a little discipline to it. I take the kids to school, and in the morning when I'm still half-asleep, [and] a little more in touch with the subconscious, I write. It has a little more of an easy time slipping out then."

Beam, also a visual artist, appreciates a range of musical styles. "Dylan, folk music, Steely Dan . . . Cat Stevens, Elton John, that's a nostalgic thing. . . . I love going back to that music. But I like punk rock and country and everything. I feel like me and my generation absorbed all that stuff, and it's all kind of muddled up together.

"It can be intimidating, if you let it be. But I'm an untrained musician, and I came out of an art-school background, where the process is about trying things and seeing whether they work out. So I just hope I stumble onto something, you know what I mean?"

As a singer, his cool, clear voice is instantly identifiable. "I feel lucky about that. I think about that often. It gives me maybe a bit of false courage, that I can try a lot of different settings, and it'll still sound like Iron & Wine."