How Sam Beam’s Iron & Wine made me cry on a Thursday night

Blue and red lights shadowed the painted ceiling of the Fremont Theater on Feb. 20 at 9:20 p.m. when Sam Beam’s hushed vocals floated through the theater like a lullaby, wrapping the crowd in a warm embrace. As the first delicate guitar strum of  “Love and Some Verses” filled the air, it was clear this was more than a concert.

The stage was set more like a friend’s living room, stripped down to its essence: a single chair, two guitars resting nearby, no backup vocalists and no extra instruments. It was just Sam, his guitars and me. 

And of course, a few other hundred people. 

Despite the full theater, the night felt impossibly quiet, the kind of quiet that only happens when an entire room is holding its breath. Sam’s voice, above only a whisper at times, had a way of making every lyric feel like a secret. 

As he played “Flightless Bird, American Mouth,” I found myself mesmerized. I had heard this song countless times before, but never like this. He didn’t perform it as a song, as much as a poem, letting the melody breathe while my mind filled in the blank hums and hymns. 

I could feel my eyes well up — not because the song was particularly sad, but because of the beauty and fragility it held. 

But the concert wasn’t all hushed reverence. Beam is as much a storyteller as he is a musician,  and I wasn’t the only one moved by his voice. Throughout the night fans shouted, “I love you, Sam!” or threw out song requests. Instead of ignoring them, he answered back, like we were all old friends catching up. 

He also wasn’t timid about sharing his own thoughts, saying, “That’s a weird one, but if we’re being honest with ourselves, we’re all a little weird.” 

He strung his guitar absentmindedly as he concluded “Carousel,” a track that, in hindsight, felt like the perfect embodiment of that sentiment: soft, strange and deeply human.