Ben Gibbard on Death Cab for Cutie, Making "Transatlanticism" and Defusing Bandmate Tension

Key Takeaway

Treat creativity like a practice, not a mood. Today, block 30-60 minutes for focused work, begin with the raw material in front of you, and finish one imperfect draft instead of abandoning it early. Ben Gibbard’s rule is simple: complete every song idea, even the weak ones, because a line, image, or musical fragment from an unfinished piece may become the essential part of better work later. Consistent output creates the raw material that discernment can refine.

Episode Overview

Ben Gibbard reflects on building Death Cab for Cutie from the Pacific Northwest DIY scene, the tensions that nearly fractured the band, and the healthier communication that shaped "Transatlanticism." He also explains his disciplined songwriting practice, why unfinished ideas are worth completing, and how creative constraints and deliberate breaks can renew artistic momentum.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Ben Gibbard on Death Cab for Cutie, Making "Transatlanticism" and Defusing Bandmate Tension from How I Built This. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

it was very empowering for me to see people who were not that much older than me at that point getting on stage and and playing their music and making their own records and and it it was it it kind of really set a template for what I not only what I wanted to do but what seemed possible because being in you two was impossible being in Guns and Roses wasn't possible hello welcome to the great creators conversations about creativity with some of the most celebrated actors musicians and performers of our time time I'm guy RZ and on the show today Ben gibber of death cat for Cutie and the Postal Service about the craft of songwriting so Ben gibbert is a giant in the world of Indie music right songs like Soul Meets Body or I will follow you into the dark these are now part of the indie rock cannon from the 2000s in this episode Ben gibber talks about how members of death cat forti overcame personal tensions to put out the incredible record TR atlanticism which Ben says is still his favorite of all time he explains why he calls himself a Craftsman and not an artist and why he sets aside time every single day to write songs and he talks openly about the challenges of finding new creative inspiration in middle age so here's what you need to know about Ben before we start the interview he was born in the small Port City of bton Washington his dad was in the Navy and lucky for Ben his dad was also a record collector you know my earliest memories are having records on in the living room be it you know ACDC was a a you know a huge band for him I think he well I know he saw them in a gymnasium when we were living in Japan in the 70s or something like that just crazy you know crazy small show for ACDC um but you know also you know dvo and Ramon but also you know the Beatles Beach Boys kind of more you know the stuff that everybody the monkeys you know stuff that was just kind of around in the the 60s he was he was a music fan and he played a little guitar he still does um so you know I have these early memories of just seeing a guitar kind of leaned up against the Hearth and whatever you know on base housing where you're living in and he would just kind of pick it up and kind of plunk along with it and I just thought that looked really great and was something that I wanted to do um you've written about uh in in your music a lot about your Catholic upbringing and um Catholic School of course um were your parents pretty strict about going to church and going to mass and doing that kind of stuff yeah so my mom is uh very Catholic to this day um still practicing my dad has never was never baptized Catholic uh but has kind of gone to church with my mom in solidarity for you know for 50 years or whatever um and yeah I mean there there was in Catholicism if you don't go to church on Sunday you have to confess it in confession yeah it's it's a sin to not go to church um so we went every week when we were on vacation we would find a church in wherever we happen to be if we were traveling across the country moving or something like that we would find a church somewhere to go to um but neither of my parents were or are to this day um like you know they're they're very they're very kind of uh open-minded in their thinking and you know their my mom's Catholicism certainly uh informs her worldview uh but you know my sister is queer and uh and so you know they're they are you know they have they are they are very worldly and and um I I like to think that in due to my sister and I and and what we do for what we both do for livings and how we live our lives has been kind of uh informative as to how they've their views on things have changed over time which um is wonderful it it it shows emotional growth and I'm very proud of them I I wonder though I mean having been raised Catholic right there's a Trope and you you've written about it right Catholic school vious is Roman rule which is a great line but and there's a Trope about sort of and you hear from people you know grew up in Ireland as you know other religious countries but at the same time like you actually get steep in in this um in this sort of with these cultural reference points right that enable you to understand art and you know and and you know literature and other cultural references simply by by being exposed to the to the stories in the Bible and and a certain I mean a certain part of you must feel grateful that you had that that that it would enable you to write the things you would write one day I think maybe to an extent I think think I think more than anything being brought up Catholic um gave me a a sense of uh discernment and you know kind of in kind of opposition of its intent made me question more things than accept and for example I remember being in CCD which is like Sunday School uh for for Catholics and I remember teacher was telling us how the pope was elected we were having a lesson about how the pope was elected and she said well all the Cardinals they pray to God and then they vote and then they elect the pope and I must have been eight or nine and I raised my hand and said well shouldn't all the votes be the same like if God is telling you who to vote for every vote should be the same they should just pull the first vote out and say John Paul okay it's John Paul there's and I was and I wasn't being snarky I was like eight or N9 years old but you know I my question was not answered as much as it was uh returned to me with rage that I would even there were there were frustration and anger and almost you know scolding for having asked a question yeah that they clearly didn't have the answer for um and so you know I think I think you know growing up Catholic I I I understood how important it was to specifically my mom that we all go together and it was important that I get confirmed and do all the all the rituals that are required of a a minor um in the Catholic Church you know I I we we went my sister and I went along with it you know we we went we went to church with my mom and you know because it just felt like you know I'm sure if we would have raised some huge objection and said we weren't going um we could have done that but you know the [ __ ] storm that it would have kind of begun would have probably been not worth not worth it you know not worth the extra hour on Sunday morning or whatever um so you know we just kind of went and went through the motions and I just think over time I you know it's there's a joke in Catholicism that when you turn 18 you don't have to go anymore um and that was that's been kind of my my my that was certainly my experience but I think that it also it also just kind of underscored the fact that I've just never been a joiner I I I don't I don't particularly like joining things I I like starting things leading things uh but uh not necessarily joining them um I know that you for part of your childhood you lived um just outside of Washington DC and and um and But ultimately the family kind of settled back in in uh Bremerton in Washington state and you from what I understand like really started to kind of play around with the guitar when you were a kid but your like your parents had a rule you had to learn the piano first which again I think would serve you well later in life knowing that you've played the piano and composed music on the piano but this was not what you wanted you wanted to play the guitar and they had a policy which was like piano and then if you do that then guitar so so how did what happened did you did you become competent enough at piano that they let you go to guitar I took piano lessons from the age of 10 till about 13 or 14 and I I I seem to infuriate my piano teachers because I would learn pieces wrong I would I would learn them the way that they sounded right to me and then I would go in and be playing like a boach piece or something like that and be like no no no that's not how that part goes like Oh but I kind of like this little how the little I do this little flourish at the end of that and they'd be like no you can't that's B you can't you can't learn it you can't not play it right and I just felt like well why not it doesn't this guy's dead it doesn't matter like it doesn't matter at all um but yeah So eventually you know my parents would would have these kind of they would give me these kind of uh if a then B kind of um carrot dangles and I think I eventually convinced my parents to buy me an electric guitar it was a JB player Strat copy just kind of a knockoff guitar we found at this local music store in Silverdale Washington and there was a a guy up the street a couple houses up who was a college student that was home um for the summer and he was a pretty accomplished guitar player his name was Patrick Santos and he started giving me lessons um kind of teaching me stuff on the guitar and different kind of scales and things like that none of which I certainly has not served me very well in the kind of guitar playing that I do now but was really helpful and informative and educational at the time um I wonder when you I mean because I don't from from everything I've read like your parents weren't necessarily musicians or musically minded it might be wrong about that but I don't think they were but what was it about playing guitar at 13 cuz a lot of 13-year-olds are forced to play instruments right they're like my kids I force them to learn the piano um force them to practice um it doesn't come naturally to them but it seems like you really connected with certainly by the time you got to high school with the guitar what