9 min readBEN GIBBARD EMERGES from the elevator bank at precisely 8 a.m., because he is never late. The Death Cab for Cutie front man is wearing gray running shorts and Wayfarers because, you see, Ben Gibbard is a runner. Has been for two decades. Gibbard is known for pushing himself to the absolute limit as a songwriter—recently telling The New Yorker that one of his biggest fears is “losing my edge,” that “if I stop writing…I’ll die, you know?” And running might actually fit into this equation.
“If I push myself physically, that will benefit how I push myself mentally,” he says, while looking directly into my eyes. We shake hands. “It sounds kind of like a cheesy woo-woo thing, but the mind-body connection…it’s true.” (Soul Meets Body, perhaps?)
We’re in the lobby of The Bowery Hotel in Lower Manhattan. I let him know the truth: I am not a runner. This might be embarrassing. Perhaps I’m honest so quickly because of the warmth of his hand and the smiling, casual ease of his presence. He’s taller than I imagined. Let’s be real, I already know it’s really because his music—consistent in my rotation since I discovered it more than two decades ago—has always felt honest with me. And it’s particularly honest in I Built You a Tower, the band’s latest record. It dropped earlier this month. And today, we’re going on a run to talk about it.
Gibbard leads the way as we walk outside and onto the sidewalk. He’s planned our route, a run that will take us to a few landmarks significant to New York writers and musicians. He takes a couple of big steps to start—his legs are long, his calves defined, the exact type of physique you’d expect from a runner. Hand on one hip, he looks up, stretching one way, then the other. It’s a sunny, clear morning, save for a few Simpsons-esque clouds. It’s also early, a few minutes past 8 a.m. I haven’t been awake and in Manhattan this early since I lived there more than a decade ago. Gibbard lifts his wrist, elbow bent, and taps his large fitness watch, a Suunto Vertical, before we begin our workout.
“Do you run across the middle of an intersection?” he asks as we’re about to get started. Theoretically, yes, I would. In practice? Anyone’s call.
GIBBARD IS BEST known as the lead vocalist and guitarist for Death Cab for Cutie, which formed in Bellham, Washington, in 1997. He grew up in the state and remains based in Seattle. In the early aughts, Death Cab for Cutie (Death Cab, if you’re a fan), featuring Gibbard’s sensitive songwriting and transparent melancholy, rocketed to fame squarely in the middle of the Venn diagram of indie, emo, and rock. It’s not an overstatement to say that his music, both with Death Cab and pop-electronic group The Postal Service, remains foundational to millennials and Gen X’ers on a molecular level. On I Built You a Tower, the band recaptures the vibe for a generation, who, like the singer himself, might be feeling a little older and a lot wiser.
Gibbard’s path to running started on the elliptical. In 2007, he realized he should start going to the gym, and he wanted to start easy. One day, he found himself watching someone running on a treadmill. I wonder if I could run two miles, he thought. One thing led to another, and in 2011, he ran his first marathon. “I’ve never understood half-measures, which is probably to my detriment,” he tells me. These days, Gibbard toggles back and forth between solo running deep in the mountains, in silence, and running with friends.
On the street, I’d assumed we’d ease into things with a warmup. A walking warmup. But I’m following Gibbard’s lead, and we enter a full-on jog just a few steps away from the hotel. I panic. How will I refer to all my notes? Will I remember to ask all the questions I prepared? Am I running too slow? Am I embarrassing myself in front of Ben Gibbard, front man of Death Cab for Cutie? I’ve walked and talked plenty. But I’ve never ran and talked in my normal life, let alone when I’m working. Maybe Aaron Sorkin should try this.…
The panic is fleeting, like a bolt of lightning with no consequences. Unlike with most celebrities I’ve interviewed—usually sitting still and on a Zoom call, for the record—it doesn’t take much to get Gibbard to talk.
“I’m excited to finally get [I Built You a Tower] out in the world,” he says, mid-pace. His breathing is normal. “I feel creatively blocked in the period between finishing a record and starting a new one. I can’t really write until the record’s out. It’s like I have to birth the record first before I can start thinking about new songs. It’s like I can’t move forward.”
We slow down for our first stop: 431 East 12th Street, a pre-war building with a warm brick exterior and intricate white engravings framing the windows. “Allen Ginsberg had an apartment on the fifth floor,” he says with a smile. “There’s a famous photograph he took of Jack Kerouac smoking a cigarette, looking off in that direction, which I have on my wall at home. This is why I love doing this shit. I love going by a place, and you think, Who lives there now?”
GIBBARD HAS ALWAYS been a romantic. Whenever he’s reading a book and an address is mentioned, he looks it up on Google Maps and pins it. The next time he’s in that city, he plans a run to it. “I love this idea that people made brilliant work in these locations in the same way that when I buy an old instrument, I think about who owned it beforehand, and for what purpose,” he says. “I just like to dream on that stuff.”
