The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Ben Gibbard

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

Ben Gibbard joins Andy Richter to talk about maintaining your self awareness, interfacing with your creativity, and more. Death Cab For Cutie’s new album Asphalt Meadows will be available September 16th.

hey everybody uh i'm andy richter and you are listening to the three questions and uh i got a real freaking rock star on here today um he's uh he is uh the the well you started out being the you started out being just death cab for cutie but then that became a band uh postal service and your solo work i'm talking to ben gibbard hi hello andy it's good to see your face again it's good to see you too i like that you got all the rock and roll stuff behind you too the basses the guitars oh yeah the marshall stack the gold record damn yeah you know i when i kind of put my little studio together uh i did it in a in a pre-pandemic uh manner that and i didn't think that this would be something that the world would start seeing 2020 when I was doing the live stream. So it looks more curated than it, than it was meant to be, you know, after the

pandemic, when they started with that, you know, room Raider bullshit, you know, people would start kind of like putting some books up in a corner that look interesting or like a photo of them with a famous person or something. And this is just how it's been from. No, I understand it. And I actually, I appreciate too, that it's obviously it's a work room and like you have,

there is, I mean, people can't see this, but behind the guitar rack, there's a platinum record, like hidden, hidden behind the guitar rack. And I love that.

Cause I, I always think like, like it's always weird to me to go into somebody's houses and showbiz where they just have pictures of themselves everywhere and like their stuff and their trophies kind of everywhere. Like to me, it's sort of like, you know, put that stuff like there should be like one room, like a guest bathroom, like a powder room with all your Oscars in there or something, you know? bathroom like a powder room with all your oscars in there or something you know so i i like that they're kind of tucked away in your work because it's work you know there's that separation between work and life that i you know especially when you're working from home as we all are now yeah and as we accrued you know we've got a couple gold records a couple platinum records you get these you know i guess they're kind of awards um or just kind of memento

yeah yeah and uh and and you're and you're kind of initially not sure where to put it because you're i am proud of the fact that our records have done as well as they have yeah you kind of present them in the living room felt maybe a little a little over the you know, but also I didn't want to put them like in the basement bathroom or something. It felt like, you know, while I'm sitting in here in my studio, trying to write new songs, this is a good place for me to be reminded of my past glories. Right, right. And also the pressure of them, all those metal discs breathing down your neck. Well, it's also kind of a reminder of a bygone era when people actually bought records.

Yes, yes. Which is just not something that really occurs anymore. You know, let's just talk about that right off the top because there's a new Death Cab for Cutie single called Here to Forever. Flipside, Roman Candles. And how, I mean, how does that work now? You just, I mean, do you just come up with a song

and you put it out just because like, hey guys, let's put out a song or is there some calculation involved that this single will, there's an album coming and there's a single, so this single will drum up interest or, you know, how did, what's the calculation behind it nowadays? Well, we have a record coming out on September 16th called Asphalt Meadows. So Here to Forever is the first official single from that record.

And Roaming Candles was kind of a teaser track that we put out a couple months ago. in a couple months ago um so i think one of the i think i think one of one of the most uh liberating things about how music is consumed now is that you really can do it any way that you want to if you want to just kind of trickle out singles over the course of you know a handful of years and then go out and play shows and have those singles be part of the live set, whatever people can do that. If they want to make full albums every couple of years in a more traditional fashion, they can do that. If they want to put out EPs every six months or whatever, they can do that. It's just, you know, I think that while there are elements of how the music, how music is consumed now that are

frustrating to me as an old person who kind of grew up on physical medium, I do think that I would much rather live in an era that is more egalitarian as far as people's access to music. CD as to whether or not you hear it, you know, in your home, you know, and so you can be a kid making music in Fargo, North Dakota, and it doesn't matter that you're not a part of the music industry. Right. So, but for me and for my band, we still very much value the traditional album as a statement. You know, I would, I don't think I'd want to move towards output that is just merely a song every couple of months. Yeah. I like creating a cohesive statement that kind of comes out every three or four years for us now. Yeah. It's like, I mean, you get used to being a novelist and you don't want to just release chapters.

You know, like, here's a new chapter. You know, it's like I can completely understand that. You know, it's like I can completely understand that. And I'm also with you with like there's the TV and movie, although it's more TV analog of being old and not understanding how things work and kind of loving it. But also kind of. I don't like not understanding things like I don't like. That it doesn't just doesn't mix. things like i don't like that it doesn't just doesn't mix i and i've said this before on here you know the notion of like you're a big hit on youtube still to me feels like oh you got a little cottage industry like you got an etsy shop where you're making belts like no no that's real oh

like that they're they're outpacing you dummy like this you know absolutely you know and it's and i i i'm trying to get my head wrapped around that but then i'm also kind of like i don't know if i can and maybe i should just not worry about it you know so yeah i mean i i have some friends who uh make a living uh with off their youtube channel they're they're on youtube That is their job. And there are people around my age and they will tell me, yeah, I go to these YouTube conferences and some person will walk in and you will think that like the Beatles just walked in. And to me, we always have this joke where we go overseas on tour and we've turned the TV in the UK or Germany or something like that. I can't remember.

Some comedian made this joke at some point, so I'm kind of paraphrasing it. But it's like, look at all these people on TV in Germany pretending they're famous. I know. It's like when you have no context for somebody's notoriety or fame, it seems either fake or completely fabricated. Right, right. Or of a lesser quality. Exactly. We are of a generation that movies and TV

and major label artists or whatever, those are the echelons of fame in each one of these particular kind of disciplines. And yet now we're living in a world where, yeah, a kid can have millions and millions of YouTube followers and put up videos that get, you know, millions, if not billions of views and people like you and I will have no idea who they are. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, the first time I, and this, I mean, it's not the same now, cause there's kind of more of a blend and Nashville has become much more of a just general music city instead of just the its own of self-appointed music city, which was just country music. But I remember going down there and feeling like I'm on a different planet. could stop 20 people on the street in los angeles or seattle or milwaukee and say you know do you

know who you know uh you know you know josh green river is and they'd be nope but in nashville you know he's the king of the town and and it's it is it is true it's like and it i it's i still i i mean i feel very provincial but whenever i go out of this country and I see someone that's like, oh, it's that big star, that big music star. And I just feel like, how big a star can you really be if you're just a big star in the UK? And it's like, a big star, you idiot. Yeah, I'll give you an example of that. We played, this is about i think 2008 uh we were invited to play a music festival in seoul south korea yeah it was being put on we were told it

was being put on uh by this musician named sataji and we were like okay cool we i don't know who that is but that sounds yeah yeah yeah and he's personally invited you guys to play this festival so great okay so we get to uh we get to seoul long flight uh everybody's really kind of burned out and everything like that and um and you know they we get to the hotel and they're immediately like you need to go to this press conference right now we need to go into this room and like okay sure whatever we go in there and it is just like you know like an nba finals kind of phalanx of people with cameras. And they're all asking us questions like, how honored are you to be that Sataji asked you to play his festival?

