Interview Death Cab's Ben Gibbard goes on the road for Jack Kerouac

In a career that’s spanned more than a decade, Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard has made multiple out-of-left-field detours—unexpectedly grabbing a gold record with tech-pop side-project The Postal Service, penning the lead single for the latest installment of the massive teenage-vampire film franchise Twilight with Death Cab—so the arrival of yet another shouldn’t come as a surprise. Even so, hearing him perform loping country-rock alongside Jay Farrar of Son Volt on the Jack Kerouac-inspired album One Fast Move Or I’m Gone warrants a double-take. Using the text of Kerouac’s novel Big Sur as its lyrical foundation, and created as the soundtrack for a documentary film on the book, One Fast Move turns the famed Beat writer’s tale of flailing dissolution into a warm and inviting slice of folk-pop. In a testament to his malleable melodicism, Gibbard proves every bit as comfortable surrounded by pedal steel and acoustic guitars as his usual angular indie rock, while splitting lead vocal duties with Farrar. Prior to his performance with Farrar on Jan. 31 at the Varsity Theater, Gibbard talked with The A.V. Club about falling for Kerouac, the romanticizing of tortured artists, and why he’ll never be like Jack White.

The A.V. Club: How has Jack Kerouac affected your songwriting?

Ben Gibbard: As I would imagine a lot of people do, I came across On The Road at a pivotal time in my life. I was 18 or 19 years old and in college, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. At the time I was studying a lot of hard sciences and on the path to becoming an environmental scientist. It was actually Nick [Harmer] from Death Cab, who was my roommate at the time, who put the book in my hands. I immediately fell in love with it and the whole notion of the romance of the road. I read every one of his books that I could find around the used bookstores in Bellingham, which actually wasn’t too many because in college towns people tend to hold on to their Kerouac. After reading On The Road I felt like I knew what I wanted out of my life. It sounds kind of hyperbolic, but there’s an element of truth to it. I didn’t know specifically that I wanted to be a musician, but the whole lifestyle of coming into town for one night only and having these really intense interactions—that sense of perpetual motion—really appealed to me. I felt that strong desire to live a life in motion and get away from what I was doing at the time. At that time in my life I really just loved the prose and how openhearted it all was. As I’ve become an adult and my life has changed greatly from where it was then, I obviously relate to Kerouac differently, but there are still things I love about his writing. In particular how he was able to take these series of everyday people and create iconic stories around their lives. That’s definitely something I strive for in my own songwriting.

AVC: In Big Sur, Kerouac writes about being haunted by the false idealized perceptions of him held by young readers of On The Road. Have you encountered similar misconceptions from fans of Death Cab For Cutie?

BG: Fortunately I haven’t really. As a musician, I’m still more of a little voice in people’s electronic devices than someone whose face everybody recognizes. While Death Cab has continued to succeed and get bigger, our profiles as individuals have never changed that dramatically, and that’s something I’m grateful for. It’s not like I’m Jack White—I can still disappear into crowds pretty easily. If we have any kind of cultural status at all, it has nothing to do with the iconography of who we are as individuals. Which is great because being an icon was never something that I wanted for myself. Obviously I wasn’t alive at the time, but Jack Kerouac’s situation in the ’50s seems very different. His face was everywhere and his profile went from zero to 60 in a way that was new for the times. His particular label of “voice of a generation” was uncharted terrain and there wasn’t a playbook for it. I can only imagine how difficult it was to try and maintain some sense of normalcy when every one of his old haunts was now being filled with people looking to spot the “king of the Beats,” especially for a guy who always struggled with his sense of identity and to find inner peace. In that sense I’m glad I can’t relate.

AVC: There’s a pretty dubious mythology surrounding the creative arts that condones self-destructive behavior for the sake of art, a mythology Kerouac’s story perpetuates. There’s the argument of, ”Well, I have to live to extremes in order to be able to make art that goes to extremes.” Do you think that idea still holds currency with artists today? Has it ever in your life?

