Q&A with Delta Spirit’s
Matt Vasquez

Delta Spirit has come a long way since starting in 2005 as a four-piece band out of Long Beach, CA but they’ve never lost what it means to be Delta Spirit. They’ve grown into a five-piece, have moved across the country to Brooklyn, NY, and have finally found a sound that balances their Delta Spirit soulfulness and their rock ‘n’ roll tendencies.

I have a feeling this is them just getting started. They’re the kind of musicians that aren’t going to stay content. They’ve got to be on the move, doing the next thing, telling new stories with all the energy they can muster.

I had the opportunity this week to speak to lead vocalist Matt Vasquez as he hung out in his Brooklyn apartment on a well-deserved down day.

So where are you? Are you in Austin, or in Brooklyn back home?
“I was just in Austin, but now I’m home in Brooklyn hanging out with my cute kitty, watching Zero Dark Thirty, downloading some drum programs… It’s great. A day of rest.”

Tell me about the band name. Where did Delta Spirit come from?
“That question is a little funny because we’ve told a lot of lies about it for fun to see how far they’d get and then they just kept going. It was just the name we liked, the name that didn’t sound like we were from England.”

The first two albums Delta Spirit released, I feel like most people tried to push them into the indie folk genre. Is that something you consciously tried to move away from with the third album, or is it something that just progressed as the band grew?
“Both. Definitely both. When you’re in your younger twenties you read a lot of Mark Twain, listen to a lot of Bob Dylan, and a lot of Townes and Willie as well. It’s his birthday today by the way…”

I know, 80!
(Laughs) “That’s crazy! So great. You listen to that music and you can’t help but be influenced. It’s like reading Jack Kerouac at the right age where you can apply it to your life. I’m going on a tangent now, but that has a lot to do with the sound when we started and then just the strange sounds and wanting to branch out… That’s just how we are as people. We wanted to continue to challenge ourselves and our music, take ourselves other places.”

What has the reaction been to the change in sound? Has it been supportive or are people shying away from the difference?
“Well, the folk thing is a bit of a fad right now, isn’t it? So the idea of us not doing that thing when other bands are being so successful from it, people were kind of shocked or weirded out. Once we toured it settled right in because the songs feel as much at home as the other songs do. And everything is as much ‘Delta Spirit’ as the next thing. When you listen to it you can still hear the soulfulness, or hopefully you can! That’s how we feel. We feel soulful when we’re playing the music and that translates live. Since we’ve started touring and performing the songs live, the things that were off the second record or that were kind of more ambient and strange on the first one, they all coalesced together.”

How have the new songs and the new sound affected the live show? I saw you at the Industry Party at SXSW, and it seemed like you were having a pretty crazy time on stage…
(Laughs) “Yeah! Super fun. We’ve always had that same energy when we play. I think now with the new songs they cater more to bigger production and wanting to have lights and have a real show for people. We’ve been growing and playing in larger rooms and you really want to have that big experience. If you’re going to spend the extra money because the room is larger… it costs more money to see your band in a bigger room. We want to entertain as much, we want to bring that much more quality to the music and the performance in the show. I think that has stepped forward along with the music. It’s great; it’s been awesome.”

Did the sound effect the decision to the make the third album the self-titled album?
“The reason why it became a self-titled record is because when we first started our band we were a four piece… like in 2005, when we started the band, we were a four-piece and then when Kelly (Winrich) joined it was a five-piece and it felt complete. Then we had our first guitar player [Sean Walker] who now plays in Deep Sea Diver with our friend Jessica Dobson who used to play with The Shins, but she was in this other band and Sean started playing with her. And then we did the second full-length LP just Kelly and I playing the guitar parts and it was really fun, a very songwriter-based record. But there was that missing part.

“I think it was something like Sean never fully stepped into those shoes of being that weighted of an opinion in the band and now we have that. Someone who can sing higher than Kelly or me — that soaring beautiful high-ass tenor harmony and his dexterity on guitar playing is perfect. He [William McLaren] understands American music, and world music and his instrument and many other instruments so it’s just like… when the Eagles got Joe Walsh in the band and they were like, ‘oh, okay’.”

