Iron & Wine – The Creek Drank the Cradle
Back in my early 20’s I was a hopeless romantic with bad hygiene. I used to spend most of my time off work and school on a bus to a few towns over to visit my girlfriend at the time. One time on my way back she couldn’t come with me to the bus stop, and I had some time to kill so I hit up one of my favorite record shops in the Maritimes.
When I got there, the guy working was closing up shop for the day, and I didn’t want to waste his time.
“I know you’re closing up in a few minutes. What should I buy? I’ve got a 5 hour bus ride ahead of me and don’t want to be bored.”
“Well, I’ve been listening to this record quite a bit lately. Really lo-fi stuff out of Florida.”
Good enough. I had just gotten my student loan so I picked it up. I stopped at a pharmacy and got some batteries for my Discman for the trip and went to the bus stop.
I don’t remember if it was an instant epiphany with this record, or if it took me a while to really get it, but I do remember that when I got it, I REALLY got it. This is a beautiful record. It’s the kind of record that invokes memories even if you’ve never heard it before.
Sam Beam didn’t set out to make Iron & Wine something big. He’s actually a fairly successful film teacher at a school in Florida. But when his friend’s band was in talks with Sub Pop, they sent a couple disc’s worth of Sam’s recordings along with their own. Sub Pop loved it, whittled down the songs to one album and released “The Creek Drank the Cradle”. They say the bigger your vocabulary the smarter you are. The average person has a 12,000 word vocabulary. Shakespeare had 25,000. While I agree with this to a point, it’s not always how much you have, but how you use what you have. Sam Beam probably doesn’t have a 25,000 word vocabulary. But the way he uses the words he knows makes for a beautiful experience. (I’ve used the word beautiful twice in this write-up).
This is a record I remember and a record I love. Sit down with this one. A nice glass of wine or a big mug of beer. You’re going to feel relaxed.
We found your name across the chapel door
Carved in cursive with a table fork
Muddy hymnals and some boot marks where you'd been
The shaking preacher told the captain's man
The righteous suffer in a fallen land
Then pulled the shade to keep the crowd from peeking in
We found your children by the tavern door
With wooden buttons and an apple core
Playing house and telling everyone you'd drowned
The begging choir told the captain's man
We all assume the worst the best we can
And for a round or two they gladly drag you down
We found you sleeping by your lover's stone
A ream of paper and a telephone
A broken bow across a long lost violin
Your lover's angel told the captain's man
It never ends the way we had it planned
And kissed her palm and placed it on your dreaming head
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