A night of words: Matt Vasquez of Delta Spirit at Spaceland

Matt Vasquez of Delta Spirit was playing at Spaceland on Tuesday night. He wears his heart on his sleeves. Throughout his set, he made some interesting comments. After singing a song about his ex-girlfriend, in which he used some rather strong words, he ended by saying, “Don’t ever date a guy with a guitar or he’ll write a song about you calling you a whore.” Now he might not have said whore, but it was a similar type word, perhaps harlot. He also talked before one song saying, “I was lucky enough to be on tour when my grandfather died. I was on tour near his place and so I was the only grandson who got to see him before he passed away. The same thing happened when my grandmother passed away, me being on tour. She was on morphine and slept most of the time. When she would wake up, she’d call my mother over and say, ‘I want to be euthanized. Where’s that Dr. Kevorkian.’ I changed my opinion on euthanasia after that experience. Anyways, I wrote this song when I was seeing my grandfather and I didn’t have to change a word.” He also joked a couple of times about how playing at Spaceland was going to pay off his rent for the month. He had a couple backup musicians, a bassist and a drummer. They played with him for the first half of the set and then the final two songs. The set went about an hour and fifteen minutes. I was actually surprised by that. I wasn’t expecting such a long set. Note: For some reason, I found it interesting when he rotated harmonicas. He also had out a banjo, but I don’t believe he ever used it.





The other two bands of the night were The Romany Rye and The Parson Red Heads. I saw perhaps half of Romany Rye’s set. They’re a three guy band. There was a funny comment by one guys who said something like, “I wrote this song while learning to play the piano, which I still don’t know how to play.” The band has an interesting situation where they rotate around musical instruments. When I walked in they were all on guitars. During one of their songs, two of the guys rotated to a drum set and a piano. The Parson Red Heads are a rather mellow band that didn’t ever go outside that music range of mellow. One of the guitar players was interesting to watch. He often times held something in his right hand. The young lady in the band commented, “Can you believe he played the tambourine and the guitar on that song? I always find that so amazing.” Looking at their myspace page, I do believe I only saw a subset of the band so I suspect they can jam it up a bit more.

Below pictures are of Parson Red Heads. I didn't really get a good shot of Romany Rye.