Like, “that’s it!”
“Yeah! Like ‘Oh, okay! Now we got it.’ And that’s what it does. It’s more about the relational vibe in our band than it ever is some like sheen or fucking schtick or whatever. It’s just that part of it, and the sound, regardless of our direction is the sound of the five of us playing and that’s really the most insane part of being in this band. ‘Cause he freaks out on stage every time.” (laughs) “And he hits the notes every time. It’s so awesome.”

Can you talk about how a song or an album comes together for you guys? Whats’ the process?
“That’s funny. We’re right in the middle of it now. It’s always really fun because we do this thing where you write a song and you show it to the band — this is something Kelly and I go through all the time — where we bring a song to the band and then it’s like, ‘mannn, it’s sounds like this.’ And then immediately the song is dead. But then there’ll be like this one fucking jam that’ll click with everybody and it could’ve been that other song… or I like to feel like it could.ve been that other song… but for some fucking reason everybody tilted their head and got focused on the vibe.

“And that’s when the magic starts happening. That’s when other songs that you revisit can come back to life and become what they are. That’s all we’re looking for when we’re writing a record. Just trying to get those times when you pick up a guitar or whatever and try to make it feel like it’s not something you’ve done before. Or telling a story that you haven’t told yet.”

I know specifically you talk about California in some of your songs…
“Yeah, Kelly wrote the latest incarnation. I wrote ‘Golden State’ sitting on our porch. Kelly and I used to live together, next to Brandon, our drummer… Yeah, so I wrote ‘Golden State’ in Long Beach and then Kelly wrote ‘California’ about a girl from Boston. Ironically, we all moved to New York, except for Brandon who still lives in Long Beach. We’ve written the two songs about it, and it’s awesome. It’s so beautiful. I miss Joshua Tree. And San Francisco. And L.A., too.”

It also seems like you talk about spirituality in your writing, or if not that what else do you draw on?
“Yeah. I think more about death. I use death more than I do religion. Music is a spiritual thing and it’s part of humanity. It’s not all just drinking beer and smoking pot and being insane. There’s this whole other side to music. I think it’s a good tool in songwriting. It’s therapeutic to me to be able to sing songs like that in front of people because it can be really honest and I think a lot of people relate. Not everything is so relatable as death… 10 out of 10 of us go through it, are going to go through it.”

Can you talk about one specific song on this most recent album that’s really significant to you? And what’s the story behind it?
“I would say ‘Yamaha.’ I bring up ‘Yamaha’ now because the Boston thing made me think about it. My wife is from Norway, and when we were recording the record there was a bomber in Oslo, Norway. He blew up a bomb in the city center, and then went to an island dressed a cop with an assault rifle and gunned downed like 100 people. They were all high school aged kids on a youth group trip for the Democratic Party… so it was these poli-sci high school kids getting gunned down by a crazy person who hated Muslims. It was covered briefly in the news.

“We were still living in California at the time, but I was up in Woodstock, NY recording the record. I was trying to console somebody who was a continent away. Basically the equivalent of this bombing that just happened, but for Norway. Press stops covering it. My wife walked past where the bomb went off every day. People forget about it. They don’t think about the whole world. The song was really about trying to console my wife about being so far away all the time. And that song has been really powerful. It’s like a red ball song… we don’t play it that often because it means so much. So that’s that. And it ended up in that movie Warm Bodies.” (laughs) “So it’s like this red ball song that means so much to me and then it’s like a zombie falling in love. It’s great.”(laughs) “But, it’s cool! My cousin Shazam’d the song at the movie theater and she had no idea it was me so that was pretty cool. That’s the world we live in.

What’s your favorite part of the recording process? Or what’s most important?
“We’ve gone at it with a different mindset every time, trying to accomplish something more every time. We’re always chasing how we record the energy people get when we play on stage. It’s tough feeling like you’re a good live band and then you listen to your record and it doesn’t feel energetic enough. Just trying to figure out how to have that energy and that kind of focus on a record is tough.

“The other thing is really trying to emphasis how much fun we’re having when we’re making the record. It’s not always fun, but the stuff we end up keeping is fun. The process sucks. It’s like an argument, or it can be. A real fucking task. Then when it comes down to it and we all finally agree — which is a miracle, five completely different people agree on something they think is cooll — that’s awesome. And when we’re all having fun at the same time after being in a band this long together, it’s pretty crazy. It’s great.

“I’m glad I’m in a real fucking band. You can’t discount single person’s feelings in our band. It has to be like, ‘y’all dig it?’ That’s the law.”