BG: I think the romanticizing of the hard-drinking, substance-abusing, womanizing writer/musician/actor will always be there. It’s a tragic romantic archetype. That will never lose its cultural currency as far as being something people want to talk and write about. I think the fascination with it is based as much in failed potential as any kind of real accomplishment. That classic, “He made this good record right before he overdosed and died, just think of how great the next one could have been.”

Just speaking for myself, having had my own struggles with things like that, I would much rather be a well-rounded person able to deal with my demons and perhaps lose my quote-unquote “edge” than continue struggling with the same issues and rely on making mistakes over and over again to fuel me creatively. It’s a romantic notion to think about how the darkness in our lives fuels us, but there has to be another side of that spectrum that can be equally inspiring, if not more so. So to purposely dwell in the darkness means not only denying a whole other side of our creative lives that could be fulfilling, it also perpetuates this limiting idea of who we should be as creative people. Having said that, of course, I’m just as attracted to tragic figures as the next person. I try to appreciate Townes Van Zandt as much as early-’70s Paul McCartney because I think we need to learn how to appreciate both sides of our lives.

AVC: The general press backstory circulating around the origins of One Fast Move Or I’m Gone makes it sound like it was a happy accident, created by two musicians who were total strangers before working on the record. Was it? If so, how central was that spirit of improvised discovery to the project?

BG: I met Jay for the first time in a bar the night before we hit record to start the project. Jay was the first person on board and did all the heavy lifting. He did the lion’s share of the songwriting. I contributed a song and did some rewrites and punch-up work, but really it all started with Jay. Originally the idea was pitched to me as a list of different collaborators, a kind of all-star project where everyone would contribute a song or two. But when I got down so San Francisco it was just Jay and I [Laughs]. For a while it was still taking shape and there was talk of other people coming in, and initially we were still dealing with making the album as an outcropping of the film, which added a couple more cooks in the kitchen that didn’t necessarily need to be there. They were all very nice people but it was difficult doing our first recording sessions amidst film cameras and having different people from the crew stopping by and adding their two cents.

Ultimately, Jay and I were able to make a much better record stepping away from all that and just working with Mark Spencer and Aaron Espinoza rather than having a jury, which is a very difficult way to make a record. Once it was just the core group we would meet up every few months and record a few days at a time. We were able to fit it in around our normal lives and have it be a really fulfilling project. It was pretty much a “first thought, best thought” approach and you can probably hear that in my drumming. [Laughs.] I had a lot of fun making it, and the fact that we were both doing the project out of mutual love for Kerouac gave it a different sort of focus and motivation that wouldn’t have been there if we were just working on our own normal songs together.

AVC: The project showcases a love for folk music that you haven’t taken public before now. Does it have a future in Death Cab’s work?

BG: Well I certainly don’t plan on taking a left turn into trying to become a folk-rock troubadour. [Laughs.] Even though it’s my first foray in to publicly making a record like this, it’s a type of music I’ve enjoyed making for quite some time. For me at the very core it’s always about the songs. I like writing and playing good songs. Whether or not it’s a genre that people have a familiarity with me working in, I’d like to think that for the most part in my career I’ve been recognized as a songwriter first and foremost. If somebody is a fan of Death Cab, then at least a part of that is hopefully related to the craft. As we saw on the first little short tour we did with this project, clearly some of the fans weren’t sure what to expect. Jay’s fans tended to be a bit older, and mine a bit younger, or at least on different sides of 30. Some of the younger people coming to the shows were at first uncertain about how to react but by the end of the evening they had smiles on their faces and were enjoying themselves. As far as my own work goes, it’s not a direction I plan on taking the band in or starting a solo career out of. That being said, as I move in to my 30s I find myself listening to more Louvin Brothers than I do Minor Threat. [Laughs.] I see myself being drawn to the acoustic guitar more as I grow older, which may be a cliché but it gives me a lot of comfort. It’s a good test for any song, if you can’t strip it down to a voice and an acoustic guitar and have it still hold up then, that’s a sign you need to put in more work.