do you remember about that what what why were you the kind of kid that kept playing around with it versus other kids who just gave it up because they didn't want to to the lessons well it was I enjoyed it and also it was fairly easy for me I mean my my dad although not a train musician is where I get my musical you know chops from so to speak and he's a he's a very intuitive musician even though he's not skilled in any way whatsoever um so that I get that from my dad when my mom and my sister were taking piano lessons it was always very difficult for them but for me it was just very intuitive so it was it was it was intuitive to me playing guitar and also it was something that I it was basically the only thing that I wanted to do um you know I had played baseball growing up and I had swam competitively from the time I was eight and even though I swam all you know through my junior year of high school um really just being in a band was the only thing that I wanted to do and and so when I when we when we moved from hearnden Virginia back to Bremerton uh you know the first thing I I set off trying to do was to find other people to play music with because that that that seemed like that was that was all I wanted to do that was the most important thing in the world to me um and I mean you were in high school sort of 90 to '94 and of course obviously this moment when Seattle you're outside of Seattle Seattle becomes the center of the world for a few years like it becomes a cultural the center of youth culture for this this period of time like subpop and all these bands are just exploding around subpop and in that World um do you think what was happening in Seattle at the time kind of in your mind solidify this idea that this is what I want to do I want to be in a band I want to this is what I want my life to be yeah I think it was it was interesting that you know I arrived back in the Northwest two months before nevermind came out yeah yeah um and at that time I was about 145 I think and I had already started to get into punk rock and independent music um and realized that was kind of my world that was the world that I wanted to be and by the way how did you discover that music cuz it's pre- internet pre I mean there were Zen and stuff and and was it was it siblings was it friends you know it was it was the it was always the older brother of a kid that I knew right you know it seems like from people our age the way you discovered things specific music was that somebody had an older brother or sister who was cool and into cool stuff and then they you know your friend would steal a tape or or whatever from them and then pass it around at school so I remember uh a kid who had an older brother who was into punk rock and stuff um bringing a cassette that had Bad Brains on one side and The Descendants on the other and just having my mind blown by both poles of this cassette on one side you have just the fastest most aggressive thing you've ever heard in your life and on the second side you have this like also pretty aggressive but very melodic uh pop music that would be basically become like the precursor for all pop punk ever right so you know that I was you know that was a that was an important record for you know cassette thing that kind of fell out of the sky for me at the time I believe it was whfs in DC was still a non-com they they weren't a commercial alternative station at that time influential station yeah exactly yeah so I could get whfs at night in hearnden so I would just run a 90minut tape on whfs and just tape songs and then from there make mixtapes or you know I didn't have any money to buy records or cassettes so I would just kind of make mixtapes from that and you know you know kind of more uh you know I was became a huge RM fan you know kind of a pre- outof time era RM fan and uh mure became a huge band for me um but you know whfs was really the first kind of um in introduction for me to the American Underground and you know underground music from around the the world and so when I got back to Seattle you know I of course I love Nirvana and Pearl Jam I mean who didn't but you know I became far more interested in what was happening at the all ages clubs around Seattle and what was happening on subpop and and CZ records and empty records and some of the uh you know smaller independent labels in the Northwest and and for me going I I would there was a an all ages venue in Seattle across from the ferry terminal uh the ferry that went to brington from Seattle uh called the OK Hotel uh and at the time there was this ordinance in Seattle called the teen dance ordinance which basically stated that if you had a club without seats that held more than 250 people you had to have a million doll insurance policy so it basically killed all ages music in Seattle for almost 15 years but the OK Hotel fell under that cap so touring bands would make a point of playing the OK Hotel because that's the only place you could play all ages in Seattle unless you were playing like the arena or something so that became this second home for me where I was able to see all these bands that became really important to me uh continue to be very important to me but it was also very informative to see bands setting up their own gear and selling their own merch and loading their own van and doing these things that if you were brought up on on MTV like I was and many people of our generation without any kind of insight into Underground Music In America you would think that in order to be in a band you had to play ripping guitar solos and look like you're in Nelson right I mean that was that's what it that's that was it so um it it was a very empowering it was was very empowering for me to see people who were not that much older than me at that point getting on stage and and and playing their music and making their own records and and it it was it it kind of really set a template for what I not only what I wanted to do but what seemed possible because being in you two was impossible being in Guns and Roses was imp possible but man I I mean man Hazel's cool I could be in a band like that or tree people is cool you know or wh who whomever else hammer box those guys are cool and you could see yourself being in a band like that because they look like relatively normal people who just love playing music um I love the precocious name of your first band because it's a deep cut that you picked Oddfellows local1 deep cut from document from R we were just Oddfellows local but that is where we got the odow local right which is a great name by the way radio head came from a talking head song as you probably know so it's a great name oddfellow is local yeah um and that was your high school band and um and were you did you guys perform were you like able to perform in like it I don't know in front of other people yeah we played a bunch of shows um our first show uh and this this sounds like a real name drop I'm a cool kid uh kind of reference but it was it was only because our some people at our school had put on this Big Show and they had gotten the GS to headline um which are a band from Seattle M whose singer Amia Zapata was tragically murdered a year after the show um so my first the first show I ever played in front of people was opening for the gits and with a bunch of other High School bands it must have been hilarious for the gits to show up at the show in Bremington and have there be seven High School bands and the gits playing you know um the kind of gig that you you play when you're probably at that point in your career kind of just getting started right but for it was huge to say like oh yeah we're opening for the GS so yeah we played around Silverdale and Bremerton um you know there were these little Grange Halls that we would rent for a couple hundred bucks but the more punk shows that got done in them the more things got destroyed and the money to rent the rent got higher and higher to the point where high school kids couldn't afford it which is probably by Design and and rightfully so honestly you know I mean if you pay $100 for in a Grange hall and then you take the toilet off the wall like maybe you know may maybe should be a little more expensive so um yeah we we but yeah we played shows all over town it was it was a fun little scene and and that was really when you start to write music I mean I guess sort of maybe before high school too but you were really like what do you remember about writing music or writing songs in high school just like sitting in your bedroom like you know hun Rover guitar all the time were you that kind of kid who was constantly trying to I don't know put words to music and keeping a journal or or not I feel like I was always trying to write songs like the songs that I was listening to at that point but I lacked the skill uh to do so or the experience to do so um so it wasn't that I was constantly noodling in a in a notebook or you know rushing off after dinner into my room to write a song for three hours I don't I don't remember it being a particularly like I don't remember it being a particularly um obsessive or laborious um kind of venture it was just something that I I I found myself doing because I really liked it and I felt that I had something to say even though I probably really didn't um and and I and it and everything was new you know when you first start writing music or writing anything for that matter when you first start creating you know everything you make is is completely new to you and so I think I probably I think in the early years of writing songs and then also certainly the early years of death cab I was just writing all the time because every once I kind of cracked how to do it there was a period in which everything I was writing was brand new and uh every song was was a new experience and that was a really exciting time to feel like you were you know breaking new ground for yourself every time you picked up a a guitar and a pen Ben I'm I'm I'm wondering about how you kind of saw your future because imagine you know your parents had expectations for you and um and they wanted you to go to college and maybe you did too and and I imagine that like a career choice to become a musician wasn't particularly viable or um realistic career choice so you you because you when you went to college and you you studied environmental chemistry was that just like did you do that because you felt like I've got to go through the motions and and I really want to figure out this music thing or did you think well I better go figure out what I'm going to do with my life I never thought of music as being a viable career um mostly because the overwhelming majority of people that I listened to and