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Ben Gibbard
Ben Gibbard performing at the Orpheum Theatre (Memphis, Tennessee) in 2009. Photo by Janie Walter.
Background information
Born	August 11, 1976 (1976-08-11) (age 33) Bremerton, Washington
Genres	Indie Rock
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, guitarist
Instruments	Guitar vocals Piano drums Bass
Years active	1994 – present
Labels	Barsuk Atlantic Records Sub Pop Wawa Records
Associated acts	Death Cab for Cutie The Postal Service ¡All-Time Quarterback! Pinwheel Styrofoam (musician)
Website	Official website

Benjamin Gibbard (born August 11, 1976 ^[1] in Bremerton, Washington) is an American musician known as a member of several successful indie rock bands. He is the lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service, also known for his project ¡All-Time Quarterback! and his first band, Pinwheel.

Personal life and career

Gibbard spent his formative years in Bremerton, Washington during the time of the grunge musical explosion during the early 1990s. He graduated from Olympic High School in 1994. Growing up he was influenced by Elliott Smith, Nirvana, The Stone Roses, Superchunk, Built to Spill, Teenage Fanclub, Pixies, Pavement, Fugazi, and Hall & Oates. He also cites Jack Kerouac as a major influence.^[2] He studied Engineering at Western Washington University.^[3] He was raised Roman Catholic and referred to himself as "this indoctrinated Catholic even though I haven't been to church of my own volition in 10 or 15 years now."^[4] He and his band Death Cab for Cutie are also known for their contributions to veganism and animal rights.^[5] However, in a 2003 interview Gibbard stated that while he had previously been a vegan, he had recently become a pescetarian.^[6]

Gibbard had a small role in the John Krasinski film Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.^[7] He completed a solo tour through the US in the spring of 2007 that featured David Bazan of Pedro the Lion and singer-songwriter Johnathan Rice. He currently resides in Los Angeles.

Gibbard is married to actress and musician Zooey Deschanel.^[8]

Collaborations

• Gibbard is the original bassist for the Revolutionary Hydra, a band that also included Death Cab for Cutie bandmate Chris Walla and original drummer Nathan Good, as well as Jay Chilcote, Joe Chilcote, and Barton Sharp.
• Sang backing vocals on the song "This Is the Thrilling Conversation You've Been Waiting For" from Harvey Danger's 2000 album King James Version.
• Appeared as a guest on Jimmy Tamborello's (his Postal Service collaborator) 2001 Dntel album entitled Life Is Full of Possibilities, contributing vocals to the song "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan."
• Played bass for Pedro the Lion on their 2001 tour.
• Contributed backing vocals on the 2001 release by The Prom, "Now and Then".
• Contributed backing vocals on the 2001 The American Analog Set album "Know By Heart", on the song "The Postman".
• Played drums on the song "Carparts" for The Long Winters' 2002 album, The Worst You Can Do Is Harm.
• Performed drums on label-mate's Kind of Like Spitting 2002 album, Bridges Worth Burning, further contributing vocals to the album's untitled last track.
• Collaborated with Andrew Kenny on Home Volume V, released March 30, 2004, as part of the Home EP series.^[9]
• Contributed vocals for Styrofoam's 2004 album Nothing's Lost on the track "Couches in Alleys." ^[10]
• Provided backup vocals on the song "Midnight Again" for Certainly, Sir's 2005 album TAN!
• Contributed vocals to a song ("Handle with Care") on Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis's side project Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins's 2006 album, Rabbit Fur Coat.
• Contributed vocals on The Postal Service's 2006 remix of "Mushaboom" by Feist.
• Co-wrote the film score for the 2007 film Kurt Cobain About a Son, about the Nirvana lead singer, with producer Steve Fisk.
• Contributed backing vocals on the 2008 release by Sun Kil Moon, "April".
• Appeared on the 2008 Nada Surf album Lucky, on the song "See These Bones"..
• Appeared on the 2009 charity CD compilation Dark Was the Night, along with Feist, on the track "Train Song".
• Collaborated with Jay Farrar on all tracks to the soundtrack of the 2009 documentary film One Fast Move or I'm Gone, about Jack Kerouac's time spent at Big Sur.^[11]

Discography

Death Cab for Cutie

• 1997 You Can Play These Songs with Chords
• 1998 Something About Airplanes
• 2000 We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes
• 2000 Forbidden Love EP
• 2001 The Photo Album
• 2002 The Stability EP
• 2002 You Can Play These Songs with Chords [expanded]
• 2003 Transatlanticism
• 2005 Plans
• 2008 Narrow Stairs
• 2009 The Open Door EP

Ben Gibbard

• 2004 Home Volume V (A split LP with Andrew Kenny)

The Postal Service

• 2003 Give Up

¡All-Time Quarterback!