And thankfully we played along with it. We're like, oh, I mean, of course, you know, I mean, wow. It's, you know, yes, it's a, it's a huge honor. And then they'd be like, who, what are your favorite songs by Sataji? And we were like, well, I mean i mean god you really can't pick one right they're all so great uh nobody had any idea and we and we were just completely blindsided by this experience and we got back we finally got to our rooms and we were you know all got on our computers individually and started looking up who sataji was and the explanation was, um, the only, the only counter, the only, uh, equivalent to how

famous Sata G is in South Korea would be Michael Jackson in America in the mid eighties. And we're like, holy shit, man, nobody bothered to tell us this. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody from the, nobody who booked the show in, you know, the South Korea, the Korean kind of, uh Korean kind of part of our record company bothered to tell us what a big deal this was. And we realized soon after, oh, no, of course they wouldn't tell you. Because it would be like as if I said, yeah, Andy, Bruce Springsteen would love to have you up on stage tonight. You'd be like, holy shit, Bruce Springsteen? Of course I know who that is. You don't need to tell me.

Right. He made a record called Born to Run and Born in the USA. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course I know. You don't need to tell me that. So, you know, it was such a wild experience to kind of find ourselves in this world that was so foreign to us and to be kind of faced with someone who was so matter of fact famous there that no one bothered to tell us that it was a big deal yeah thankfully you know we played it off well enough that we were able to cover our asses but it could i mean we left that experience being like how poorly could this have gone yeah yeah we had been like who the fuck is sataji yeah yeah who the fuck is that guy i don't know any of

that guy's songs well i don't blame i don't blame anyone from their organization for not for assuming but like your tour manager should have been like oh oh, by the way, guys, they should have looked it up. But also, I kind of give our management a little bit of a pass, too, because they were like, yeah, it's a festival. This guy put it on. I guess he's kind of like a musician. They were like, okay, cool. It would be, I mean, that happens all the time. You're like, yeah, the guy from this band wants you guys to do his little festival.

Cool, let's do it, man. That's awesome. Yeah. You're like, yeah, the guy from this band wants you guys to do his little festival. Cool, let's do it, man. That's awesome. Yeah. But not like, oh, it's the biggest star in this country. Yeah, yeah. Very touch and go moment for us. I do kind of love that because I do find things that sort of impose humility on you when you're in the entertainment business or you're a person that's a known quantity. Things that force humility on you, I think, are just like, I don't believe in heaven, but I feel like there's signs from heaven.

You know, it's like, don't get too big for your britches. And I don't know whether that's just the Midwestern in me or not, but I do think, you know, I do think that like reminding yourself of your own, you know, just your own sort of like having some humility is a very important, an important paving stone of your road ahead. I think, I don't know how you feel about it. You're, I mean, you probably have a big, huge ego and you're probably a nightmare from what i am i'm terrible to deal with yeah no you know i i to your point um i think we've all i think in in our careers we've probably both seen um as people ascend uh in fame and notoriety the circle of people who uh will push back on them gets smaller and smaller. Yes.

And the people who will say yes to them continues to kind of, you know, get bigger, right? Yes. And so I've heard it said that people tend to be frozen kind of emotionally in the age where they got famous because that's the point at which people stopped saying no to them yeah and it it requires a particular type of god dare i say upbringing or you know kind of self of sense of self sense of self-awareness to kind of maintain a circle of influence that will tell you when you're, you're being kind of bullshit about something, right? So, and, and, and in those circles that are all telling you, yes, they are also, you are, you are the center, literally the center of that circle. And you, it is possible to be given the impression that you are the most important person either in your field or in this room or, or what have you. Right. So yeah, so those moments are incredibly

important to be, um, to be reminded of your impermanence and, uh, that while what you do might bring entertainment or great joy to people, that there are a lot of people who do what you do and will continue to do the thing that you do. And, and you know to kind of get you kind of force a little bit of a little bit of perspective upon uh you know your place in the world let alone your place in the entertainment industry yeah i i could not agree more and i've said virtually the same thing just in different words for decades now because it was you know once i got on television i had i mean i was kind of i had an interesting perspective of sitting next next to fame quietly for many many years and that you know while my notoriety sort of grew but didn't i mean i'm mine's very manageable i can go to the grocery store whenever i want and nobody gives a shit and i wouldn't have it any other way but i've always

said and it's like you stop being told no about things and that is so dangerous and that if you do get into a situation where you are famous and money and you got people that are sort of catering to you, the easiest path, the path that water will seek is to become a maniac, to become an asshole. Because you don't ever hear no again. So you start to think, I think I might be infallible. I think I might be right about everything. And you have to push back. You have to make extra effort to remind yourself when you're surrounded by people saying, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. To go like, I don't know.

maybe I am being out of line here or keep people around that sort of can talk to you in the same way that you would be taught that you would have been talked to prior to being yes I completely agree and I think to add to that um you know when I I lived in LA for three years that you know I was married to an actress and I kind of found myself in these circles with people who were um very famous at times or had been you know, I was married to an actress and I kind of found myself in these circles with people who were, um, very famous at times, or had been, you know, famous since they were very small. And I remember, um, I remember going out to a dinner with someone who will of course remain nameless and, uh, you know, I'll get the name later after we finish recording. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and, uh, and a wonderful person. Um, but, uh, she would say things like, um, oh yeah. I mean, you know, me and my, my, one of my best friends, well, he's also my contractor,

but, uh, he's one of my best friends and we go up to Malibu all the time. So wonderful. And, you know, we just, I just got back from Mexico and I was with like a couple of my best friends. I mean, they're also my assistants, but you know, they're my best friends. And, um, and I, I don't doubt in, in, in this kind of, kind of trope kind of continued over the course of the evening. And it, it started to feel to me, um, uh, this person seemed fairly well adjusted and they were kind and, um, um, but it seemed like a kind of sad and unintended consequence of that echelon of fame. Yeah.