whom I respected and wanted to be like were people who probably had normal jobs and they put out a record every couple years and took some time off and went on a tour or two um and you know our heroes were selling 20 to 50,000 records it wasn't you know it wasn't like a there wasn't a lot of money in indie rock in the mid late 90s it just just wasn't so and that style of music or styles of music were had not broken through the mainstream in any way so you know it's 1998 and like Limp Biscuit is the biggest band in America number two headline you know it's like what was that not laapa um Woodstock I just saw that Woodstock document exct my God scary yeah it's wild right it's totally wild so you know that's that that was the uh climate that I was coming of age in so all the music that me and my friends liked there was no way it was ever going to be popular so I just felt like and my parents my parents are very supportive of me to this day and certainly were at that age and they had said like look we don't we just we will you know we will pay for your education but you need to get a degree in something that is remotely marketable you know we don't want you going to school and getting you know the classic haha underwater basket weaving degree right so I I felt very strongly about um environmental issues when I was younger I still do but at that time it seemed like that was a noble and um enriching kind of field to go into um so I just figured yeah I'll I'll go to school get this degree in environmental chemistry and then that will take me somewhere in the world probably working in a lab somewhere unless I go to grad school and yeah you know push it to another level but yeah I just figured like okay I'll just do this and I enjoy my classes I enjoy my professors I feel this is a you know a good place to be and yeah maybe I'll get a job where I can be in a band and maybe we'll put a record out maybe we'll tour a bit and I just I I just wasn't thinking that far down the road I wasn't thinking about a career outside from music as much as I was a way to allow myself to play music a job that would be better than a service job better than a coffee shop or music store job and allow myself the time and and space to work on music if anybody wanted to hear it I mean the 90s and particularly the 9s were this incredibly fertile time especially in the Pacific Northwest I mean we uh I think about like you get to College I'm sure you bring your guitar and you would eventually meet the people who would become your bandmates Chris Walla and and and in particular um in Death Cab but um you know in an earlier episode of the show we talked to Carrie Brownstein who went to Evergreen Cy college and Olympia and like all the you know Bikini Kill on the riot girl like all the that whole movement of female Punk singers were there and all these musicians were there and major musicians were just come and jam in Olympia cuz it was just a thing to do like I don't know if this is true or not but it just feels like there was all this like cultural and and Creative Energy in the Pacific Northwest especially on campuses around that time I mean is that is that real did did you feel that I think it was real in Olympia um you know Olympia was very much it's it was it was such an insular scene and such its own thing yeah that it might have well it might as well have been in on Saturn you know I mean it it was it was it was even if you lived we lived an hour and a half two hours away from Olympia and uh you know in the year in the Years After when when when the band was kind of prominent and getting going I'd have friends who were touring through the Northwest and be like hey we're we're trying to get a show in Olympia do you you know where should we play or who should we call and I was like look if you're not playing at Calvin's house it's really not worth playing Olympia I mean all due respect uh but it's really if you're not in that scene yeah uh or or like you know adjacent to it it's it's it's uh Olympia is just another town on the side of I5 um so Belling but Bellingham felt uh you know at that at at the time I went to Western in Bellingham the the Posies were a success story from Bellingham um and the monomen who ran Esther's records were an underground success story in their own right but the Posies had moved to Seattle five years before I got there and the monomen estris record scene was felt very adult it was it was uh you know those guys were probably only in their late 20s but yeah they they seemed so much older than us um so yeah I mean it I don't I don't I didn't particularly feel connected to any kind of uh creative stream running through the Northwest at that point I mean outside of the fact that a lot of the Bands That influen us were from Seattle or Boise or Portland OR Olympia but Bellingham just felt like it was this Outpost it was it there wasn't there was a scene but it wasn't a scene that anybody outside of the scene recognized it wasn't something that people from out of Bellingham wanted to be a part of it was just like a bunch of local bands playing with each other not dissimilar to Growing Up in bton I I wonder when you met Chris Walla there did you feel a create I mean clearly there was some kind of creative spark that that connected the two of you I mean right I mean was that self-evident from the beginning it's it certainly seemed that way I mean we met I was playing drums in a band with Nick harmer who who was uh the Basse player in Death Cab and uh and our friend Arman was the singer and Chris came to see us play with a woman who I was sort of dating at the time they were friends from Bothel um from high school and we just really hit it off and we we we spoke a lot of we spoke highly about a lot of the same bands we we were into a lot of the same things you know our mutual friend Suzanne had said like yeah Chris is like he's going to school to learn how to record bands and he he you know he's he's really into ABC D and I like well I'm really into ABC d as well and you know it's I think what's I think what is lost uh or what what gets lost between the '90s and now is that making a recording was very difficult in in 1996 yeah you know if if if you wanted to record yourself you probably had like a for track which for those who are not initiated in lowii recording it was this machine that would take a regular cassette uh which has you know you know stereo tracks for side a and side B and then run them all in the same direction so you can multitrack on them and you know Guided by voice has made amazing records with a four track but most of us using four tracks were not making releasable material um and recording studios were very expensive so if you wanted to record your songs your option was either a for track or spending a lot of money to go into a recording studio when Chris and I became friends he was in the process of building a a rudimentary uh home studio with a real tooreal eight track and a board and he was buying some microphones that were expens ensive to us at the time and not only was he kind of building this little recording Arsenal but it became apparent that he was incredibly talented and really had amazing aesthetic and was really playful and creative in how he was recording with the materials that he had to use I mean he didn't you know we we didn't have a real recording studio it was just a cobbled together of microphones and thrift stores and you know uh um you know just like ampli built amplifiers that you know ripped out of the back of a uh you know projection like a you know projector or whatever and and he and he also just was an he's also an incredible musician and he was at the time I I'd never played with anybody or made music with anybody who was that competent and creative on a number of instruments and he he seemed to like my songs and and I really like the recordings that he was making so he would he would come up to Bellingham from Bothel um on weekends when he wasn't working and bring some recording equipment we would record some of his stuff you know I'd play drums on it and we would record some of my stuff and then eventually I had written enough songs that I felt you know could make this little side project away from this band that I've been playing in for the first couple years of college named pin wheel and so in the parlament of the times where this small mostly cassette record label called elnor was putting out cassettes and you they they' be for sale at the counter at the local cellophane Square I decided like well I want to make a cassette too I want I want to make one so Chris and I started making this cassette record kind of a maxi EP that we called um you can play these songs with chords and initially it was just going to be this is like my side project from my real band and as that cassette started to circulate around Bellingham and kind of made its way to Seattle it started to dawn on me and also Chris that like who this is this might be like a real thing like this people are people are not just reacting to this cassette with supportive um pleasantries they seem to really like it and so we put together a band initially just to play a couple shows to promote this cassette and so I recruited uh Nick harmer who is the bass player of death C forut to this day and Chris recruited his friend Nathan good to play drums um and we just started playing some shows around town and you know one thing led to another and then we were making a record and and so on and so forth It's a men that became death cap fore did you I mean how did you and obviously you know Chris eventually left but um I'm I'm curious about your descriptions of him as a really talented producer and and just kind of thinker of music you were how how when you met him right because this is a really important time in life you're in your early 20s and you're really starting to get your fingers into the thing that you're going to do right that eventually you will begin to learn how to master over time and it's it's a moment where like you if you meet the right person right you know you can create this amazing I know you've you've been inspired by briano and you think about briano and all the people that he collaborated with David Bo and and others um and mck Ronson but when you um when you meet him how did how did it start to change what you were doing and how you were doing it like how would he what would he bring to the music you were writing that elevated it he he had this way of capturing and elevating the demos that I was recording on my four track mhm so I would bring in a demo that I I I kind of got into this habit of you know I would write the guitar part and the Baseline and the drum part and also any kind of