Songfacts®:

• This freak-folk number is the first single and opening track from Kiss Each Other Clean, the fourth album released by American singer-songwriter Samuel Beam, who records under the name of Iron & Wine.
• Beam told Billboard magazine that he started writing "Walking" while on tour in Australia and New Zealand. "When you're out and about in the middle of that kind of journey, it's fun to start with images you actually see and daydream and come up with new images," he noted. "That one took a long time to finish."
• The song was released as a special Record Store Day Black Friday single in November.
• How come 'Iron & Wine?' Beam explained his moniker to Spin magazine: "Back in '98 or so when I was in film school I was working on lighting for a movie in Georgia, out in the middle of nowhere at a gas station," he recalled. "Inside the gas station they had a bunch of old home remedies like castor oil, and one of them was a protein supplement called Beef, Iron & Wine. I just dropped the Beef part. I recognized that a lot in my writing I'm trying to show both sides of the coin - the sour and sweet. Iron & Wine seemed to fit with that duality and I thought it would be more interesting to call the project that rather than use Sam Beam. I never tried the stuff, though. Hell no. Someone told me that I should try and get sponsoring. So if they're reading..."