• 1999 ¡All-Time Quarterback!
• 1999 The Envelope Sessions
• 2002 ¡All-Time Quarterback!

With Jay Farrar

• 2009 One Fast Move or I'm Gone

Pinwheel

• 1996 Pinwheel

See also

• Chris Walla
• Jason McGerr
• Nick Harmer
• Death Cab for Cutie
• The Postal Service
• ¡All-Time Quarterback!

References

External links

• Unofficial Discography
• Death Cab for Cutie's official website
• 20 Questions with Ben Gibbard from 2000
• Death Cab for Cutie 2006 Tour Mapped on Platial
• Pinwheel music from Gibbard's former band
• Death Cab for Cutie Fan Flipbook
• The Postal Service Fan Flipbook
• Death Cab's Ben Gibbard:Reveals plans for the follow-up to 'Narrow Stairs'

From Wikiquote

At this point in my life, I find myself obsessed with alternate paths I could’ve taken. I don’t think about this with a sense of regret, but with a sense of wonder...

Benjamin Gibbard (born 11 August 1976 is an American musician who has formed several indie bands. He is most notable as the lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service, although also known for his project ¡All-Time Quarterback!.

Sourced

• I don't think there's necessarily a story, but there's definitely a theme here. One of my favorite kind of dark jokes is, "How do you make God laugh? You make a plan." Nobody ever makes a plan that they're gonna go out and get hit by a car. A plan almost always has a happy ending. Essentially, every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time. I really like the idea of a plan not being seen as having definite outcomes, but more like little wishes.
  • On the the title of the Death Cab for Cutie album Plans, as quoted in Mix online (1 January 2006)

• I feel like there's a lot of beauty in the darkness of Narrow Stairs, but that's not really a place I'm ready to go to for a while. I'm interested in taking a different approach and having the next record be different in tone — I'm just not interested in making another dark, dark album.
  • Death Cab's Ben Gibbard: "The Next Record Will Be Softer" in SPIN magazine (8 October 2008)

We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes (2000)

• It wasn't quite what is seemed: a lack of pleasantries
  (My able body isn't what it used to be)
  I must admit I was charmed by your advances
  Your advantage left me helplessly into you
  • TItle Track

Plans (2005)

• If there's no one beside you
  When your soul embarks
  Then I'll follow you into the dark
  • I Will Follow You Into The Dark

• I once knew a girl
  In the years of my youth
  With eyes like the summer
  All beauty and truth
  In the morning I fled
  Left a note and it read
  Someday you will be loved.
  • Someday You Will Be Loved

• You'll be loved you'll be loved
  Like you never have known
  The memories of me
  Will seem more like bad dreams
  Just a series of blurs
  Like I never occurred
  Someday you will be loved
  • Someday You Will Be Loved

Narrow Stairs (2008)

• How I wish you could see the potential
  The potential of you and me
  It's like a book elegantly bound, but
  In a language that you can't read just yet

  You got to spend some time, love
  You got to spend some time with me
  And I know that you'll find love
  I will possess your heart

  • I Will Possess Your Heart

• As the flashbulbs burst she holds a smile
  Like someone would hold a crying child

  Soon everybody will ask what became of you
  Your heart was dying fast and you didn't know what to do.

  • Cath…

• It seems that you live in someone else's dream
  In a hand-me-down wedding dress
  With the things that could have been are repressed
  But you said your vows and you closed the door
  On so many men who would have loved you more
  • Cath…

The Meaning Of Life

Essay in Paste magazine (10 April 2008)

• I pulled On The Road off the shelf and found myself reading it between classes, and at that time in my life it was exactly what I craved, exactly what I needed to hear. I thought, “That’s the way, that’s the ideal life, that’s great. You get in a car and you drive and you see your friends and you end up in a city for a night and you go out drinking and you catch up and you share these really intense experiences. And then you’re on the road and you’re doing it again.” The romance of the road, particularly from Kerouac’s work, encapsulated how I wanted to live. I found a way to do it by being a musician, which is what I always wanted to be. The traveling and the being on tour and being away from home set a precedent for me where I thought, “Oh yeah, this is how it works.”
  But then in reading Big Sur, it’s the end of the road. You end up with a series of failed relationships and you end up being an alcoholic and in your late 30s, and not having any kind of real grip on the lives of the people around you. That’s the potential other end of the spectrum when you’re never tied to anybody or anything. I run the risk of losing touch with the people in my life that mean the most to me because I have made the decision to live like this.
  • I