Where at a certain point, you're just working so much or you're being pulled in so many directions that maintaining relationships with people who are not on the payroll becomes very difficult. You know, if you're an actor and you're on, you're like on location nine months out of the year and, and, you know, you don't get to see the people who you consider your real friends, if you even, you know, if I can be so cynical, even have those people in your life. And then it's the people who work for you, who become your closest confidants. And then, but it's very, it's a very, it's a complicated relationship that one has with somebody who's being paid to be there i mean we are on tour often we have people who work for the band who i admire and i have you know a particular kind of fondness for in relationship with um but it's something i have to check myself from time to time to be like this this person who I do care about is being paid to be here and

get me my dinner, you know? So we have a relationship, but I need to be very cognizant of the nature of that relationship and make sure that I don't tip, my life doesn't tip over into having only those type of relationships yeah yeah can't you tell my loves are growing your dad was in the navy correct he was yeah so you did some moving around I mean how how long in your life were you you you know, the Navy brat that, you know, had to relocate every now and then? Yeah, we, my dad went into the military as, he enlisted at 17 into the Navy and then came out, went back in as an officer. And so I think we moved between being born in, when I was about 15, I think we moved six times. Uh, so, you know, I was born in Bremerton, Washington, and then we moved here,

then we moved back and we moved here, then we went back. Um, and, uh, you know, I, I think, I think my parents, you know, to this day feel like, like they did a, did us a disservice by moving us around a lot that it was uh it was difficult at times but i i felt like in looking back i was just about to start getting in trouble whenever we moved like i was just i was just starting to roll with like a you know like like a bad crap not like necessarily a bad crowd but like you know and like and like the teen movie that there's a kid who's always like, Hey guys, I don't know if we should be doing this. And then

the other one in the handcuffs in the back of the police car, that was me. Like I was, I was never the guy doing the, doing the, uh, doing the crimes, so to speak. I was just the one saying, maybe we shouldn't do this and then getting caught for it, even if I didn't do it. So I was pretty not good at being bad, but, um, so in a way, every time that we moved, I felt like it was right on the cusp of me starting to kind of get into some shit I should have been getting into. But I think it also kind of set a precedent for how I've lived my life since in the sense that I've, I'm very comfortable with travel and very comfortable with kind of moving locations. Yeah, not often, but it's not something that, you know, it's kind of been how I've lived most of my life. Yeah, I was going to ask if that impacted the way that you did business.

You know, and I did business, I mean, you know, interact with people and make you comfortable with traveling. people and make you comfortable with traveling. And also, I think that you get an outsider's perspective because you're changing more frequently than most people are. So I think you become a more astute observer because you just have more data to sift through than most people do. I think that might be true. I think from a very young age, I remember feeling as if I could walk into a room and kind of read. uh, read, I could read the room in a way that, um, that maybe other kids couldn't in the sense that I could kind of read the kids who maybe were looking at me and, you know, kind of with some kind of, you know, malice or like I could, I could pick out the bully, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

You know, you could kind of tell when, you know, the kids that seemed kind. Um, and I don't know if that was something inherent in who I was or if it was a function of moving a lot, but, you know, in changing environments often, especially as a, as a kid, when you, you just, kids just want to feel safe and they want to feel like they've got a place and they've got a, you know, um, you know, it's like kid, they need some kind of structure and kind of like, okay, what are the rules? What do I, you know, what can I do? What can I do? You know, that was off, that was shifting often for me because we moved so much. And, you know, we would go from living in Bremerton, which is a pretty working class kind of town, the idea of watching TV and seeing rich people on TV was like, I don't know anybody like that.

Yeah, yeah. Living in this kind of very middle class, working class town and then moving to the suburbs of Chicago where inexplicably there's a Navy base. Yeah, I know. It's just wild when you really think about it. where inexplicably there's a Navy base. Yeah, no, I know. It's just wild when you really think about it. And my dad was stationed there. And then I was going to school at a private school in Lake Forest, Illinois, which was a very, very affluent suburb of Chicago.

Yes, I'm familiar. And kids getting dropped off in limos and realizing that being not even poor, but just not rich was, uh, was a point of derision and, uh, and, and kind of, you know, that we were mocked for being poor, you know? Yeah. And in actuality, we were, no, we were staunchly middle-class, but, you know, and so it was just very odd for me in that moment in my life,

you know, 10 years old or whatever, realized like, oh, money is a thing that people, people think they're better than other people if they have money. What a weird concept, you know? And, you know, I'm not sitting here saying that it like scarred me for life or something like that, but it was these kinds of recalculations that i was constantly making as a young person um based on my environment that i think is a large part of um you know the kind of becoming the type of writer that i became and then you know i'm always observing i'm always kind of walking into into a room and kind of looking for the exits so to speak and you know kind of like i feel like you know like j Jason Bourne or something like that. Yeah. Keeping your back to the corner so you can. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, I often, I often have this thing. I, whenever we go out to eat

with people or even with just my wife, I always insist on sitting what I call gunslinger, which is like, if there's a seat where I can be, I can see, I can see the whole restaurant because you never know what's going to go down. Yeah. Yeah. I need to sit in that seat. Now, what is that? I mean, do you, is it, cause I'm kind of the same way, but it's more just cause I want to, I, I, I want to, I want to eavesdrop. I want to, you know, like I want to spy on people. I want to watch the comings and goings, you know know it's like when my son was a baby and there's those baby bjorns he from i mean from when he could lift his own head insisted on facing outwards like he always wanted to scope out what was going on and i feel like that's the same way i mean are you are you really paranoid are there people out to

get you are there do you have deep thoughts not that i'm aware of i feel like i'm i feel like well i've got a list they're probably you know it's like you know god you know there's always as i've you know i've known people who've had people following them it only takes one person to change how you live your life right so you got it sure does you really gotta just hope yeah it happens but um no it's it's, it's not, it's not a paranoia. It's certainly not like a check me out guys. It's not that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah, I didn't think it was. Yeah. It's, it's definitely me guys. You don't, don't, uh, you know, one at a time. That's right. I'm that guy from that thing. Yep. You know you you yeah you remember that record from 15 years

ago yeah um uh no i i i think i just i i i like to be um always aware of my surroundings that might be uh to maintain a sense of comfort uh or feel kind of at ease, to kind of know. You know, I mean, you joke about like, yeah, somebody's that, you know, if you're sitting with your back to the rest of the restaurant, somebody could just come out with a, you know, cast iron just wacky over the head. You know, you got to be prepared for that, right? It's not that. It's more just like, yeah, I just like to kind of see what's going on in here. Yeah. And it's hopefully never to the detriment of the people I'm sitting with.

