Iron & Wine will fill the Ohio Union’s Archie M. Griffin Grand Ballroom with folk rock tonight in a concert hosted by the Ohio Union Activities Board.

Sam Beam, the single member of Iron & Wine, will be releasing “Kiss Each Other Clean” in January 2011. The album will be his first since 2007’s “The Shepherd’s Dog,” which peaked at 24 on Billboard’s Top 200 chart.

“It’ll be cool to see (him) play in the ballroom,” said Ben Joodi, a third-year in mechanical engineering. “It’s exactly the kind of music to listen to relax in the middle of a busy week of school.”

The Ohio Union will be the last stop of a tour that began in Mainz, Germany. Another tour is planned in November, beginning Nov. 13, in St. Louis.

Sam Beam, a former film professor, has been in the spotlight since he signed with his former label Pacific Northwest in 2002.

“With Iron & Wine having a song in the ‘Twilight’ movie and a new album slated to be released in early 2011, (it) made the band relevant to students,” said Linnea Larson, OUAB concert chair, in an e-mail.

Tickets were available at the Ohio Union for free through OUAB. But not every student is ecstatic about the idea of free shows.

“The fact that OUAB doesn’t disclose information about how much they pay these bands is wrong,” said Colin Waldman, a third-year in aeronautical engineering. “We pay the (Student Activity Fee) so we have the right to know, especially if it’s a band we don’t care about.”

A September Lantern article reported that it is OUAB policy not to disclose how much it pays music artists and other performers to come to campus because it would put OUAB at a competitive disadvantage.

“We also gain insight to student interest outside of OUAB through surveys, our online suggestion box, and we are starting to implement an interactive text suggestion method,” Larson said. “Students at our events are able to anonymously text their thoughts and opinions to an online program that then sends OUAB their answers.”

The concert committee agreed on Iron & Wine considering that recent concerts have not represented the folk genre well.

“The OUAB concerts committee felt that a show of the indie folk rock persuasion had been lacking in recent years,” Larson said. “And when we learned of Iron & Wine’s availability, we jumped at the chance to bring them to OSU.”

The Archie M. Griffin Ballroom opens its doors at 7 p.m. for the show.