You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe.

This week, I wanted to go back and revisit the episode that I made with Iron and Wine in the fall of 2022.

And there are a couple reasons.

One, there's a new Iron and Wine album that's coming out this month, called Hens Teeth. And secondly, I actually have a song of my own that's coming out today, the same day as this episode, and it features Iron and Wine on the track. It's called Stray Dogs, and it's the first song from an album that I'm releasing in April called In the Last Hour of Light.

This Iron and Wine episode of the podcast is what actually led to our collaboration on the song.

I'd been a huge fan of Iron and Wine for two decades, and this live taping, which happened in Wimberley, Texas at the Blue Rock Artist Ranch and Studio, was the first time

that I got to meet Sam Beam from Iron and Wine. So before we go back and listen to the episode

itself, I thought it could be nice to talk to Sam about how this episode happened and then how

that led to the making of stray dogs. Sam, do you remember what your thoughts were leading up to the day when we

met? Oh, well, I'd heard some of your podcast, some of the song exploters, and so I would try to

keep up when, you know, you're very familiar with someone's voice, but I've never seen their

face. You know, it's always interesting to put the voice back into the mouth, the real mouth,

and your voice fit right back into your face. It was cool. Yeah, we were talking about bands that we liked,

and it was interesting to hear how familiar, and having never met you, how familiar you were

with my writing. It was a nice surprise. One of the things that was really special for me that day was to tell you the story about my mom in 2003

when she'd come to visit me for the first time in L.A.

And I'd been listening to your first album so much.

And my mom, you know, she enjoyed some of the music that I listen to. Yeah, she's a huge

post-punk fan, I'm sure. She was like, Fugazi only in the car. I get it, Risha. Yeah, love it.

But I said to my mom, I just, I love this album. You got to hear this song. And I played her upward over the mountain. Just thinking that she would, you know, really enjoy it.

But then to my surprise, she started crying. and I'd never seen her have that kind of reaction

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