Topline stuff and um and that became kind of the basis of the first cassette the first death cap cassette was me pretty much playing everything um but he he he was and is a a very a brilliant interpreter um of of other people's songs his ability to kind of find the core of the song and elevate it or often more importantly to to pinpoint the weaknesses in a song and then find ways to either improve them or and oftentimes with my songs to kind of hide the weaknesses with cool production tricks and thing and sounds and things that that kind of take the listener's ear away from the fact that that there were no there was no change in that bridge or it's just a solo over the verse but he would he would bring in some kind of other element there that would kind of pull the listener's ear away from any anything that felt repetitive and and bring in new elements and at that point in my life I'd never met anybody like that before I I you know Bellingham is a pretty sh Pond and while there were definitely some talented people playing music around Bellingham at that time um it was apparent to me at that point that that Chris's abilities and his talents far exceeded anybody else that I I knew in that scene at that point and uh it wasn't so much that I wanted to get what he had as much as it was once we started collaborating and becoming friends I just felt and I looked around I realized how fortunate that I was to be making music with this guy yeah um you would go from I mean I'm going to sort of make it sound like it was seamless and easy and it was not because you after the year you graduated I think you released your first record um as a band and then begin the the long arduous process of becoming a touring band um when and you know before you kind of reached real commercial success but but some critical success pretty early on um what did you think I mean you know take me back to sort of where your head was about the future were you were you imagining that this band would become a huge band did you have a sense of what it would be did you think this was going to be something you might do for a couple of years or or maybe none of those things I started to think and I and to an extent I I still do probably to my my detriment I I began to think of my life in fiscal years that were related to the album we were making and then whatever touring we were doing to support it and so when we put out something about airplanes our first record in 1998 we didn't have a lot of prospects we our friends in uh span Harvey Danger who had a really big song on the radio called flag pit at the time they were friends of ours and they took us on our first ever tour that was a huge song up the West Coast yeah huge song yeah and uh they took us on their first tour our first tour and you know we were just doing oh this band called crumb wants to do some shows with us down the West Coast in December sure we'll do that and you know there was for the first two or three years really until fall of 2000 it was it was a labor of love and something that I love doing I couldn't wait to get on tour I couldn't wait to make a record I just was just thinking eating sleeping breathing music and specifically Death Cab 247 just ruminating on how excited I was to go on this Rinky Dink West Coast tour or how excited I was that we were playing a show that week or whatever with it with you know the hope that there might become a point where we could make enough money that I wouldn't have to think about a temp job or something for six months to a year maybe you maybe and we would go on tour um I'm proud to say that we never did a tour that lost money but because we slept on floors and ate mustard sandwiches from time to time and we we were pretty Punk about it for the first three or four years um but then we started going on tours and coming back with like a couple thousand bucks in each one of our pockets and like oh that's cool and we got a royalty check from barook records um for we have the facts and we're voting yes our second record in the fall of 2000 that couldn't have been for more than3 or $4,000 but that was enough money at that point uh to kind of cease temping I just finished a like a year-long temp job um and that that job had ended and $4,000 had fallen into my yeah what was that job by the way um I was working at uh Nick and I were both working at the same place it was a place called committee for children here in Seattle that I I assume is still active uh but they sold nonviolence curriculums for schools so we worked in the warehouse just shipping and receiving it was a great place to work everybody was super friendly you know it's is nonprofit it was a really a really great place to work honestly and they treated us really well and they were really supportive of our music and we would say hey we're going to go on tour for a month and like go live your dreams boys I mean they were very supportive which was unlike a lot of jobs right um so yeah that job uh kind of expired and then almost to the day that we got this royalty check and you know $4,000 is not chump change uh but it's also not it's not money you can retire on and at that point I think my rent was around like $1,000 a month or something like that so I was like okay well this can get me like two months or so two or three months with living expenses if I keep it really cheap and we're going to go on tour in in January or whatever so it's if I can make it to January and then that became that begat the cycle for a couple years of you know just kind of going on the road making enough money to make it the next couple months maybe royalty check comes in and so on and so forth um around around sort of 2201 the biggest band certainly in the US were like uh you know s the Indie world where were the White Stripes and The Strokes and there's a whole scene coming out of New York that would begin at that time um and you guys were critically acclaimed you had some fans but you were still relatively obscure at that time and I wonder one of your tracks uh a movie script ending was used in that show the OC which I never saw cuz I was overseas for like six years so I missed that whole world but I know that it was on that show and it was a big deal that show was like was one of those shows that really did have an impact on music certainly a lot of other bands of shins including the included in that was that a turning point for the band for Death Cab when that song was played on the show yeah I mean the short answer is yes but I think it's a little more complicated than that um you know I you know around 2003 2004 it felt as if there was this sea change happening culturally where I can only assume the people who grew up listening to this music were Now Music supervisors or they were showrunners or they were directors or whatever they were in positions to start influencing the culture and and using the kind of music that they liked in TV shows and movies and and and whatever else um so it felt as if to me in hindsight now the OC was was absolutely important to a band that was not getting played on the radio as a vehicle to get our music you know I mean the OC was on network television when you know before PR before Prestige TV was really a thing right I mean I guess The Sopranos were on and maybe six feet under was on at the same time but Prestige TV it wasn't like it is now where there every time you see your friends are like oh you got to check out this show you there weren't lot there was a lot of TV related to relative to where now so you know we were a band getting played on College radio uh we didn't have any alternative radio support we didn't have any support on MTV we didn't really have any videos we didn't have any videos at that point so for this TV show to start using our music and not only that but kind of use it as a almost like an addendum to this character's whole you know personality was a very odd thing to be caught up in at the time because you know you have to understand we just got a phone call one day saying hey this show on Fox wants to use one of your songs and they're going to pay you this amount of money and we were like oh my God that's a lot of money to us right now that's wonderful that we got our song licensed finally and then we tuned in and watched the show and the characters are name-checking our band you know in the show it was a very surreal thing to be uh a part of um but think you know the OC very much like Garden State or you know any of the other kind of movies TV shows you know I think I think this this was just this was kind of indicative of this kind of cultural sea change that was happening where people who'd grown up with indie rock were now at a place in their lives to elevate it uh because I think like like myself and probably a lot of people like me you know the late 90s were a real bummer as we kind of discuss they if you were into the kind of music that I'm into and you didn't like machismo rap rock then it was there wasn't really anything for you on the radio right and it just felt like over you know not with the same kind of um ferocity that Nirvana killed hair metal it was a little gentler than that but it definitely felt in 2003 2004 there started to be this massive shift uh not necessarily on MTV but certainly on radio and other cultural Outlets away from that genre and style of music into kind of more cerebral um you know uh 60s 70s influenced indie rock um it it it felt like and and we just happen to be in the right place in the right time putting out what would you know I think most people would agree was has was our best record um and we just happened to be landing in 2003 when this shift was happening with this record that just you know I to this day I think is the best thing we've ever done transatlanticism yes transatlanticism um I want to we're not going to be able to talk about all all of your records and all of your work but I want to highlight um I want to talk about a few sort of moments in in in the process of of how you did them because I think they they're part of a bigger puzzle um a lot you obviously you know you've got tons of fans who love the Postal Service which was a project a oneoff project um with some friends um and which you literally like mailed dat cassettes back and forth um which you know in the ER of Dropbox sounds very very um quaint um but um well not even not even dats just CDs straight up CDs um and and this was just something you did on the side you had death cab and do you remember why I mean was it was it just like this is a fun thing to do or I kind of need to break out of I need to sort of grow or because obviously that happened I mean this was a what you did as part of the postal service was a completely