AVC: What was it like having your supergroup The Postal Service blowing up while Death Cab was promoting Transatlanticism? Did it create any tension between you and your bandmates?
BG: Well, the times that it got tough was when there were weird events happening that affected both—it's like, there are two groups of people both trying to sell records for their respective bestselling record. On one hand, we have Sub Pop doing everything they can to maximize album sales in a place where we're not doing any press, we're not doing any shows, we don't really exist, and then we have Josh at Barsuk and everybody else surrounding that whole deal trying to maximize, you know, get the records in the stores and selling records. They're two companies independent of each other that are both trying to get the records to the same people. And some tension is naturally going to happen—not directly between me and the guys in Death Cab, or me and [The Postal Service's] Jimmy [Tamborello], but just when all of the sudden there's some weird conflict where a radio station wants Postal Service to appear at some event, and Sub Pop doesn't get back to them in a timely fashion, or basically does what any label would do: try to maximize the amount of time the song's getting played on the radio, and all that kind of stuff. And then when all of the sudden that turns into, "What do you mean they're not playing this event? Well, now we're not playing Death Cab." Or like the threat of, "Then we're not going to play anything Ben's involved with." It's like, "Whoa, whoa."
There were a couple moments in the last couple years that were just like, "What am I going to do? How do I do this?" There has been no role model or answer for how to deal with situations and the position I've found myself in. I can't think of another person who's been spread across a band and a project that have been this successful. There's no guidebook for this situation. Granted, it's a very good problem to have, I'm certainly not crying with two loaves of bread under my arm, but it does come with its own set of complications that unfortunately we all have to deal with.
AVC: Did you ever feel compelled to sit your bandmates down and convince them you were still focused on Death Cab?
BG: Everybody in the band has been really supportive and really understanding. For chrissake, I started this band, you know? [Laughs.] Would I have really put in years of work and writing and pining over trying to become a musician, only to walk away from it because something was, for all intents and purposes, slightly more successful than the band that I'm in? Any good band, from the minute they start playing together, they sound great—there's just something that happens when people get in a room and start making music together, and when it works, it's like you're fucking flying. It's like doing magic—it just happens, and you can't explain it, and no amount of technical virtuosity or songwriting expertise is going to make a band sound good. I feel so blessed in my life to have that with these people—there's nothing that would ever make me want to walk away from that, because this will never happen again. I'll never find three other people that can get in a room and do this the way we do it, and do it as effectively and as well as we do it.
AVC: It seems like you guys work really well as a unit now, but in 2001 you nearly broke up.
BG: We'd just finished The Photo Album. At the time, I think we were okay with it, but in hindsight, we were kind of doing a record because we had to get on tour in the fall and we had to have a new record—a very typical indie-rock decision-making process: "Well, we gotta get on tour, we need a new record, I've got eight songs, I think I can get two more." I'm proud of the record, don't get me wrong, but we went in with just enough songs to make a record, and we ran into a lot of problems with Michael [Schorr], our old drummer—we just weren't gelling creatively. He was stonewalling us a lot of the time, and it just wasn't working out that well. And I think Chris kind of got caught up in the band more than he maybe initially wanted to. Because we went from Chris recording a tape for me, to, all of the sudden, "Hey, let's play a couple shows," "Hey, you play guitar on some of this stuff, why don't you play guitar in the band?" "Sure, that sounds fun." All of a sudden, a couple months later, we're heading out on tour. We never really had any clearly defined lines, like, "We are a band, we're moving forward, and we want to accomplish this." I think for Chris, he was always kind of, "Do I want to make records, or do I want to be in a band?" And not seeing that you can do both of those things.
CW: I was just sick of it, yeah. It had gotten to the point where I was enjoying what I was doing so little and at such long stretches that I didn't see how it could be fun again. It's the point at which you say, "I'm sorry, this isn't working." But, also, communication had broken down to a point where I couldn't even say, "I'm sorry, this isn't working." We'd been on tour for about two weeks at that point, and it just completely exploded, like the whole thing completely fell apart.
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