Dead Flowers: Anglophiles Anonymous

The Delta Spirit are a San Diego five-piece on the verge or rereleasing their excellent debut EP, "I think I've found it". This time around, the EP will be featuring a new track called "People Turn Around". One of their tracks, "Crippler King", made it onto the Dead Flowers Best of 2006 [Download]. Thus, I thought it would be worth talking to them ahead of their Spring tour. Here's what they had to say:

Dead Flowers: I heard a recent interview with Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy and he was lamenting the waning influence and popularity of the Blues. Are you trying to spread the word?

Delta Spirit: Hmm. Interesting. For a while all that you would hear of the blues was watered down bar blues or adult contemporary blues. That stuff is pretty painful, so it is no surprise to me that the popularity declined. As of late though bands like White Stripes and Black Keys have made a name for themselves by playing blues. We don't consider ourselves a blues band by any means, so it really doesn't concern us too much. I think that blues as played by those early musicians is something that is no longer possible to create. it can be imitated, but the social and cultural climate that produced those songs is no longer here. They were slave spirituals and chain gang songs. Great things came out of that horrible obscurity, but now people would just be trying to empathize with those emotions. There may still be good blues, but they are inevitably different than the early blues.

DF: Closer to now, I also hear a Libertines influence in your music, especially on a track like "Crippler King". Am I just imagining things?

DS: No. You are right. We all really like The Libertines. Old Petey is an interesting character.

DF: On a related note, what bands going today do you relate to?

DS: Despite popular opinion we think there is still some great music coming out today. We most closely relate to our friends... Cold war kids, The Colour, The Prayers and Sparrow Love Crew. We are constantly blown away by the creativity that comes out of our small group of friends. There are a bunch of other bands we like that are making great music today... Dr. Dog, Richard Swift, Elvis Perkins, U2, My Morning Jacket, Tom Waits, Foreign Born, Phoenix... just to name a few.

DF: With the label releasing music by Cold War Kids and The Colour, Monarchy Music seems like a good fit for you...

DS: More than anything we just wanted to be working with our friends. Scott (monarchy) is a great friend. We also wanted to be a self sufficient band, a band that doesn't depend on a label for our welfare and sustainability. I hope that more bands choose that road.

DF: How has San Diego affected your music? I think most people would think of the city as a sunny, soulless place, but one doesn't hear that in your songs.

DS: Yeah, it kind of is. San Diego is a truly beautiful place, but as far as culture is concerned it is pretty desolate. I think we identify more with America as a whole than with the local culture. When we started the band we wanted it to be a thoroughly American sounding band. i don't think that we will always stick to that so closely cause there are a lot of British bands that we love like the Zombies, Beatles, Oasis and such. Nonetheless, part of the reason for our name was to at least anchor ourselves to the soul of American roots music, which is our true home.

DF: What's your recording process like?

DS: Honestly it is different every time. We record at Kelly our piano/ect. player's house. Most of the stuff we do live or at least mostly live. Then Matt will grab a mic and throw a sock over it and sing in the control room. That is how we recorded the ep. The quality of recording is getting better and better. We are about to re-release the ep with a new version of "people, turn around" on it and we are constantly writing and recording new songs in the studio. We just got a tape machine and are really excited to mess with that.

DF: Do you think modern music is too polished?

DS: As a whole, yeah. That's why it is exciting when a band like The Libertines comes along and has a record that sounds like the whole things was done in one take. it feels alive! But at the same time when you get a pop record like Kylie or Lily Allen you don't want to hear them singing off key. That would just be weird. There is a balance. Ultimately we just want our recordings to have a life to them and nothing will stifle a song's life like overproduction.

DF: Along those lines, it seems like there is a greater focus on capturing the energy of a song than on having every note exactly
perfect. Was that intentional?

DS: The focus at least for the ep was to get a good feeling. I think we achieved that. Originally these were just demos and then we decided to release them. We always want to retain a bit of a live sound, but we don't want the recordings to sound sloppy and unlistenable. We are always working on being better musicians. We would just rather do that in real life as opposed to having the computer make us sound better, ya know.

Many thanks to the Delta Spirit and to Scott from Monarchy Music for arranging the interview. Thanks also to Jake Drake for question help. Be sure to catch The Delta Spirit in concert this spring.

[Order the EP @ Monarchy Music]
[The Delta Spirit on Myspace]