different type of sound it was very electronic it was very different from what you had done up until that point and it even it came out sort of before you really became a famous band as Death Cab do you remember the sort of the motivation behind why you wanted to do that was it just let's have fun or was it let me try to stretch myself and see what I can do it it was really just to have fun um we death cabit had a pretty tumultuous 2001 uh in which we really we really ran ourselves ragged trying to finish a record that would become the photo album and then you know we were in this place that um was very difficult to be in creatively in the sense that it's it's been said often that when artists are financially stable that's when they make bad records and that's when they they get soft or they they you know they they make they make their worse records and it's it's been my experience and that the most um compromised place that an artist can be is in that place between Hobby and career where decisions are being made to keep the machine going rather than decisions that are good creatively so when we were making the photo album uh we we really didn't have enough material um there are things on that record that I think are great there are things that I wish I could have a chance to do do over again but we are making that record because we had to have a record out in the fall because we had to be on tour and if we didn't have a tour and we weren't able to make a living then we'd have to go get go back and get jobs and that would kill this momentum that we've been building for the first four or five years so we had this massive um blowout somewhere on that tour in the fall got sick of each other probably four of us just scream yeah but mostly Chris and I just really just going at it after a show uh to the point where we weren't sure that we were going to be a banned the next day about what what were you fighting just just about the performance about what I think it was you know it was it was just we were both burned out in our own ways and the way that was uh kind of coming across was that I remember having a show where um from my position uh you know Chris had been kind of distant the whole day and we weren't really communicating on stage and it was a bad show for whatever series of reasons and we just kind of I think I must have tore into him he tore into me it you know all these years later it's kind of blurry but it basically just came down to not communicating about how we were feeling as most people in their mid 20s early mid 20s do not do we were not communicating like hey I'm feeling kind of burned out I'm sorry if I was a little distant tonight da d d so just not communicating fighting about that um and then thankfully the next day having had some time to sleep on it or to not sleep on it um coming to the conclusion like hey we got to take some time off this is I know that we we needed to get this record out we needed to be on this tour but we really need to just like pull back a bit and really reassess what the next thing we're going to do and we just need to take some time away and that had coincided with me um I had done a song with Jimmy tamborello for his uh project called Dell where I did the vocals for it it's a song called This is the dream of Evan and Sean and when we did that song together this must have been at some point in 2001 I had said like hey would you want to ever do more of this this was kind of fun maybe do like an EP or something like that um and Jimmy was like yeah that sounds fine cool whatever and he started mailing me CDs of um kind of song ideas and I would put them in my computer and chop them up and kind of try to make songs out of them and a couple of those songs found their way to Tony keywell who's a head of anr at subpop uh Jimmy and and Tony had gone to loyy together and so before we even had a record finished I think we were signed to subpop I think we were signed off of wow two songs I think it was the the district sleeps alone tonight I think maybe sleeping in maybe one other one and they were like yeah let's do a whole record and at that point because of the time that Death Cab was taking away you know Chris was working on records people were traveling we're just kind of trying to live life kind of get a little bit of distance from the band I was just on a creative heater at that point I was writing a lot a ton of material that would become transatlanticism I was also writing stuff for give up at the same time and it was I have these I've had these moments in my career where everything is just flowing so well the creativity the songs are flowing almost effortlessly um that you know I I just I I would get something from Jimmy and be like okay cool and then write it that day and send it back to him I was just really really on a heater creatively and you know I want to be very clear this is not how I live my life all the time uh but there have been these moments in my career where when given enough time to really settle into the practice of writing which I firm firmly believe you know it's like it's like a muscle it atrophies when you don't use it and when you're on tour for months at a time at least for me I don't have the mental space physical space to create I'm just living the life of a of a performing musician not a writing not a writer um so getting back into that space primarily because we had the band had decided to take a step back and really kind of be a little more um methodical about what the next steps were going to be allowed me the space Not only to write transatlanticism but also to work on this project with Jimmy at the same time so you know looking back at those records coming out in the same year um it's pretty wild that these these records came out within four months of each other and when give up came out I think I think sub poop's projections were that it would sell 20,000 copies or something like that which seemed great to us but the record just kind of took on a life of its own um we did five weeks of touring around the states I think on it and then put it to bed thinking we'd never do it again and the record just kept selling and selling and selling and it became this real word of mouth um you you know kind of phenomenon that it didn't feel we could even really take credit for it just felt like to kind of paraphrase William Gibson it's like you know like he he would talk about his books being like yeah I feel like they're your children who went off in the world and had great adventures you know and accomp and accomplished great things right it's it it felt the same way with that record or any record that I've made or been a part of making it's like yeah you you put it out and then it lives its own life away from the nest and yeah give up just became this weird phenomenon I that I remember the particularly the district sleeps alone tonight um uh the district sleeps Al alone right was the title of the song The District sleeps alone tonight uh the district sleeps alone tonight tonight yes cuz I was living in Berlin as a reporter my girlfriend was living in Washington DC who's now my wife of 18 years and we would have to see each other every like three months and that song very much resonated because I believe it's a similar kind of story you were you'd written about a relationship you had going sort of being far away from that person yeah yeah I had I had had uh a partner this my first I guess what one might call adult relationship you know we were out of college and living together in the big city and uh she still is a a teacher and and has become a one of my a great friend of mine since we were together all those years along years ago um and uh yeah we had we had kind of the relationship had kind of petered out and she had moved uh to the suburbs of DC and um uh on this this kind of tumultuous death cab tour that I was just speaking about uh was kind of the first time that I I was seeing her after she had moved all the way across the country to live in DC um and uh and it just and it was there were a lot of kind of moments in that brief visit that were both painful but very cinematic at the time and as a songwriter there's I'm often finding myself experiencing things and like probably many writers being like oh this will make a great song If I can just if I can just kind of harness you know kind of like take some mental snapshots of everything that's happening right now um so yeah so that became that was the inspiration and the story behind that that first uh first song on the record um there's something that I I want to talk to you ask you about and and particularly in the recording of transatlanticism and and possibly you've used it in other settings but there's a some people listening will know about this but there's a famous deck of cards that briano put together called oblique strategies you can buy it and it's just he he he designed this this thing basically to push artists out of their comfort zone in the in the recording studio like do you know everyone switch instruments or you know and it's just a series of cards and you you get a dick of cards and you whatever comes up like uh you know uh cut you know uh abandon normal instruments as I say or um uh breathe more deeply or just different things that you and you have to do them and I guess you guys or you made the decision that you were going to try using this do did it did it work was it actually I mean you made this record out of it but but was it did it have an impact I think so but not necessarily a literal uh it wasn't a literal influence like if you know I I I'm paraphrasing one of the cards but it's something like uh it's not uh building wall but mending a brick or something like that these very they're they're they're they're not even as direct as like everybody switching instruments they're just very ethereal you know kind of uh uh non sequer kind of but but directives nonetheless they they still they still are kind of at least taking taking your you know placing your mind in a different place than where it had been ruminating on so I think that having a deck of those cards in the studio and certainly while making transatlanticism it wasn't as if we would get stuck and then pull a card and then do what Brian Eno said told us to do was exactly it was it was more so that it and probably was probably more its design yeah was to take you off of whatever you were ruminating at that moment and laugh at this card or try to interpret it and then fail and then somebody would be like you know what but actually I think you know we we maybe maybe it's not a drum kit maybe maybe we try some or maybe we do this thing to this other instrument like yeah let's try that and then you're off