Running south down Avenue A, Gibbard asks how old I was when I started listening to Death Cab. Again, I tell him the truth: I was 14 and discovered their music the way most people my age did: watching The O.C. The track “A Lack of Color” appeared on The O.C. Mix 1, the first soundtrack released for the hit Fox teen soap, which premiered two months before the band’s breakthrough album, Transatlanticism, was released. Throughout that fall’s episodes, the main character Seth Cohen (Adam Brody) name-dropped Death Cab for Cutie. In one episode, he even wore a T-shirt. In the memorable 2003 episode “The Best Chrismukkah Ever,” Seth gifts Summer and Anna, the two women pining for him, each a Transatlanticism CD. It’s seen as one of the show’s most iconic moments and helped catapult Death Cab into the mainstream.
While we wait to cross the street, he raises a pointing finger. “When we made Transatlanticism and The O.C. was popping off, we went from playing there to playing Roseland Ballroom or whatever.” He’s pointing at Mercury Lounge on Houston Street. “We went from being this secret band, and the people who come to shows looked a lot like us—and we might even stay at their houses afterwards—to playing much larger places and for a more diverse audience culturally. I did feel this pressure,” he says. “People were like, How are they going to follow this up?”
Somewhere along the way, Gibbard let that pressure go. “It’s a rather liberating feeling to know we’re never going to make a record again that’s going to have that impact,” he says. “This is not that serious. You know? I’m gonna make a lot of records in my life. Just have fun with this. We’re gonna do our best and it’s gonna be what it’s gonna be.”
Back on the road, Gibbard notices me struggling to breathe. “You’re doing great,” he says. “You’re conversational.” I certainly don’t think I’m talking normally. But at least Gibbard—who wrote 2005’s Plans, the album that lived rent-free in the CD player I had installed in my car in high school—thinks I’m doing a good job.
He interrupts himself in the middle of telling me about his morning routine (he rises at 5:30 a.m. every morning).
“56 Ludlow,” he says, as we pull up to another brick pre-war with black iron fire escapes. It’s similar to Ginsberg’s building but with fewer details. “Right here. Lou Reed and John Cale shared an apartment in this building. They did low-rent recordings here, where they postmarked the tape of the songs and then mailed it to themselves. ‘Waiting for My Man,’ ‘Heroin,’ songs like that. And they lived there. Incredible. It’s just crazy to think of those two weirdos living in that apartment together.”
Back to that morning routine. After getting up in the morning, Gibbard says, he puts on a record, because there’s always a record playing in his house. Then he gets “super caffeinated” via a carafe of pour-over coffee. He reads the news and says he starts “blowing up” his group texts, reacting, he says, to the aforementioned events “with various versions of Would you fucking believe what this guy did last night.… And at some point, I’m like, it’s time to rage run or whatever.”
Despite the passage of time, Gibbard’s older projects have remained close. In 2023, Death Cab and The Postal Service went on a reunion tour. Death Cab played Transatlanticism from start to finish, then The Postal Service played Give Up from start to finish. Last year, Death Cab did a reunion tour for Plans, in honor of its 20th anniversary.
“From the business side of things, I don’t think it’s controversial to say that streaming is fucking all of us,” Gibbard says when I ask about the reunion shows. “Unless you’re Taylor Swift or Post Malone, you’re kind of getting screwed.” He’d seen other musicians going on special tours to promote their own iconic work. He watched The Cure perform Disintegration, and he saw Liz Phair—whom he “crushed out on” as a teenager—perform Exile in Guyville. “Even if I wanted to write those songs again, I really couldn’t,” he explains. “So for me, it was more about re-creating the process than rewriting songs.”
“I have made an unbelievable living for myself,” he says. “I think it's safe to say that barring some unforeseen tragedy, I will probably not have to worry about money for the rest of my life.” He shifts the weight in his feet back and forth while we wait to cross the street. “I find myself asking the question often: Do we not have enough? Especially people who are already wealthy in the entertainment industry. I just have to release that record for the fourth time, a different color vinyl this time. Do we have to? It just seems kind of gross and cash-grabbing.”
WE STOP IN front of a run-down building at 112 Chambers Street. “When Yoko Ono first moved to New York, her loft was in this building,” Gibbard explains. His face is inquisitive but solemn.
“This is the only building on this little tour that looks like it’s still kind of slummy,” he says. “Artists create the culture. Artists are the magnet. They’re the people who make people want to live in a place. And then money comes in and ruins it. I was under the false impression—I was naive—to think that people wouldn’t want to move to Seattle because it was gray and rainy and dark seven months a year. But behold, they sit in the dark room and code, have all their meals delivered, play video games, and just watch porn all day. They’re not that concerned with the weather.”
We breeze past a brand-spanking-new Sephora on the corner of Third Avenue and St. Marks.
“Four miles. We’ve got one left,” he says, just as I’m starting to think that I don’t want this conversation to end. I’m warmed up. “You’re doing great.”
We make it back to the dark, raging-hot Bowery Hotel lobby, its multiple fireplaces roaring. The band’s publicist greets us with ice-cold bottles of water—success has its perks—before leaving us alone to chat.
It’s clear that Gibbard feels comfortable, and for him, our talk is no new thing. “What’s said on the trail stays on the trail. I have friends I know through running, and we know the details of each other’s lives,” he says. “We don’t know each other, but at the same time, we’re talking like we’re old friends.”
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