It's not like I'm doing that Hollywood thing where I'm like looking over somebody's shoulder to see if there's somebody more in the room. It's just that I kind of, I like to be, I like to be amongst the people and kind of feel like I'm a part of a larger kind of setting. That's not just the three people or four people that I'm sitting with at the table. Yeah. At what point did you start to really feel like music was going to be the thing for you? Well, I always, I think maybe when I was 13, 14 years old, the only thing I wanted in the world was to be in a band that's that's the only thing i wanted to do i didn't i didn't um i didn't think of myself as like a solo artist or something like that i just i loved bands i loved the concept of being in a band and it's like a little gang and you you're you're friends and you kind of get into adventures and what bands were inspiring you at that point when you're at 13

um it was kind of a hodgepodge of things that were a little more mainstream on the radio like cure and rm uh but also i was starting to kind of discover um underground music punk rock and indie rock and things like that and so you, you know, I, I was, I was a huge fan of bands like super chunk and yeah, a band called tree people that eventually became built to spill. Oh yeah. And and a lot of the stuff that was happening in the Northwest at that point, I loved the descendants and just just kind of i i just you know the bands that i i

admired the most if they had a visual component it was that it was really strong on the collective right yeah it wasn't like the singer is in focus and the rest there's like some shadowy guys behind right just kind of like you know you know in the, in the, in the background, like I, I, I really like the idea of like a collective, like a team, you know? Um, but so much of the music that I was moved by was underground music in the sense that, yeah, it's, it's possible that maybe this band would go on tour and, you know, make enough money to pay the rent for a couple months maybe they'd sell 10 or 20 000 records and if they had like a 50 50 split with an indie label maybe they could kind of eke out a living over like the period of time that they're doing the band intensely

but that music was not music was not something that you could do for a living it was yeah it was a temporary it was like it was like a vacation from real life that you might be able to get for a living. It was, it was a temporary, it was like, it was like a vacation from real life that you might be able to get for a couple of years while things were going well. And then eventually you'd have to like go back to grad school or something like that. So, um, and that, and that's also, that's the world that I wanted to be in. That's, that's the world that I, you know, the idea of being, um, on a major label or like being a rock star or something like that just seemed like a completely asinine, uh, uh, goal because it's like, you know, it's certainly coming as a kid who kind of came up in the eighties and then, you know, became a teenager in the late eighties, early nineties. It's like, you know, on one hand, you know, we had the benefit of kind of

coming of age with, you know know a lot of music that was popular in the north all around the world from the northwest at that point with like nirvana and pearl jam and soundgarden they were putting forth a very kind of like art forward you know um rock stars are bullshit kind of attitude yeah but at the same time i i had come out of the 80s at a time where the music on the radio was like hair metal. Sure. And everything was larger than life. I've said this a number of times, but I was given the real impression that the only way you could be in a band is if you looked a certain way and you could play with a certain level of proficiency. You could play with a certain level of proficiency.

And so to discover punk rock and independent music and kind of come to this realization that like, oh no, you learn like two chords. You learn one chord, you can start a band. Yeah. You don't have to be, you don't have to look a certain way. You don't have to be a certain gender or you don't have to be a, you know, you can be whatever you can be, whatever you want. Yeah. Then you music, however you want.

And it sounds like kind of a little bit kind of trite to say that was huge eyeopener for me. But you know, when you're, when you're living in a world with limited information, there's no internet in 1990 that we had. Right. Right.

So you're, you're really, when you poison and Motley crew, and then, you know, you look at those kinds of bands and think, I don't fit into that. You know, how am I going to, yeah, how am I going to do that? Yeah, so, you know, I mean, growing up in a pre-internet world, you were kind of, you know, you were resigned to the little information that you could get, be it from zines or college radio if you were lucky enough to live

in proximity of a college radio station and thankfully uh you know i was uh and to have friends who had like older brothers who were into cool shit yeah and you know it's like who would like i stole my brother's bad brains tape you want to borrow it like hell yeah i want to borrow that like yeah you that that's how it was back then and i don't think it's necessarily any better or worse than how kids discover music now i mean honestly i'm pretty fucking jealous of the fact that you know kids can just like dial up whatever they want right now yeah yeah can't you tell my loves are growing i've talked about this before because i'm about 10 years older than you and so it was even and i was you know i was a teenager at the beginning of and i'm

air quotes new wave um so you had to buy the fucking album like if there were you know like there was nobody was playing talking heads in illinois when talking heads first came out or you know like some of my early favorite like joe jackson and you know elvis costello and the cure you know that you mentioned but you had to go buy the album and just take a you know they were only six or seven dollars at the time but still it was like the notion that you can hear about a well first of all hear about a band which i used to read a little blurb in rolling stone that sounded kind of interesting and go buy the album based on that and just like that's so blind compared to like you said just oh that clickety clack oh here it is the entire album you know i'm listening to it

didn't cost me a dime uh i guess i'm just sound like an old man beefing and maybe that's what i am well i mean i don't i don't i don't. I think that, you know, we've had a very different lived experience in our relationship to music than young people now. And I got in this kind of a similar conversation with, you know, a little name drop you, but he's a I still hold, which is that I think that because people of our generation and older had to walk the proverbial 10 miles in the snow uphill both ways to the record store to get the punk rock seven inch. And that the strife that we had to kind of undergo to get that piece of media made it more special than if someone just dialed it up on their phone. And I was in the position that I don't agree with that. I think that, you know, it, it doesn't necessarily matter how music comes into your life. If it makes a huge impact on you, if you had to walk 10 miles in the snow, each direction, you get the seven inch, or if you just dialed it up on your phone and you loved it and it changed your life it doesn't matter and

bob said something to me that it stuck with me and i'm giving him credit on numerous occasions as he said well it's not how music comes into your life it's how it leaves if you are able to just swipe it away with your finger versus even just getting up and taking the disc out of the player or flipping the record over or you know you know it's it sounds you know it makes us sound so lazy that you know you know there's been times i've been sitting in my living room listening to a record and you know there's a it gets to a song that i don't like and i'm too lazy to walk the 10 feet over and just move the stylus lift the needle yeah lift the needle and you're like ah okay that's

a song whatever else i keep playing and then eventually sometimes those songs they crack open you're like yeah love that song now yeah it's all because um i wasn't able to swipe it away as easily as as if it was on my phone i just can't tell siri to like skip the song or something like that, right? So I think he had a really good point there. And it's not to say, it's not to take a kids today kind of position on it, but as much to say that, yeah, I mean,

you know, we've all been there when we're trying to find something to watch or something like that, right? And we have a gazillion streaming services and there is just a glut of, you know, you know, shows vying for the prestige TV logo now, you know, certainly during the pandemic, uh, you know, somebody was always like, Oh my God, have you watched this show? Oh, you got to watch, but have you seen this show? I mean, how many times you've been at dinner with people and the conversation has devolved into what

we're watching and everybody's talking about a different show that they're watching and why it's great. So then you're at home. I mean, you're always trying to start watching something new. And you open up Netflix or Apple Plus or whatever the fuck. And all of a sudden, it's a half hour later and I haven't found anything to watch. Because I'm making that calculation of like, okay, well, if I watch this for five minutes and I don't like it, watch because there's, because I'm, I'm making that calculation of like, okay, well, if I watch this for five minutes and I don't like it, do I have to keep watching?

