Iron and Wine, Trocadero, Philadelphia, 6.19.05

I had never really been big into Iron and Wine, but I have some friends who really love him/them. Andy said in an e-mail to me the other week: "If Iron and Wine comes to your town, wherever that may be, go and see him cuz he broke both his legs on stage." As luck would have it, I&W were swinging by The Trocadero down in Chinatown, so I, heeding my resolution to see more concerts and spend more time in Philly and NYC, jumped at the chance to go. I bought Our Endless Numbered Days off iTunes, and really started digging it. I also picked up a few free mp3s off their web site. I was never a big fan of their version of "Such Great Heights", and that had pretty much been the only I&W song I'd ever heard, but I got to really enjoy all the other songs. Very Nick Drakey.

So we headed down to the Troc. This is a pretty sweet venue, and I (of course) had never been before. It's apparently an old burlesque house or something. There's a balcony and old gilded moldings and whatnot. We arrived just as Band of Horses was starting. They reminded me of My Morning Jacket. This is where I began experimenting with my new camera. I still (obviously) haven't mastered the art of shooting concert photos, but I'm getting closer. I think.



We had a decent vantage point for the show, slightly elevated over the tall people. Sam Beam came out and started with "Sunset Soon Forgotten" solo. I don't think I've ever seen such a polite? awe-struck? audience ever. The room was silent aside from Beam and his guitar (and maybe the A/C). Contrast that with the huge wave of applause (and "I love you, Sam!"s) after each song; this audience was here for Iron and Wine, and they weren't fucking around.



The rest of the band came out after one or two solo songs. They'd come on and off stage periodically throughout the show. I enjoyed the Sam Beam solo acoustic stuff best. The whole show had a fairly intimate, campfirey feel to it, like an intimate campfire.



The show really, really reminded me of Asheville. Why, you ask? 1) 90% of the men in Asheville look like Sam Beam, with their giant beards and laid-backedness; 2) The music itself is as folksy and Appalachian as I've heard since Merlefest a couple years ago. It didn't really occur to me how much electronic trickery I've been seeing at concerts lately until I saw I&W with their banjos and dulcimers and startling lack of synthesizers. At any rate, evoking Asheville is a very, very good thing.

My last irrelevant observation of the evening was when the crowd was calling for the encore and we did the thing where everyone claps in unison at a gradually increasing tempo, the acceleration was much faster up here than any I've seen down South. Like I said, irrelevant.

We capped off the evening with dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Can someone please explain why Bethlehem doesn't have a Chinese restaurant that stays open til 3 am?