SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
What do Kendrick Lamar, U2 and Roxy Music have in common?
(SOUNDBITE OF IRON & WINE AND BEN BRIDWELL SONG, "I STILL HAVEN'T FOUND WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR")
SIMON: All their songs, ranging from hip-hop to '80s pop, are featured in a new EP of covers by Iron & Wine and Ben Bridwell.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I STILL HAVEN'T FOUND WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR")
IRON & WINE AND BEN BRIDWELL: (Singing) I have climbed highest mountains, run through the fields only to be with you.
SIMON: Iron & Wine's Sam Beam is best known for his intimate indie-folk sound. Ben Bridwell is best known as lead singer for the rock group Band of Horses. And their new album is called "Making Good Time." Sam Beam and Ben Bridwell join us. Gentlemen, welcome to the show.
SAM BEAM: Hi, Scott.
BEN BRIDWELL: Hello.
SIMON: Listen, you're both prolific songwriters. Why cover other musicians, particularly songs that are so well known?
BRIDWELL: Let's see. I mean, I think Sam and I, you know, we have this friendship forged really from a great distance. I was living in Seattle. He was, I believe, in Tallahassee, Florida, and we were sending a lot of mix tapes to one another, just the current favorites that we're listening to at the moment. I think because our bond really stemmed there, we wanted to sink ourselves into reliving those kind of - those big moments that we're such fans of.
SIMON: But you're both childhood friends, aren't you?
BEAM: That's right. We grew up in the same town. We've been friends for a long time, and at one point, we were practically roommates. And we would bond over - at night, you know, after work, listening to music and just talking about records. And then when it came time to do a record together, about 10 years after we had been making music publicly, we thought maybe we would just do cover songs 'cause that's how our friendship sort of - and music began.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I STILL HAVEN'T FOUND WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR")
IRON & WINE AND BEN BRIDWELL: (Singing) I still haven't found what I'm looking for, still haven't found what I'm looking for.
SIMON: How did you choose which songs? I mean, for example, which came first?
BRIDWELL: Sheesh.
BEAM: A lot of arm wrestling.
BRIDWELL: Yeah, totally.
BEAM: It wasn't really a rhyme and reason to it. We just sort of made a long list of stuff - songs that we loved, either that we had talked about together or just ones that we wanted to introduce the other to.
BRIDWELL: No, I think sometimes our fanhood or fandom, kind of gets us excited about looking what's under the hood in a song, too, you know, wanting to see how it works and how it moves and why it affects us as a listener. I think it's also, like, a - maybe a morbid curiosity of what makes these emotions tick.
SIMON: Well, let's hear a little of a very famous song, "Luther."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LUTHER")
IRON & WINE AND BEN BRIDWELL: (Singing) Hey, Roman numeral seven, bae, drop it like it's hot. If this world was mine, I'd take your dreams and make 'em multiply. If this world was mine, I'd take your enemies in front of God, introduce 'em to that light, hit them strictly with that fire.
SIMON: Of course, the original Kendrick Lamar and SZA...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LUTHER")
KENDRICK LAMAR AND SZA: (Singing) If it was up to me, I wouldn't give these nobodies no sympathy. I'd take away the pain.
SIMON: ...Topped the Billboard charts for months earlier this year. And they performed it at the Super Bowl, which is a lot of exposure. Why, of all songs, did you decide this needed another treatment?
BRIDWELL: I was kind of at a loss for what songs I wanted to select, and I was like, man, I should just pick my favorite song. I should pick the song I'm listening to over and over. And funny enough, my dad, growing up, he would always say that if Luther Vandross gets a hold of your song, it's not your song anymore. He would turn Luther into a verb, basically, and say, that song got Luthered. So it all kind of comes full circle back there.
SIMON: What's the balance between honoring the original and making the song your own?
BEAM: Music is a subjective thing. I don't think there's a right or wrong way to interpret things. Someone will obviously always think that you mess it up, and another person will hear the same song and think that it's the better - a better version than the original. We go into it with heart first. I think the intent comes forward.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS")
IRON & WINE AND BEN BRIDWELL: (Singing) I got to take a little time, a little time to think things over.
SIMON: So what spoke to you in this song - "I Want To Know What Love Is" - that made you want to do it on your own?
BEAM: Mostly the hook.
(LAUGHTER)
BEAM: It's an incredible mechanism, this song. It's like a joy machine.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS")
: (Singing) I want to know love is. I want you to show me.
BEAM: Brad Cook, the producer of this record, put this one in the pot, and we were like, I don't know. Oh, you're right. Yeah, it's incredible. We have to do it. I remember ice-skating to this song as a child. What I remember about the making of it - I'm pretty sure it was a letter to the songwriter's wife, which is really beautiful. And it's very - like, a swelling gospel kind of rendition, the original. It's so beautiful and big. Whereas we kind of just took an opportunity to sort of interpret it in a way that the narrator is someone who doesn't have those things, and he really wants them. And so it - what comes across is the lack of it and the desire.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS")
IRON & WINE AND BEN BRIDWELL: (Singing) There's been heartache and pain. I don't know if...
BRIDWELL: I'll add here that Sam, the way he brought that arrangement forward and getting to see the way he plays, even the way he selects the chords and things like that in his guitar playing, that interpretation comes out. That filter of Sam's is so beautiful to hear and to watch. I was thoroughly impressed.
BEAM: Oh, stop it.
SIMON: No, go on.
BEAM: I like a moody scene.
BRIDWELL: Well, you do it well.
SIMON: This EP comes about 10 years after your first collaboration, "Sing Into My Mouth." What have you learned over this past decade about working with each other? What's different now, too?
BEAM: It has been a long time.
(LAUGHTER)
BEAM: You know, the idea started with a celebration of us having done that 10 years ago. It sort of like a little birthday anniversary party. We were going to do, like, a song or two and just put it on the internet. And then what happened was we got in the studio and started, like, breaking out our lists of songs and just getting excited, and it turned into a longer thing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MORE THAN THIS")
: (Singing) I could feel at the time, there was no way of knowing.
BRIDWELL: Our careers or whatever this is that we're doing out here, we've run a bit parallel, both coming from small town in South Carolina to both getting signed all the way up to Subpop in Seattle. We've run a bit parallel, and we've circled each other a couple times. We come back home and meet each other. And any reason is a good reason for us to get together and make some noise, I think.
SIMON: Sam Beam and Ben Bridwell. "Making Good Time" is out now. Gentlemen, friends, thanks so much for joining us.
BRIDWELL: Thank you.
BEAM: Thank you so very much.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MORE THAN THIS")
IRON & WINE AND BEN BRIDWELL: (Singing) More than this. You know there's nothing more than this. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