Actually kind of, I don't, I can just, I can just swipe away and watch something else. And maybe if, and I think that there is something to be said about, uh, you know, media that we have to kind of sit through, be it watching it or listening to it. And maybe after we've experienced it, then we're able to really form an opinion on it instead of just 30 seconds or five minutes into it we don't like it we're just like yeah whatever let's get rid of it move on to something else yeah yeah but then again too sometimes you know you get it's like okay enough i've i've had you know i just recently i've given myself the permission now because i'm i have a bad thing of i i it's like this duality in me of terms of if i start a movie that's sort

of middling to shitty and i might just get caught up in the plot and need to know what happens to these poorly written people that i know aren't real. You know, like I have to stick it out because I want to know what happens. But I also have found lately I've been giving myself the permission to check out a hot new show that everyone's talking about and get three episodes in and go like, you know what? Fuck this. I, you know, I don't enjoy this very much. And I also to being a television professional, just see the scenes. I don't know if you're that way with a lot of music where you just kind of think like, oh, I see how they edited that.

Or that's an interesting way that they ripped off the Beatles or whatever. I mean, because my TV viewing is full of that. or whatever, you know, I mean, cause my TV viewing is full of that. I just, like, I just hear that sometimes the lines, I hear the writer in the room pitching it and being so pleased with themselves and, you know, it's, it's, it spoils everything, but, but yeah, you can, I mean, I still think, yeah, no. And especially when there's such a huge pile of homework to do when it's, you know, when it comes to like the television to watch, if you, you know, if you choose to engage with it,

it can feel like an obligation. You know, if you want to sort of like swim in that kind of mainstream, you get, it's like, oh man, this is a lot of work. This is a lot of time to commit.

Yeah. I mean, keeping up, keeping up with what's current, certainly I would imagine in TV, but definitely in music is incredibly difficult now. It gets harder and harder. Incredibly difficult.

And I was- Music, I don't know any, new music is so hard for me because it's so hard to sift out. I don't know what, you know, just the old indicators of like, oh, this radio station, if it's playing here, I'll probably like it. Now it's just, I'm on my own and I just, it's hard to sift through.

It can become like a second or third job. And I was out to lunch with like a younger musician, like record producer. And, you know, we were just talking about music that we liked. And I was, you know, I was telling him like, look, I mean, my listening has basically almost devolved to just like the Velvet Underground and like Pharaoh Sanders. Like it's always like, I don't know. I'm not, you know, I, you know, it's,

it's become so difficult for me to kind of truly stay atop of, you know, this tsunami of new music that's coming out every weekop of, you know, this tsunami of new music that's coming out every week. And, you know, he is a younger guy, maybe 24, 25. And he was like, look, man, I gotta be honest. I mean, this is my, I do this for a living and, and I, and I can't, I, it, I can't do it. So I, I, I would imagine it would be incredibly difficult for you. Who's also heard so much music at this point, to kind of continually be listening with a discerning ear. And I've made this point a couple of times in the past, but a lot gets made of... Often you'll hear people say dismissive things like, oh, I don't know, just music today, man.

Often you'll hear people say dismissive things age, you've heard so much music. You've heard so many things come around two or three times, you know, styles of music. So, you know, when I, you know, take a band like a band that I love, like the Jesus and Mary chain, love that band. And, you know, I first heard the Jesus and Mary chain when I was younger and I immediately fell in love with them. And now, you know, enough years have gone by since their high watermark that I've heard that sound come back. Yes. Two or three times. Yes.

And then to have people, you know, people who are like the tastemakers in independent music be like, you're not going to believe how amazing this band is. I'm like, yeah, the band that sounds exactly like the Jesus and Mary chain. Yes. this band is. I'm like, yeah, the band that sounds exactly like the Jesus and Mary chain. And if you're a young person who's not familiar with the Jesus and Mary chain, well, by all means, you're going to love that band. But I'm getting to a point now where when I hear a band in 2022 that sounds like that, it just makes me want to go back and listen to the records, the original records. And the more music you hear, the more discerning your ear gets, the more, um, things you have to compare new music to. And it's not that, and I truly believe

that the most interesting music that's ever been made is being made right now. Um, and I believe that is the case because of just the, just the, the advancements in technology, like the movement away from traditional instrumentation that a lot of young people are using now. It's not just like, okay, you get a buddy who plays guitar and your homie plays bass and I'm the singer and the drummer and that's a band. That's what music sounds like. Now it's just splintered off into all of these sub-genres that are overwhelming to me. But when I hear things that are new, there are often moments where I go like, if you put a gun to my head, I wouldn't know how to make this. I would hear something on the radio or somebody play me something and I could, I could parse out what the sounds were and how, and what was making them to some degree. Right. And now, um, it's,

it's as if, it's as if, you know, um, you know, there is this palette that young people are using to make music that is uniquely their own and is so embedded in, in technology and advancements in technology that have left me behind. Yeah. Uh, it's incredibly fascinating to me and it doesn't, embedded in technology and advancements in technology that have left me behind. It's incredibly fascinating to me. And it doesn't, it's not that I like it all, or I think that it's all like, you know, paramount stuff. But I think that's something I need to always take a second and recognize that, wow, this is truly innovative stuff. I'd never heard anything like this before. And it happens more often now than it did, you know, when I was in high school, you know? Yeah.

My 16-year-old daughter has made me promise to stop saying things like, oh, yeah, this band is great. I liked them when they were the cure, you know, like that. She's just like, okay, yeah, yeah, I get it, dad. Shut up. I wanted to bring something up because here to forever. I is I really it's it's a it's such a beautiful song. And it really the lyrics to it, I think, are very. I think are very, it's interesting to me within, within sort of like your canon, I guess, because it's kind of about, I'm going to tell you what your song's about. No, I mean, you start out saying, watching movies from the fifties and thinking about how everybody's there is dead. And that sometimes your, I believe it's your dreams are in color and you try and fix them into black and white. And it's like this desire to sort of, I think, derive comfort from the old systems that you don't believe in anymore. And I know that you were raised Catholic,

and I've seen some quotes where you talk about how you're, I mean, do you consider yourself a lapsed Catholic? Is that the sort of thing? Or just non-catholic? Yeah, I'm an agnostic. I feel that the self-righteousness that atheists feel is not dissimilar to the self-righteousness that fundamentalists. Right. It's like an unwavering faith in their particular belief system.