on a new path so I felt that I still feel to this days that those cards are not necessarily great directives in and of themselves but they are they're actually MISD directives they they take you off of the path you were on and allow you to ruminate about something else for at least a short period of time which kind of clears your head and allows you to hopefully see whatever you're working on whatever whatever is in front of you a little bit differently in the same way that if you were trying to do a magic eye or something and you couldn't do it and then you looked at the wall and looked something else and then look back at it you might see the thing you're trying to see if that makes sense um transatlanticism is an amazing record um and you've said that excuse me that it was the best working environment maybe of all the records that the band recorded um you know in the first sort of first eight records um and I wonder what I mean how did that because you know you often hear about um you know creative tension or you know you know there was that Beatles movie that came out obviously actually they were getting along great but you often hear these stories of like real just tension and anger and conflict but then these beautiful records that come out of it um but it it it sounds like in this case it was harmonious like the the band was really working together and maybe maybe actually that that's why the record was so good oh I I I absolutely think so I mean I I think I I Al I also think that if we had a better of songs than we had had for the the previous record uh due in large part to the our ability to my ability to kind of have some time to actually write them but yeah I think I think as far as the band Dynamic and the recording of the record I've I've I've never bought into that idea that um at least not for anything that I've ever been involved with that that constant conflict makes for great art it maybe it's just the collection of personalities in the band at that time or my personality or whatever but I've always done my best work when everybody in the group is communicating clearly and respectfully and you know nobody myself included is passive aggressively trying to kind of push through whatever series of ideas they have that the other people in the band might not be into or whatever it is so yeah after we'd had this big blow out on the tour for the photo album and we all kind of we we all realized how close we pushed this thing to the edge with before almost pushing it over we were able to actually have communications about you know I remember Chris saying something about like yeah I didn't really really really realize I was in a band for about two years because this started out as a solo project we were just playing shows and doing short little tours to support the record that we had made and we were we were banned and but at the same time it was kind of my project that had been morphed into a band without any kind of discussion about what the long-term not even the long-term goal what the next year's goals were it was just like and you know myself being a military kid and Nick also being a military brat we just kind of had this attitude of like let's just keep pushing push push push yeah sleep on Floors whatever like doesn't matter like just got to do it without any real destination in mind just this is what we do and once we all had kind of reaffirmed that we love doing this and that we all loved each other and that we wanted to make the best records that we possibly could we were able to really just get down to we get get down to just doing that without thinking like oh well you I don't want to put words in Chris's mouth obviously he's not being interviewed here right now but you know I didn't want Chris to think that he was making my solo record you know that he was doing this for me and not for himself or that anybody in the band was merely my appendage and was helping me achieve my Creative Vision Dam all other ones which was I'm sure there have been moments in my career that I felt that way but it was certainly not that wasn't the overarching kind of I you know the band's never been a a dictatorship you know like to you know to paraphrase uh uh I think it was maybe one of the members of radio head saying like yeah it's like it's like it's like the B our band is like the UN but I'm America you know like we we all we all we all contribute but at the end of the day I'm the songwriter so uh you know I I tend to kind of push push on my ideas and and desires a bit more but in making that record I felt like we all really left I I didn't come into that record with any kind of like this song has to be like this and this song has to be like that there was a lot more space for everybody to kind of contribute and for Chris to really kind of um try a lot of new stuff and I mean he he did such a brilliant job on that record I mean it I I just can't imagine what that record would have sounded like if anybody else would have made it it certainly wouldn't have been as good on that record and on you know on your subsequent records and I know this has changed over time and over as you've gotten older and as your life experiences have changed but what what is it what is what what is the hardest part about writing songs for you I mean because I think the assumption that many people make about songwriting is that it's autobiographical or it draws on uh experiences but but actually there are analogies to being a novelist like a lot of times you're writing about things that are made up that are just interesting stories right I mean it's it's and you've got to kind of create those stories yeah I I think that songwriting is really the only discipline in which using first person almost implies a lived experience of the person who wrote it you know yeah I mean if like Paul auster is writing a book and there's murder in it and it's in first person you don't assume that Paul AER murdered somebody right you don't um but in a lot of songs and specifically the kind of songs that I tend to write I I I I like using first person for a number of reasons mostly because it's the most direct way to write and I think also when people listen to those songs or they sing those songs back to themselves or whatever they can using first person allows The Listener to see themsel in the song in a way that using third doesn't so if I'm singing a song about I'm speaking to somebody and using the words you and I that piece of music can be easily kind of placed in the life of the person who's listening to it but it also uh tends to make people assume that if that if I'm writing about this thing and I'm using first person then then I'm I'm writing from a real experience and that's very flattering it it tells me that if if if people believe everything that I'm writing is personal experience that I'm doing something effective uh it doesn't necessarily make it true I mean you you you've written about you know um experiences that were real and are are related because so many songs about love or or love lost or um um and then you know some songs are written like you know I I read um something You' had written about where people would come up to you and want to relate to you about the this experience you had in the waiting room uh in a hospital when somebody died but it wasn't real this didn't really happen and people were disappointed when they discovered that you were not writing about yourself yeah I mean I've certainly been in a lot of you know Hospital waiting rooms in my life and i' I've you know I've been in icus and um uh yeah but there there have been these moments where people feel something so viscerally because they it's it is directly correlated to an event in their own life that they it's that I don't think anybody's I've never nobody's ever expressed to me that like this great betrayal that I was that the song was a piece of fiction but there is a slight disappointment i i i GED from people that this particular song What Sarah Said is not is not uh is not an auto autobiographical song but it assuredly will be at some point in all of our lives so uh you know I think that my ability to kind of write about that experience is is more indicative of just being you know observant and you know being in the world and and watching people and and and and and kind of tapping into something that is somewhat Universal you know I mean love and loss and death and and everything in between is you know these are these are simple the they're very comp complex emotions complex subjects um but they they never they never cease to be fascinating to me it's I mean there's a reason that probably 80% of all recorded music is love songs you know yeah how do you do do you labor and um stress over lyrics I mean you know for example I mean I'm I'm I'm going back to an older one but I think of like just a lot just a such a creative line like illuminate the nose on their vacancy signs you know just just so visual you know you can see that no on the vacancy sign you know you can imagine that's so um evocative you know um uh singing about the BAU you know the um soul meet's body you know this this notion of like that place between life and death or do you do you agonize over the words and do you throw away a lot of lyricss I always write lyrics to whatever music I've just written or the piece of music that I'm been tasked with writing Melody and lyrics for because I I I want the music to tell me what the song is about I I I don't and there have been times where I've I've labored over a verse or there's been a song that has had a different set of lyrics for a long time and I'm desperately trying to kind of rewrite it in the 11th Hour um but that's that happens maybe once every couple records for the most part I I find that I I I just sit in this room and I I I try to write music and then after writing music I'll try to write a melody and then lyrics and that the songs kind of tell me what they want to be about but also over the course of time over a course of however many months to maybe year or years of working on songs for a an upcoming record that often these kind of patterns start to kind of emerge and there are sets of lyrics that I've written for one song that the song is not strong but there's a a central idea or lyric in the song that I'm really proud of that I can then migrate over to this other thing later in the songwriting process in the album process to kind of help the whole thing kind of Co L and you know for this most most recent record that's coming out asphalt Meadows you know two of both Roman candles and here to Forever were songs that I wrote in the last month before he went in the studio but they they were kind of the culmination and the