Lauren RabainoJust days after gracing a San Luis Obispo stage, San Diego rock-and-soul band Delta Spirit will make its TV debut on the Late Night with Conan O’Brien stage on Sept. 3.
One of the band’s first summer performances to promote its new album, “Ode to Sunshine,” will be at Boo Boo Records in downtown San Luis Obispo for an in-store show August 27 – the day after the album’s re-release.
The band will make its way around the country for two months and make its first TV performance with O’Brien.
“We’re pretty psyched, and we like Conan a lot,” bassist Jon Jameson said, adding that Delta Spirit is in the process of planning a way to spice up the on-air performance to make it memorable.
“We’re kind of trying to think of something that would be like very us and make it a little bit more like a special thing, but we haven’t really come up with anything yet,” he said.
The ideas they’ve considered include wearing bear costumes or dressing as lumberjacks.
“Maybe we’ll end up doing something. or maybe we’ll just end up playing a song,” Jameson said.
The atmosphere for the in-store show at Boo Boo will likely be far more moderate than the possibilities contemplated for the Late Night appearance.
The band has only done one in-store show in the past, and is unsure of what to expect.
Frank Hayes, assistant manager at Boo Boo records who books the in-store shows, said the performances are usually pretty laid-back.
“They come in, it’s real intimate, a real mellow affair,” Hayes said. “They play, hang out.”
He said in-store shows have taken place at Boo Boo Records for decades and have included nationally acclaimed bands like Sublime.
“We’re not a venue, so we don’t operate like a venue, you know, we’re still open for business,” Hayes said. “If someone wants to come in and look through our classicals, we’ve got to make their shopping experience a good one still.”
“It’s nice because you can still have a conversation with a customer but enjoy the atmosphere of a live performance simultaneously,” Hayes added.
This won’t be the first time Delta Spirit has ventured to the Central Coast. They performed at Downtown Brew in 2007 and The Graduate in May.
“We’ve played some good shows (in San Luis Obispo) … and we had good response from people,” Jameson said of returning to the Central Coast.
Before it was picked up by Rounder Records, the band’s album, “Ode to Sunshine,” was featured on music review Web site DayTrotter.com as one of 2007’s top 15 albums.
“It’s music that can change you in the nicest ways, make you a little happier, a little more alive,” the Day Trotter review said about the album.
Delta Spirit originally recorded “Ode to Sunshine” in a cabin in the San Diego mountains.
“We just wanted a place that was out of our normal setting and a place that would isolate us a little bit so we could actually get work done,” Jameson said.
The band members, all in their mid-20s, said that because they’re young and have friends at Cal Poly, students will likely relate to their music.
“It’ll be a fun in-store,” Jameson said. “It’ll be a surprise to us and to everyone else how we end up playing it.”