On one side, it's that Jesus Christ opened the gates of heaven, blah, blah, blah. And the other side, it's that there is no God, and you're stupid for believing in one. That is its own version of faith, which I find interesting that atheists tend to feel as if they're not spiritual or religious, but in actuality, atheism is at the extreme of the religion. Well, the thing I like about agnosticism is it's the acknowledgement of the unknowable. And that sounds like, okay,

yep. That's because I, spirituality to me is not something that I concern myself very much. And I, you know, and that, I think it's just the way I'm built, but it's just kind of, I look at it as like, I don't really know how a car works, but I can drive one. And I don't need, I'm not interested in how a car works really, other than pushing gas and pushing brake. And that's kind of how I feel about the universe. I can, you know, I certainly can ponder like ah what is and you know what how did we get here and especially with all the recent stuff with these super deep space pictures just the mind-blowing shit of like oh they're getting they're they're getting close to the end of the universe like they you know i've seen like where they're they're getting pictures that

are so far away that like yeah in a few years we'll be able to see the end of the universe and it's like what does that even mean like you know like like what you know i can't i think of things you know like vessels within vessels and how can there be no big vessel and so i just kind of then go make dinner uh and you know but i did think because of this you know you still there's an interest you know i still see in your music and you know when you go back to um i will follow you into the dark that which is is that's like your biggest single right i think it probably is yeah yeah because that one is kind of it embraces the unknown and now this new one kind of wishes you could get a handle on the unknown and maybe even using old like i said old systems to do it and is that something that has kind of evolved in you and in you know in like some sort of sense of spirituality or or mode of of

handling getting older maybe i i think it's a subject that i keep coming back to often i think in large part to being brought up catholic um because you know you know, I don't know if Catholicism is considered a fundamentalist religion, but it certainly is a very strict one. An absolutist one. An absolutist one and carries itself with a very, very absolute kind of set of rules and dogmatic kind of, you know, elements. And so, I think that there's a long sunset on leaving the church. You know, not even formally, it wasn't like I stood up and made a big announcement and like walked out. But you know, there's a joke in Catholicism and like, yeah, you get confirmed and then you turn 18, you don't have to go anymore, you know? And my mom is still very practicing, very strong Catholic. But I think it's the subject of, you know, what happens, the question of what happens to us after we die,

or what exists outside of ourselves is something that I find, you know, I've never not found fascinating. And here's an example. My wife and I were, it was her birthday and we were having dinner with some friends and this little outside table, this was maybe three or four years ago, at a restaurant that we like here in Seattle. And two of the people at the table were another couple. And she was a woman that I had dated years ago that we'd remained friends. And we'd lived together for a period long before. And I had owned a house in this neighborhood. And my first house was in a neighborhood called Ballard here in Seattle. And me and this woman lived in this house together. And so we're all at dinner. And this couple walks by and they kind of look at me and they give me

a second look. And I'm thinking like, oh, okay. They recognize me from the band. They kind of, they walk down the sidewalk a bit, they stop, they come back. And this woman goes, listen, I have a really, I have a kind of a weird question to ask you. I'm like, okay. And he's like, well, I bought your old house from the woman that you sold it to. And I'm like, okay. And she's like, was it haunted? And like, and I go, well, I don't really. And then this woman who I had dated and who had lived in the house, like spun around out of a conversation was like, yes, yes, it was. And the woman on the street is saying like, so you, you hear, you, you would hear voice like a girl's voice, like in the closet, in the guest closet. And you know, my friend who was like, yes, yes, yeah.

And it was in the downstairs closet. And it was this bizarre moment of confirmation of the fact that this house that I lived in allegedly was haunted by two people who did not know each other, who had experienced the exact same thing. Wow. And in my pragmatic mind, I kind of went to like, well, but I mean, maybe it's like a pipe or something, right? Maybe there was like a pipe that kind of sounded like a child, maybe when the hot water was on. I couldn't allow myself to accept that, A, if the house was haunted, that means that ghosts are real. And if ghosts are real, that means there's some sort of afterlife or some kind of liminal space outside of our mortal plane that the human spirit or whatever it might be can exist in. And in this moment, we had these two strangers confirming to each other the same experience in a house that we all have lived in at some time.

Yeah. And there was no way that this could have been set up. There was no way that this could have been set up there was no way that this could have been uh like a bit right right um and you know those those kind of moments i'll you know although not that you know on the nose have happened enough in my life that it makes me feel that there has to be some kind of other plane of existence. Right. But what it is and what it's called is somewhat related to the line in the song

in Here to Forever that goes, you know, I want to feel the pressure of God or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And to me, it's the addition of whatever that kind of removes the power of the concept of an all-seeing an all seeing all knowing deity is it just like yeah it's god or whatever man like whatever like ghosts or like you know aliens whatever it is just something something that gives us any some sense that there is something outside of this mortal plane we're living on and i tend to kind of really struggle with, you know, my kind of mathematical brain, my pragmatic brain that wants to kind of just like explain that, you know, oh, that there wasn't a ghost in Three Men and a Baby. That was just like a, you know, that was like a cutout that was behind the sheet.

That's what everybody thought. I wasn't really. That's a grip. Yeah, yeah. out that was behind the that's what everybody thought it wasn't really that's a grip yeah yeah there has to be some logical explanation for right the phenomenon that we we we kind of attribute to uh the spiritual world i'm the same way i feel like i was just talking to my daughter about this the other day uh because i was talking about a friend who owns a very old house and that his daughter says that she repeatedly feel someone come sit on the foot of her bed.

And that she said it, she feels that vibes that it's a very motherly presence. So she doesn't really worry about it. And my daughter said, no, uh, no, no, I got to move. And I, and I just said, I don't think I would even, I just feel like I don't have, I don't have those receptors. I feel like I'm the same way. I'm very, I mean, I just told you about my spirituality and I likened it to, you know, a mechanic working on a car. You know, I mean, I just, I'm the same way. I don't think it would work for me i do want

to ask though because you you know in the you want to feel the pressure of god or whatever do you do you really want the surety you know like the the assuredness that your mom has that that you know what's you get a handle on it, or is the not knowing okay? Well, the not knowing has to be okay because we have no other option. What else are you going to do? Your mom knows. I mean, but she doesn't. I mean, one of my favorite, I mean, Jeff Tweedy from Wilco has written so many great lines,

but one of my favorite lines of his is from a song called Theologians in which he says, theologians don't know nothing about my soul. You can study, you know, it's, you know, the Pope knows as much about what happens to us after we die as I do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Baby does. And it's, and, you know, it's, it sounds like a, it sounds like a conversation that people would have, like passing a joint around, but it's kind of that whole thing of like, you know what, man, like, you know, like nobody knows, man. Like, you know, it's, it's, it's, but it's, it's, and just think of all the wars that had gotten started, man. Cause somebody thought they knew, like, you know, I believe in unicorns and you believe in centaurs.

I'm like, well, we should kill each other because, you know, should kill each other because for the love of centaurs or something, right? And I guess it's just how we're wired as human beings. We desire assurance and security and comfort. And death is an incredibly scary part of life. you know, death is an incredibly scary part of life. And, uh, and it certainly makes, makes the inevitability at least a little bit more tolerable. If you, if you believe that you're going to go sit on like a golden throne next to Jesus or something, right. That that's a, I understand. I completely understand why people are seduced by any kind of belief system that assures them that death is not the end. That involves fancy furniture.

