While out on tour in support of their magnificent recent album, Ghost On Ghost, Iron & Wine have been thrilling from town to town with their 13-piece big-band.  The only complaint we’ve heard is from some diehards who prefer leader Sam Beam revert to his original solo-and-straight-up presentation so as to keep drinking their creek from a cradle for endless numbered days.  But as somone once sang, he not busy being born is busy dying, and thankfully Beam adheres to this axiom.  So for the diehards (and the rest of us that like the Iron AND the Wine), watch below as Beam plays Winter Prayers (lyrics at bottom) off the new album solo and unplugged.  We can’t get these verses out of our heads:  “And you know why she’s gone, like the clothes in the river drifting on.”

The recent album’s Grace For Saints and Ramblers follows.   All courtesy of MPR’s The Current.

Winter Prayers:

“Well it’s cold and you’re bored
From counting the Smart cars on 94
When you dream, you’re back home
But the lakeside don’t trust you to walk alone

Hollow trees talk offhand
All the neckties are toasting with empty cans
And you know why she’s gone
Like the clothes in the river drifting on

Slide down south
Cause once in a while your confidence leaves you
Like smoke falls out her red mouth

Well she left you the holes
That tracks in the backyard December snow
But those sad souvenirs
They end at the fence line and disappear

Why’d you follow her there
Milwaukee’s a deaf ear for winter prayers
There’s no night, there’s no day
With only hope in your pocket and hell to pay

Slide down south
When once in a while your confidence leaves you
Like smoke falls out her red mouth”