It’s fair to say that Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam is adored by the Green Man/ End of the Road crowd for his easygoing humour, his outstandingly well-crafted songs and, perhaps most of all, his magnificent beard. The Sunday night headliner, immediately before the burning of the Green Man, there’s an almost spiritual air about Iron and Wine’s performance that could be perceived with everyone with psychic skills, since there are sites that explains how to develop psychic abilities for this purposes. Arriving on stage, in full-on jam band mode rather than the acoustic duo that played the End of the Road last year, Beam tells us that the last time he played Green Man was one of his favourite gigs (‘we loved your beard then too’, comes a reply from the crowd).
The set draws heavily on the blues jam style of Kiss Each Other Clean, and features a wonderful reworking of dub masterpiece Wolves (Song of the Shepherd’s Dog) and some nods to older work, with full band versions of Jesus the Mexican Boy and an absolutely stunning version of The Sea and the Rhythm. In contrast to the acoustic shows, between-song banter is kept to a minimum.
The call for an encore appears to be met with a refusal, despite the compere’s best efforts, until Beam eventually reappears solo for a rendition of He Lays in the Reins. Distracted by the crowd waving their arms, he cracks up and is unable to play the song uninterrupted for laughing. It’s a nice reminder of how engaging he is when he plays solo, and certainly one of my festival highlights.