DESCRIPTION:
Pardon the awful pun, but it's fitting that Daytrotter.com's chosen mascot is a horse. The leggy equine sits on every page of the mp3-download site, reminding you to keep kicking yourself for lacking the ingenuity of Daytrotter's low-key President-for-Life, Sean Moeller. A longtime indie music journalist and enthusiast, Moeller began tiring of the empty promises of the indie blogosphere, as well as the dearth of interesting acts making the stop in any of the Quad Cities (but especially his home of Rock Island, IL; as Moeller memorably points out, "the name of the city is not ironic").

So Moeller started Daytrotter on Interstate 80, the 2900-mile thoroughfare that's a staple on any tour with a stop west of Chicago. He began intercepting bands traveling to and from the City of Big Shoulders and having them lay down four-song sessions to quarter-inch tape at Futureappletree Studio One in downtown Rock Island under the studied ears and hands of Patrick Stolley, a full-blown vintage gearhead with a wealth of rack-mounted, beautiful-sounding curios. All variety of performers appear on the site, including Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Jason Forrest, Canadian indie stars Frog Eyes and Sunset Rubdown, hip-hop artist P.O.S. and countless Midwestern bands (The Ponys, Maritime, The M's, The Impossible Shapes) whose music exudes the same easygoing friendliness and tattered authenticity as the studio itself.

Gearwire abandoned our Chicago home for a night to travel to Rock Island, where we drank High Life at the behest of our benevolent hosts and watched Stolley record the fantastic San Diego-based rockers Delta Spirit. Everything Stolley records is mixed live to two-track, offering each session a sense of immediate completion; the songs are released on the website as mp3's and eventually become the property of the artists. We'll be rolling out a few videos from our trip, beginning with this one shot after the session while Stolley wrapped cables and waxed poetic on some of his recording techniques and in-studio gear.