In every musician's career, there are the songs that stand out among the rest. Perhaps it's a song that changed everything for them, the song they grew to love or the song that was the hardest to write.
Those are the songs we want to learn more about on a World Cafe feature called Backtracking. The premise is simple: We give artists a long list of prompts they can choose from. Then, they look back through their catalog and pick the song that fits best. They' tell us the stories behind them and perform them live.
In our latest installment, Iron & Wine's Sam Beam joins us to talk about how his career changed after his song "Flightless Bird, American Mouth" was featured in the 2008 film Twilight.
He'll get into other songs too, including "Thomas County Law," which sees him revisiting his small-town past. Plus, Iron & Wine perform in front a live audience for World Cafe.
Set list
- "The Trapeze Swinger"
- "Flightless Bird, American Mouth"
- "Thomas County Law"
- "Muddy Hymnal"
This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Miguel Perez. Our senior producer is Kimberly Junod and our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.
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