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. You can be in a cloud. Who doesn't want to live in a cloud? Well, what's in store for you? Where are you going now do you think uh what i mean a career life you know is there anything is there anything special you got that you're aiming for buy a boat to jail the world yeah what's that joke about the boat it's

like the happiest two happiest days of owning a boat is when you buy it when you sell it yeah the rest in between is drudgery yeah yeah yeah you know it's i don't know if this has been your lived experience but i i have gotten to do everything everything in my life at a certain point has become become complete gravy. Like I just feel so fortunate sitting here at 45, almost 46, to say that not only am I still doing the band that we started in college, but that people still patronize the band. They still come out to the shows. They still listen to the music. It's truly amazing to me that the music that I and we wrote in bedrooms and basements and whatever else, some of that music has become

so integral in people's lives in the same way that The Cure or Superchunk or whomever else has been integral in my life and it takes me back to a place and a time but also i've grown with it um and it's continued to kind of crack open uh as i've gotten older and i've learned you know i've kind of found new things to love in it and it seems at least from where i'm sitting that that's that's the case for our music is as it pertains to some people so um you know it's like you kind of blink and 20 years have gone by right and i don't say that in uh with this any sense of um regret or melancholy but just that i'm doing exactly what i want to do and and so

with the question of where i'm going is is, the answer is really I'm just continuing down this path. It seems that the entertainment industry as a whole has now become this kind of homogenized thing where everybody's a triple threat and everybody, everybody wants to make records and act and host a competition show and write a book and have a podcast. And that, you know, um, that it seems to me in my kind of cynical old man kind of view on things is that merely being a musician, merely being a songwriter, uh, or being in a band is seen as like, you're not doing enough. Yeah. That it's that music or doing music is just a one component of a larger brand identity. And I fucking hate that term that people have for themselves

now of like, no, I, for my brand, I need to kind of get this clothing line going and, you know, I need to do A, B, and C. And for me, I, I've, I've, I've always felt very content and very satisfied and fulfilled just doing this thing professionally. Um, so, but having said that, there are these moments where I kind of wonder if in my single-minded kind of attitude towards my yeah, I've been on this one path for so long, and there was a path that diverged back there at some point. What would my life have looked like if I had taken this other path, right? Yeah, yeah. Kind of hard to not do that. But I don't kind of muse on those kind of paths not taken out of a sense of being disappointed with where my life is or where i'm going it's more out of curiosity yeah yeah and so yeah so i mean you know it's whenever people

i'll see somebody i haven't seen in a while they're like hey man what's going on what are you doing anything new i'm like yeah just making records playing shows that's what yeah that's what i do like this and and you know for me want, I'm trying to do it at the highest level as I possibly can, as I get older, which is a difficult thing to do as a songwriter and as a band, because I think, you know, one of the kind of beautiful, beautifully frustrating things about the position that I'm in is that, you know, we have made some records that have been very impactful and important to people and they have defined eras in their lives. And it is incredibly difficult to create something 20 years after the thing that people really gravitated towards. And, and you, I, I've

learned to kind of let go of the expectation that anything new that I make will be viewed with the same weight as the more seminal albums that I've made. Yeah. And just let that go and just be like, look, you know, at this point in my career, the most important thing for me to do is to remind people why they love our

band and make sure that we are, uh, kind of shutting the fuck up and just making the best music we possibly can. Because I see so many people that I was, I was recently made aware of the concept of living out loud. Are you familiar with this concept? I've heard the phrase, but I chose not to really engage.

Yeah. Which I, it's perfectly understandable. You know, the, the, I, somebody explained to me that they had just turned 50 and they had started to

kind of um you know have been hip to the concept of living out loud which is like i'm just gonna say it man i'm gonna say the shit that like i know it's not cool to say it but i'm gonna say it man because this is how i i know other people feel this way and you know living out loud just seems to me in some ways to be a boorish way of trying to kind of maintain, to kind of deal with one's insecurity about a world that's passing them by, by kind of just hunkering down in their belief system and not allowing any room for personal growth or change. Yeah, yeah. And it's also a perfectly awesome way to ruin one's legacy. And it's also a perfectly awesome way to ruin one's legacy. And I've seen people, of course, we'll go nameless, but there are a number of artists that I grew up admiring so much who just can't shut the fuck up. They can't shut the fuck up. They can't just exist in the space that they have been so blessed to have right now and just live in that space and, and feed the world,

the good things that they make. Right. Instead they take up, they're like, I'm just going to start talking to him. Yeah. I'm going to go on Alex Jones's podcast. I'm going to talk, I'm going to tell,

we're going to talk about some shit, man. I'm going to, I'm me musician. I'm going to talk about vaccines. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Maybe to, I'm me musician. I'm going to talk about vaccines. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Maybe, maybe you shouldn't. Exactly. And, and, you know, I think that these are conversations that should be had amongst, you know, close friends and people you trust and they're, and, uh, and it's not to say that you're not living your real, you're, you're, you're not,

you're presenting a false sense of yourself to the rest of the world, but they're just things about us that everybody doesn't need to know. And as I get older, the most important thing to me, or one of the most important things to me is to just make sure that I stay in my lane and do the thing, be in public doing the thing that people have known me for and that people people want from me and that's not that's not too i don't see that as diminishing or my personality or limiting my speech or whatever it's just about like do you don't want people to hear my name and be like i fucking love that guy yeah rather than like oh, you hear what that guy said about, you know, Biden or something? You know, like, I don't want to be that guy.

No, no. That's a callback to not to people stopping telling you no. You know, is that you think like, yeah, I know about vaccines. No, you don't. You really don't. Yeah. You know about amps. I don't even know about amps.

Well, you know what what you're saying strikes me a lot about the way that someone has viewed a craft forever like i'm you know i'm a stone cutter and i'm gonna just stone cut or you know i my kids especially they watch a lot of you know, my kids, especially, they watch a lot of, you know, like street food kind of videos from around the world. And it's like the guy in Thailand who's been making noodles by hand his entire life. And he, you know, mashes them out with a log that he, you know, that he puts his leg over. And his leg has a permanent hump in it from where he's been mashing out noodles. has a permanent hump in it from where he's been mashing out noodles. And I often think about those people.