whittling down of lyrical ideas and and and themes that had kind of weaved their way through 10 or 12 different songs that would that are not going to see light of day and without having written those songs I wouldn't have gotten to this place to have these two songs that I'm very proud of so I've you know if anybody was ever asking for advice um as a songwriter you know my central piece of advice would be never throw anything away finish everything you know when you're sitting there working on a song and you think it's a piece of [ __ ] it might beting it but finish it finish it because there might be something in the third verse that you wouldn't have gotten to if you had just given up on the first and that might be find it be invaluable later down the down the road Can you estimate how many un uh un um recorded songs you have that that you just are like no this is not good but but but it's a song you've written it it's there like dozens tens let's see I I started the first couple records the first three records um I only really had enough songs for those records so that's but starting with transatlanticism writing for transatlanticism I started to have about 30 to 40 song oids or unreleased things variations on songs that became on the record and roughly around yeah about 30 to 40 and then a record's like 11 12 Songs maybe there's an EP in there so I have to say there's probably at least 400 um to 500 things floating in you know my Dropbox that probably will never be released um 40 to 50 you said like 400 to 500 4 500 wow yeah yeah they just that are just sitting in Dropbox folders that wow but you know but it's also I want to be very clear these are not good songs these are not you know I I I don't think that anybody would hear you know the the majority of the outcomes from transatlanticism and think like oh my God transatlanticism could have been the White Album like it's that's not it's not what we're dealing with here um but in all a lot of those songs there's some central idea or little bit or something that um I felt at least inspired enough to finish and some of those if if if I were to dial up the demos for as I said transatlanticism there'd be a lot of it is junk but probably four or five songs be like oh yeah that kind of reminds me of this other thing that it's like yes exactly because I took that guitar part and put it in this song or that lyric is the chorus for this song that is on the record walk me through your sort of the discipline of the process like I know you've got an office you literally have an office in Seattle that you go to every day right I did I actually gave it up right before the pandemic it was perfect time again with the timing I I I have seem to have perfect timing I had given up the lease in November of 2019 uh cuz my wife and I had moved farther out from downtown which made getting there everyday difficult and arduous so I was like you know what I'm going to try I'm try riding in the house I home studio home studio because we we had bought a a house as opposed to a condo we were living in and we had a room I could build make into a little makeshift Studio which is which I'm in right now so um it actually kind of it worked out perfectly but the reason i' rented this office was that I wanted a creative space outside of the house yeah um that I could go to and kind of keep relatively business likee hours like I try to get there by 10 um and and start an idea or something and then sometimes the day would be like well that's lunch at noon and then take a nap on the couch and go home and run errands or sometimes you'd be like hey I'm I'll be late for dinner because I'm trying to finish this thing um and it was all about just trying to kind of maintain uh maintain some consistency in uh the time that I was working versus like you know I have friends who you know will on a random night they'll just go in their studio and be there till 4 in the morning writing a song but I I tend to work just like work during the week like anybody else would work a a straight job I just I just you know when I'm when I'm actively writing and working on a material to or trying to write a record I'll be in this room you know Monday through Friday from whatever noon to 5 you know where where do the best ideas in your experience come from I mean obviously you've written about love you've written about a lot about love and about you know love lost and but you've also written about more obscure themes that that are not always easy to discern like some of your lyrics remind me of like Michael styp you know some of Michael stypes lyrics of the 80s you know where they're they you're just not really sure what he's writing about but they're really interesting and I don't mean that as a slight at all I mean I I like those those kinds of lyrics too but when you know now I mean here you are you're you know sort of easily I mean I must imagine the process of writing is a little bit maybe easier today than it was 20 years ago for you maybe I'm wrong but where do you seek out the ideas and the inspiration to to craft either a narrative or you know a piece of poetry or what whatever it is that you are putting to putting to music well first say any any kind of comparison to Michael stype is a welcome comparison so I I took that very well thank you um um I would say it's actually a lot I wouldn't say it it I was just about to say that it's harder to write now than it was when I was 20 and it is in the sense that having the kind of catalog that I have between death cab and pulse service and solo stuff and everything like that you know there is there is there is this feeling at times that you know I've written myself into a corner and there's just less there's kind of less to pull from that I haven't already kind of written about in some capacity and you know of course I I you know I'll fully admit to you know kind of returning to themes and and images and imagery that I've I've I've written about before um as as I think most people do certainly this deep in their career um and so there is it does it does feel like I I write more now but I get less so for example for this with this new record a record of which we are very proud of and um I'm very proud of the lyrics and you know I you know it's when the record is out in the World probably after this we've recorded this and everything people will make up their own minds about these kind of things but um you know in order to kind of Whittle it down to a collection of songs that I I and we felt were strong enough musically and lyrically and everything to put out a record four years after the last one you know it was there were 90 songs that went into whittling down to this 11 songs um and so that's what I mean it's like you know when I was 20 if I wrote 90 songs there that that would be like eight records um so I write more and I get less but you know what inspires me what it still is is is this kind of sense of like being in a room by yourself with an instrument or with a piece of music that you're listening back to and just letting this Cascade of imagery just kind of wash over you and and you know there it's it's really just a rumination it's not it's not that I'm keeping an extensive note in my phone or whatever of like lyric ideas or that I'm on a plane and I'm just like writing free verse to maybe us in a song at some point I mean maybe I should start trying to do that get something out of that but I've I've always felt most inspired when I'm kind of listening to a piece of music that I that I've just written or that we are working on as a band writing together and just allowing just my mind to kind of just wander and it it almost feels as if um you know if you had a projector if you're if you were like trying to kind of like um focus a projector you've got you're in a black you're in a dark room the light is hitting the screen and you are just like okay I can tell there's people there but I can't tell what they're wearing okay now I'm getting a sense of it oh now I can see their faces and I can see where they are and okay and now I can start kind of uh focusing on the details in the room that they're in or whatever it kind of feels like that and sometimes songs Stay blurry a lot longer than I'd like them to be and they they only reach Clarity very late in the process but often it's the music that is kind of the hand turning you know turning the focus knob to kind of show me what the song's about I I wonder at this stage and it's I'm I'm always curious when I talk to people who are you know who have had considerable success in whatever field it is um and how they kind of think about what they continue to do right so you've had a number I mean you've had a number one billboard record which is kind of almost impossible for a non-pop band right like um you haven't had any number one hits cuz it's almost impossible and with the kind of music you make but you've had a number one record you've had huge songs and you've played massive venues because of that success that you've had over your career do you do is do you still does any part of you feel a little bit of fear or trepidation every time you are putting something new out not necessarily that you have to match its success but that there's going to be an expectation of Excellence around it I don't know whether that's true or not I I have found that now 25 years into our career and my career as a musician as a songwriter I I feel so unbelievably fortunate um and proud that we've made some albums or I've been involved with making some records that have uh had such an impact for some people who become fans of the band or or just music fans in general people hear the record and it it connects with them and with all the music getting released every day you know you know you're lucky to kind of connect one song to an audience let alone an entire album or multiple albums and having had those records and having seen now years later of course feeling like William William Gibson just kind of releasing in the world and they have Adventures right I don't feel particular it's not a particular point of um ego for me or or uh that the some of these records have kind of been woven into the fabric of people's lives and they Mark time for people in their lives if you were 20 when transatlanticism came out and that was your favorite record that record will probably always remind you of being that age the same way that the Kira's disintegration reminds me of being 14 right it's and it it it's like it exists in a particular time in somebody's life and it allows you to time travel to that period and feel how you felt at that time so at this point in my career and in the career of the band we are always trying to make and I am