• If you tell certain people that you like Kerouac, they assume that’s all you read, like you don’t know anything else about literature. I recognize all the things that people dislike about the way he writes — his tone and the sentimentality of it all. But those books were there for me at a very important point in my life.
  • I

• Because of my age and what I do for a living and the amount of time that I’ve spent away from my family and loved ones, I’m starting to relate more to the late-period Kerouac stuff in the way that I once related to the fun and excitement of the early material. There’s a darkness inside of me that I’m only now starting to come to grips with and accept. And it’s starting to scare me.
  • I

• At some point I thought that, as I got older, I’d come to terms with a lot of things. I’d solve some big problems, and eventually I’d become content. It’s almost more depressing to think that the older you get, the more your problems multiply. When I’m old, I’d like to wake up in the morning and not really do anything — just be happy to exist. I’d like to look at my accomplishments and sit back and revel in my own achievement. But I don’t think that’ll ever happen.
  Before I made a living playing music, I used to work shitty job after shitty job and think “Man, as soon as I’m able to make a living in music, it’s really going to come together then, it’s really going be amazing.” I remember hoping there’d be 10 people at a show in 1998 when there was an incredible write-up in the local weekly. I don’t want to go back to that period of being obscure and having nobody know who I am, let alone have to struggle to get people to come to the show. I remember what it was like, and it was shitty.
  • II

• Liking interesting things doesn’t make you interesting.
  • II

• I decided a handful of years ago that I just want to write songs that you can understand as soon as you put the record on. There’s no need to veil what’s happening in the song the way I used to.
  My goal as a songwriter now is to simply write some memorable turns of phrase.
  • II

• It’s amazing to have people singing a song back to you on a stage. It’s great to finish recording a song and play it for your friend, and they love it. That feels good. But nothing feels better than when you’ve finished something and you know it’s good, and you know that those other responses will come in time.
  • II

• Some fans get genuinely upset if I admit that a song that they held close to their heart was not based on actual events in my life. Like “What Sarah Said”: I was never in a waiting room in a hospital waiting for news that somebody was going to die.
  • II

• A lot of the material is about the inevitable disappointment people feel as they move through life, and things don’t feel the way they expect. No experience will ever match up to the idealized version in your mind.
  • II
• Our band is very polarizing. There are people who absolutely can’t stand us, and people who absolutely can’t live without us. I’d rather spark those kind of polar-opposite feelings than have people be indifferent.
  • III

• I don’t spend my time perusing message boards to find out what people think about me or if people think my songs are good or if people love that lyric or this or that. I just want to be happy with it myself — and if other people like it, that’s great.
  • III
• At this point in my life, I find myself obsessed with alternate paths I could’ve taken. I don’t think about this with a sense of regret, but with a sense of wonder...
  • III

• I find it very hard to accept the wonderful things in my life. My life really is great: I do exactly what I want to do for a living, I have a wonderful person to share my life with, I have a great family, I have great friends. But somehow there’s a void. I’m the last person who should be complaining or wondering why I’m perpetually unhappy. I would like to think that my lack of contentment is part of what makes my work the way it is, and for the better.
  I would rather make great records than make great relationships. When I’m at odds with myself, I would rather fuck up every relationship I’ve ever been in and write great records. And not because I need a breakup to provide me with material. Not like that.
  • III

• It’s hard enough having a relationship with one person, but to have a relationship with three other bandmates that you are so intimately tied to and you spend so much time with — and to have that actually work and function — is just astounding. I have been in a band for more than 10 years now. I never thought I’d be doing anything for 10 years straight, let alone a band, and I feel so fortunate for that. I have been allowed for some reason to do that. But it’s even more amazing that we get along better now than we did 10 years ago.
  • III

• An ex-girlfriend once got upset when I told her that music is the most important thing in my life. It’s more important than anyone else could ever be. I don’t want to be overly dramatic and say it’s the only thing that gets me up and keeps me going. But people in your life come and go. As you go through your life, you make friendships, you break friendships, you have relationships. Music is the one thing I’ve always been able to rely on. So why wouldn’t it be the most important thing in my life?
  • III

Quotes about Gibbard

• Dude. You are marrying Zooey Deschanel. You have nothing, I repeat, nothing to be sad about anymore. From here on out, please only songs about emotional guys and their blind luck.
  • J. Edward Keyes in Rolling Stone magazine (9 January 2009)

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

Ben Gibbard

• Ben's personal blog page
• Unofficial Discography
• Death Cab for Cutie's official website
• 20 Questions with Ben Gibbard from 2000
• Death Cab for Cutie 2006 Tour Mapped on Platial
• Pinwheel music from Gibbard's former band
• Death Cab's Ben Gibbard:Reveals plans for the follow-up to 'Narrow Stairs'