Do they think at a certain point, like, man, I wonder what it's like to not make noodles. But they just end up, it's like, no, they're making these, they're making the best noodles that they possibly can. And that's what has given them meaning. You know, that's what, that's what provides them with meaning and a sense of direction and all the stuff that you're supposed to get from God, frankly, you know, I mean, gives you a place to be and a reason to be here and a, and a, and a place to go. I, yeah, I agree. And I think that, you know, not to kind of, you know, tip it back into old man yells at cloud clouds territory. But I think that, I think that the environment that we're now living in, um, with the kind of omnipresence

of social media has kind of placed us all in a position where we, we are, we are all living with apes, you know, varying levels of FOMO for the things that we don't, you know, that we're not participating in at that moment. And it can be something as innocuous as like, oh, my friends are in, you know, the Caribbean and they're having a great time. And, oh man, it would be great to be there. I'm kind of angry that I'm seeing these photos because they're having a great time to, oh yeah, well, you know, actually, you know, maybe I should kind of, you know, maybe I should kind of start getting more of my opinions out there about things. Maybe, you know, maybe I should kind of start getting more of my opinions out there about

things. Maybe, you know, maybe people need to know, people need to know what Ben Gibbard thinks about whatever topic kind of like hoved into my field of vision on Instagram today. I really need to chime in on this. This is important that I make sure that everybody knows that I support, you know, A, B, C, D, and E. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, of course there are moments where it's important to kind of voice those things. Sure. But more often than not, I view, I've started to view social media as something that inhibits creativity in the sense that,

creativity in the sense that um for example i i have friends who have not made a record in five or six years but who tweet all day long right who who and i i believe that there's like there is creative you are expending creative energy when that you could be using for more um noble purposes uh ouch are you you're saying this about me aren't you absolutely not god damn it no but i know i know i'm wasting my life no no no no i just i mean i mean i know i know exactly what you mean yeah and it's true and and it's and i think also you know when, when we were first starting out, you know, pre-social media world, you know, you put the work in making a record, writing songs and everything. If your sole motivation was to have an audience, to be in front of an audience, that at least required doing work on the front and to justify being in front of an audience. You had to make a record, you had to make a movie, you had to make a TV show, you had to do, you had to make something, present it, and then be on stage basking in the glory of the thing that

you made. Right. Sure. But I think what I've seen with some of my contemporaries is that one can be on stage and on the toilet you know you can just be on the toilet and be on literally like on stage in front of people expounding your views and beliefs on things and i i really i've i've seen it become a a somewhat detrimental uh development in some of my friends lives who yeah who um, I would argue probably less so for younger artists who've kind of grown up with it and know how to manage it. I think for older people, it can be a really devastating rabbit hole to go down because there's a void in your life and you're filling it with social media yeah and expounding opinions and

just trying to trying to maintain control over some kind of narrative or something yeah it's all a balance i mean that stuff can be really good and really fun and really useful and then also just another you're back on a playground and kids are picking on you and you're picking on kids and it's just as valid as that. Well, you've, I, I, we've gone long here. Thank you so much. I mean, we've been having such good conversation that, uh, we've gone a little long here, so let's, let's wrap it up with, um, you're, you know, the main point of your life, uh, boiled down to one statement, um, you know, like what do you, what's the one the biggest thing you

think you've learned out of the path that you followed you know whether that's like a piece of advice that you kind of could give or or just sort of something that you know that you can share yeah i i when i was younger and first starting out the band was first starting and we had written a record maybe two I started to become very afraid that

if I had not written something that I was proud of or that I felt was good in whatever window of time I had determined that I needed proud of or that I felt was good in whatever window of time I had determined that I needed to do it, that my creativity was in the toilet. It was gone. Yeah. And I think that a lot of young artists... There's an adage. I don't know if you ever heard this kind of adage as it pertains to musicians, there's a there's a kind of a thing kind of an oft-repeated

kind of thing observation that goes you have your whole life to write your first record right then you have six months to write the second one and the second one is whatever was left off the first record yeah plus the six songs you wrote in that six months and then the third record is the quote-un unquote difficult third record. Yeah. Starting completely from scratch. You've used up everything, right? Yeah. And there were moments early in my career where I would feel like I was experiencing a little bit of writer's block and immediately go to, well, that's it. I'm done. I'm cooked. No more songs.

I've done all the work I'm ever going to do. And over the years, I've learned that writing is a muscle and it's something that you need to kind of, it atrophies when you don't use it. And then when you start using it again and you start kind of building strength, it takes a while, right? You don't immediately go, you have to kind of like, you know, you start writing again and you're not getting exactly what you want, but eventually you kind of, your powers kind of come back and you start to kind of get somewhere and you start to kind of write things that you're starting to view as good and that might be part of a record or whatever it might be.

And so a piece of advice that I find myself giving younger artists when I hear them kind of going down a little bit of a rabbit hole, like, yeah, I don't know. I haven't written a song. I don't know what I'm going to do. I always tell them, you know, unsolicited, of course, obviously, you know, look, your creativity is within you. It's what made you do it in the

first place. It doesn't just one day go away. You don't have 30 songs in you and then you're done. You will never write another song again. But the longer you do this, the more lifting you have to do to get that muscle strong again. It becomes more difficult and it is entirely worth it to put in the work, but it does become slightly more difficult and it requires more care and it requires more attentiveness to your craft. And so that's something that I've learned that I felt is important to impart upon young artists is that, yeah, your creativity is within you. It's not going away. But having said that, it requires attention and it requires interfacing with it. And you have to be willing to fail more than you succeed um i mean we wrote 90 songs for this record and there are 11 songs on the record wow you know that's you know and when i

say 90 i don't mean like 90 amazing songs that everybody needs to hear there's a reason they're not on the record because there are what like 79 failures and 11 you know 11 victories right yeah so it it it you it just requires a lot of care and a lot of work and it's entirely uh satisfying and worth it in the long run but um i would just i would just recommend that no one ever get too discouraged and and to never think that if you haven't written something that you know in a month or something like that that you're never going to write again it's going to happen you just have to kind of allow it to happen and allow it to come to you and put in the work and and uh as you know that i've the i love the phrase inspiration likes to find you hard at work right

yeah you there'll be a week there'll be months where I'll be not getting anything. I feel as if any quality, and then I'll just sit down and within 15 minutes, it's like, it's beamed down from another planet. All of those, all of that time that you spend failing was setting you up for this one success.

That's great. Well, thank you so much, Ben. And the new album is called, it's called asphalt Me called Asphalt Meadows. Asphalt Meadows. And it's out September 16th.

So everyone go buy it or steal it or whatever you guys do with albums these days. I think, I think now we've been instructed to tell people to pre-save it. Oh, pre-save it everyone. Their, their streaming service of choice, which is kind of, it's like, pre-save it everyone. They're a, they're streaming service of choice,

which is, uh, kind of, it's like, I know, I think it's, I think since we put out the last record, this has become,

uh, now the request that you make of your fans. Pre-save everybody. All right. Well, Ben Gebbert, thank you so much, uh,

for spending this time with me. I really appreciate it. Uh, you've been very generous and you all out there have this time with me. I really appreciate it. You've been very generous. And you all out there have been generous with your time, too. And I thank you for listening. And I will be back next week with three more questions. They're the same questions, but there will be three more.

I've got a big, big love for you. The Three Questions with Andy Richter is a Team Coco and Your Wolf production. It is produced by Lane Gerbig, engineered by Marina Pice, and talent produced by Galitza Hayek. The associate producer is Jen Samples, supervising producer Aaron Blair, and executive producers Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Earwolf. Make sure to rate and review the three questions with Andy Richter on Apple Podcasts.