We meet our heroes Delta Spirit at the Rock Island Brewing Company on March 5, 2007, just a few days before we, the Daytrotter posse, leave our families for a week of hellish activity and ghetto sleeping arrangements at the South By Southwest festival. This brewing company is a bar around the corner from the studio, with a heavyweight selection of beers and all the fixings. The boys – hightailed in from Lawrence, Kansas, special for a rendezvous with us – were drinking something Honey Brown and smoking Marlboros and Camels as they worked through their burger baskets. As an off-night between the land of the Jayhawks and Minneapolis, this session had been proposed as a super-group gospel session with the Spirit and their touring buddies Cold War Kids. An early afternoon radio station appearance in the Twin Cities nipped that in the bud, but what resulted in its place, I believe goes without saying as one of the finer moments this humble web site has had. There’s no excusing the guest appearances by yours truly and Daytrotter contributor Kyle Smith, who was filming the session for gearwire.com, but even our sorry asses couldn’t sink one of their four soulful songs that make your belly feel full of life and hope. There I was kicking around an empty cardboard beer case full of tambourines and banging on an almost empty bottle of Jack Daniels with a drum stick, not really knowing when or where or how. Luckily for everyone, I didn’t even need to be good as an accessory. Lead singer Matthew Vasquez and pianist Kelly Winrich killed a bottle of Jack that night and the revelry and loose warmth – the delightfully unfussy stitching of the songs – is the aspect that makes the entire set a pack of showstoppers. We got wrecked and the songs were in the best shape they’d ever been in for the first time they’d ever been recorded anywhere but Winrich’s studio. The honor was ours. – Sean Moeller

First song
French Quarter (Delta Spirit) [4.02MB] [4335 downloads]


– original version appears on I Think I’ve Found It
This was the first song that we wrote with Kelly. He wasn’t even in
the band yet at that point. Matt was playing tacked piano, Kelly was on bass and I was playing guitar. The other two were on their
respective instruments. I think Matt had a basic structure and we just jammed it and it came together really quickly. The content of the song is based on the experience that Matt and I had when we got to go out and join in the disaster relief of post-Katrina New Orleans. It was life changing.

Second song
Duncan (Delta Spirit) [4.23MB] [4221 downloads]


– unreleased
Sean and I wanted to cover “Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard,” but Matt thought that that would be to cheesy cause Royal Tennenbaums “popularized” that song too much. Instead, he wanted to do “Duncan” which is his fave Paul Simon song. We all eventually fell in love as well.

Third song
House Built for Two (Delta Spirit) [4.26MB] [4056 downloads]


– unreleased
This song was the most fun at the Daytrotter session cause Sean
“Daytrotter” Moeller came in and was kicking around a box of empty beer bottles to help with the much needed atmospheric background noise. Also, the fact that the bottle of jack was fully cleared by this point didn’t hurt the vibe either. The bat was faded.

Fourth song
Children (Delta Spirit) [4.40MB] [4084 downloads]


– unreleased
This song we tried to do more acoustically than we usually do live. I am not sure what i feel about it, but at least it gives a different perspective and probably brings out a few different aspects that may be lost while watching Matt slam away on the marching drum live.