Joey Burns on reconnecting with Sam Beam
Joey Burns had a general idea of what to expect when Calexico first got together with Sam Beam of Iron & Wine to collaborate on “In the Reins” at Wavelab Studio in Tucson.
As it turns, he was wrong. “John Convertino and I thought, ‘OK, this is gonna be a really quiet session,’” he says, “because the music we had heard leading into the session in 2005 was really quiet, home-recorded, hushed vocals. We thought we’d be playing barely anything at all. But as it turned out, it was quite different than that. Sam wanted us to do what we do and sort of asked us to do even what we
do.”
On “Burn That Broken Bed,” for instance, Beam said, “OK, normally, you would only do one trumpet solo? Let’s do two or three.”
As Burns recalls his reaction at the time, “I liked that he was really pushing our identity collectively.”
They went on to collaborate on a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Dark Eyes” for the soundtrack to the Todd Haynes Dylan movie “I’m Not There.” And they’ve stayed in touch, joining each other on stage on occasion. Burns is on Iron & Wine’s 2007 album “Shepherd’s Dog” while Beam appears on two Calexico releases, 2008’s “Carried to Dust” and 2015’s “Edge of the Sun.”
But they hadn’t done a larger-scale collaboration since 2005 when they assembled at the Sound Emporium in Nashville last December to record the songs on “Years to Burn.”
And this time, they took a much different approach than they had on that 2005 EP.
“Instead of sort of trying to outdo ourselves or reinvent ourselves,” Burns says, “it was more about peeling back the layers, just being as raw and as intimate as possible in the studio. Just by nature of us being there, performing live and recording and then only maybe adding a couple vocals or one overdub to each track, it really was a more minimal arrangement and expression than the first one.”
Following Beam’s great instincts
The new album was also recorded with a much different cast of musicians than they’d used on “In the Reins.”
As Burns recalls, that first EP was “mostly all of Calexico with just Sam Beam and the help of a couple of the engineers at Wavelab, who also guested on the project.”
So it was a group effort, he says, “but leaning more towards Calexico’s side.”
This time, Beam wanted to use his own bassist (Sebastian Steinberg) and keyboard player (Rob Burger).
“I said, ‘John and I will be there but how about we bring a couple trumpets?‘” Burns recalls. “Sam said, ‘Well maybe just one.’ I said, ‘OK. We’ll bring Jacob Valenzuela.’ And I had to break the news to some of the other musicians in Calexico, but they understood.”
They also used Paul Niehaus, a longtime Calexico sideman who now tours with Beam as well.
They had four or five days to record and as Burns says, “Kind of similar to the first EP, we just went in and knocked the songs out. There was no preproduction and not much thinking about it. It was sort of, let’s just see what happens. I think Sam had some feelings about what he was looking for. And he was certainly willing to hear any sort of feedback or ideas. He’s pretty quiet in his direction. But I would say that he’s got some great instincts.”
In the first three days, they managed to record all five songs they had demoed in advance.
“And then we had a couple days to just sort of experiment,” Burns says. “So we did. We started off with an idea that John Convertino had, which was instead of basing a song around music, lyrics, chords, melodies, let’s just do something completely free and entirely improvisational.” That track became “Outside El Paso.”
Burns suggested doing variations on “Tennessee Train,” one of Beam’s songs.
“I said, ‘How about we take one of the
Calexico and Iron & Wine
7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 16.
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verses and translate it into Spanish, with Jacob singing, which ended up becoming a track called ‘Pajaro’. Then I offered another idea of leaning more on the band’s ability to improvise. I said, ‘Why don’t we do something that’s just more of a groove, more like ‘70s Afrobeat or something for lack of a better word, but just groove in some of the keys that are on the track ‘Tennessee Train’? That became ‘Evil Eye.’ Then Sam said, ‘Why don’t we put them all together in a medley and we’ll call it ‘The Bitter Suite.’”
That title is a play on something Steinberg said at the end of that song.
“You can hear him very quietly say, ‘Ah, life is bittersweet’ after that song, which is sort of a silly thing to say after a sad song,” Burns says, with a laugh. “But we love his lines. And there were quite a few throughout the session that were cracking us up, which really helped balance the whole mood.”
‘Being totally honest with who we are’
They only had enough material to make another EP but they came out with a full-length album. As Burns says, “We wound up getting creative, did well with our use of time and got some beautiful moments that you only find when you’re comfortable enough playing with one another, just kind of throwing things out there to see what sticks.”
The last track they worked on was “In Your Own Time,” an old song Beam’s manager salvaged from one of his earliest demos because it had always reminded him of Calexico.
“It is what it is,” Burns says of the album they ended up making. “It’s singersongwriter material. We’re not trying to be the Ramones or anything. And we’re certainly not trying to completely reinvent ourselves. We’re just being really totally honest with who we are and what we are. And there you have it, ‘Years to Burn.’ But it’s been really fun, sort of revisiting some of that energy and great memories that we had going way back to 2005.”
They called the album “Years to Burn,” he says, because “it just seemed like the most fitting title we could come up with that was featured in the lyrics. It kind of touches on the aspect of time, which when you’re dealing with musicians in their 40s and 50s who haven’t played together in 14 years, that is the common denominator.”
They recently finished a European tour. Now they’re launching a U.S. tour at the Orpheum Theatre in Phoenix.
“We’re kind of getting to catch up,” Burns says. “And I can see already the creative wheels are spinning. I imagine that there will be, who knows, maybe a couple other new songs coming out of the touring.”
It’s a much different tour than the one they did on “In the Reins.”
“There’s far fewer musicians,” Burns says.
Another difference doing separate sets.
“In 2005, Calexico did a set, Iron & Wine did a set, and then we did those seven songs and some covers together, including inviting guests in whatever cities we were performing in,” Burns says. “In a way, we were kind of modeling our tour in 2005 after the Rolling Thunder Revue that Dylan had done in the ‘70s. And now we’re just doing our own thing. We’re paring it down in the middle of the set, just doing two acoustic guitars and voices, which is something more familiar to Iron & Wine’s audiences than maybe Calexico’s audiences. So it’s a bit of a nice turn. We’re also doing some Iron & Wine songs, which John and I have chosen. And some Calexico songs, which Sam has chosen.”
Burns is thrilled to be launching the U.S. tour in Arizona, with concerts in Phoenix and Tucson.
“I get to to drop off my kids for the first day of school,” he says. “And then I get to drive to Phoenix and rock out, drive home after the show, try to sleep in on Saturday, and then I’m gonna to take them to the rock show, which they’ve already seen in Brooklyn, and it’s gonna be fun. I can’t wait.” is they won’t be