always trying to make the best records that we possibly can trying to write the best songs I possibly can we care deeply there's never a moment where one of us is like oh that's good enough that's just that's never been how we've thought but having said that it you know it doesn't really matter how hard you worked at it if if someone is not willing to be there and kind of accept it um with the same kind of level of uh fandom they might have accepted an older record and you know that's one I want to be very clear that's 100% fine with me and with us I think as music fans ourself we understand that everybody including me has my favorite era of most of the bands that I listen to an artists right but but what my hope is for this record and for all of our subsequent records anything that I do from this point on be it with the band or solo whatever is that the work is embraced at bare minimum as a reminder of how much people love the band and I think that we can continue to do that so long as we are putting the amount of care and work in into the records that we're making and so you know when somebody says they you know it's like I I I I can only speak about my own experience as a music fan but it's like when I you know get a new record by a band that I love and I'm like oh man this is pretty cool but man these guys are great I haven't thought about these guys in a while it's like oh man like I want to go back and listen to the whole all the other records and like yeah this record's cool it's got some cool songs on it but you know and I like some of this stuff but it also wants makes me want to listen to this other record that I really loved by them and you know I think at the end of the day yeah of course you'd want every record you've been You' you're you've made for 25 years to be every record is is is seen as like the best record you've ever made and blows people's minds and is a cultural zeist moment but we all know that's not possible so really what we what I want to achieve with this record and with every record we make is just to kind of make the best thing we possibly can with material in front of us and also remind people why they love us remind people why the music means something to them and often I found in my own music listening that you know when when when I have that experience of like oh this new record reminds me how much I love this band I go back and listen to the older material but then I come back around to the new record and I want to listen to that more because it feels like a continuation of the old the old records um this will be different for everybody who hears this record and anything we make after it but you know that's what that's what I'd like people to take from it is just to be like yeah we we know that your favorite records are this record that record this record but I think you I I'd like to think I feel confident that when people hear This Record they will be reminded of why they liked us in the first place rather than like oh my God I can't believe I like those guys you know there are those records too right where somebody makes a record and you're like what happened to those guys you know like what you know and and and like and it's also possible someone could hear asphalt medals and have that reaction too but I I feel confident I feel very confident in the material and I I think that it's a I'm I'm really proud of what we just made Ben you've described yourself as a Craftsman and you've said you know I've never felt like an artist I'm quoting you from an interview you gave many years ago not that long ago you said I've never felt like an artist I'm more like a Craftsman and but I I don't think that means that I mean being a Craftsman or an artist both of those things and I don't it's it's hard to discern what one or the other means but I mean I'm assuming that what you mean by that is that you you really approach it like somebody doing carpentry like that it is you have to keep at it it's really hard to try and produce something that you are prepared to show people but it still requires a lot of creative thinking like being an artist and being a Craftsman are two sides of the same coin in in that sense when it comes to doing something creatively I think you know to kind of build upon that comment I made I think I I I I feel like calling oneself an artist is is accurate more time than not but the term artist I've always felt is kind of very ethereal and uh and just kind of it's and i' I found that most people that I would consider true artists are people who just wake up in the morning are just creative with everything they do I mean we all know these kind of people who just just they wake up and everything they're doing from The Breakfast that they're making to you know how they're arranging their sitting room it just is creative and artistic and you know I'm very envious of people like that who who just seem to be like an un like just like like a waterfall of creativity and I've always felt like I've had to work at mine I'm very proud of my output but it's it's I've never felt as if being a a songwriter has been something that that I've just kind of waltt through my life kind of pulling songs out of The Ether and and always just picking up a camera and just taking photographs or like painting something for fun it's like it's writing has been something I sit down and I work at it's and oftentimes it's something I don't particularly want to be doing at that point but I feel that like I need to do it I need to maintain my craft I need to put the put the work in I need to put the time in um because I I think that you know you know from my from my perspective one of the first places that you quote unquote lose it as a songwriter or a musician or an artist or whatever is that is when you take it for granted and you just assume oh yeah I can just kind of Walt into this and be great I mean I think that enough years have gone by that we can talk about this movie without making it sound like I'm shit-talking Metallica but you know you watch some kind of monster and you know these guys just show up and they're making a point of the documentary is making a point of like we didn't come in with a riff or a song or a drum beat or anything we're just going to come in and just be Metallica we're going to be great and of course the lesson that is learned throughout that film is like no you have to put the work in like I recognize that you're Metallica Metallica is amazing I love Metallica but Metallica didn't get to be Metallica by not working at it um and and I feel that you know and it I I've been I've lived in fear of that level of complacency for for some time that that there that you I just can't wake up and be good or great and in my better moments with this I have to really be working at it and be Discerning in in what I release in the world and and hold back things that I feel are not worthy of being released do you think that creativity I mean some people have as you say there's some people who just wake up in the morning and it just seems to just come out of them but it seems to me that what you're saying is that creativity can be cultivated that that it you you yes some people just it comes it just kind of rolls off of them but but for most of us it's actually something that you can if you work at it you can produce it to an extent um you know kind of coming back around to my upbringing and watching my my mom and sister struggle mightily to learn the piano it it was just not intuitive to them at all you know they worked so hard to just be able to do the most rudimentary things on the instrument that were very easy for me um so I would never say that I would never take the you know oversimplifying it but like the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours you just put 10,000 hours in and you can be great at anything I I do believe that there's that you know some there are there's an innate ability that some people have to do certain things be it for whatever series of genetic reasons or or you know n how they were nurtured you know whatever um that's not to say that anybody listening here shouldn't who wants to write songs shouldn't try to write some songs I'm not not saying leave it to the professionals or anything like that but yeah I would I would push back on the fact that you anybody can just put the time in and be good at something I I don't think it's I I think that I mean there plenty of bands who have practiced for you know hours and hours and hours and never written a good song so um you know I think there's there is something about just inherent in who we are that makes us good at certain things and not so great at other things congratulations on this new record um I I think um Roman candles to me sounds like a it could be in a film right away there's a cinematic feeling about that song I can see it um scene that's how I saw it yeah it it certainly it certainly slaps you in the face it's definitely uh um yeah when we were I I was I when we were kind of looking at the material we had in front of us for this record um I I just felt it was missing something very short and loud and to the point um I you know if there's a criticism I feel like can more than come to level on my own band is that we often take a while to get where we're going and there are there there are people who like that I I I often like that that's something I I tend to like in music in general but there's also some value in just really just hammering the point home and doing it loudly and and coming out of the pandemic I I just was not interested in making quiet music it I I wasn't interested in making like an acoustic guitar record or a bedroom pop recorded so boring to me and and um and also I think just you know we cannot we cannot stop from growing older but we can certainly try to be aware of some of the tropes and kind of the missteps of some of our favorite bands who as they got older the tempo started to fall off the acoustic guitars came out oh here comes the string section you know it just you know they're and you know I I I want to make sure that as we if we're going to continue to do this band which we definitely plan on doing that you know we are we are very conscious of not um not kind of falling into those tropes because because those things are very predictable and very boring and they're not interesting to me at all that was my conversation with death C forties Ben gibber we're going to link to some of the videos that we mentioned in our interview at our website go to the great creators.com gibber and we publish show notes for all of our episodes at the great creators.com I'm gyz thank you so much for watching and listening to the great creators see you next time