Interview: Dave Depper (Death Cab for Cutie)

When informed of the embarrassment of riches on Sept. 22 that saw My Morning Jacket (Rabbit Rabbit), The Mountain Goats (The Orange Peel), and Shakey Graves (Salvage Station) in a certain Western North Carolina town on the same night, Dave Depper had one response:

“Damn! Well, Asheville gonna Asheville.”

The Death Cab for Cutie guitarist/keyboardist is well aware of such shenanigans, having played our veritable city in various groups since 2006. And he’ll be back on Friday, Oct. 7, at Rabbit Rabbit in support of Death Cab’s new album, Asphalt Meadows.

Edwin Arnaudin: Were you touring with Death Cab the last time they played here in 2016?

Dave Depper: Yeah, for sure. I joined Death Cab in 2014, so I guess we've only done Asheville…once since I've been in the band?

EA: I think so. The thing last time was, “We won't come back to North Carolina until the bathroom bill is repealed,” and fortunately that got dealt with in the legislature. So…welcome back! [laughs]

DD: [laughs] How innocent those times seem. [laughs]

EA: [laughs] And then I was curious, too, another local connection — when you were in Ray LaMontagne’s band, did you play with Seth Kauffman? Did your times overlap?

DD: Mr. Floating Action himself! I did not play in Ray’s band at the same time as Seth. I’m trying to think how I first got to know Seth — I used to be in the band Fruit Bats, and Floating Action toured with Fruit Bats a bunch. In fact, yeah, I'm now remembering an epic Floating Action/Fruit Bats show in Asheville… Fuck! What is…I don't remember the venue. It was kind of near [the] Moog [Factory]. But, yeah: great and amazingly talented dude, Seth Kauffman.

EA: Agreed. Well, thanks for taking time out today. I’ve definitely been excited for this tour, even as it's changed. And I know several of my friends are really bummed about Low having to drop off, but for obvious reasons.

DD: Ah, yeah…

EA: Have y’all been in touch with them during [drummer/vocalist] Mimi [Parker]’s cancer treatment?

DD: Yeah, although I don’t think we know more than anyone else knows. It's a serious situation and she’s rightfully taking the time to deal with it. We're such fans of theirs, so we're very, very sad about the situation, but obviously she needs to get better.

EA: Definitely.

DD: But I am happy to say, we had our first show of the tour last night [in Madison, Wisc.] and Thao of Thao and The Get Down Stay Down opened, and her new band is absolutely smoking. Like, it blew all our minds. If you're coming to the show, come early to see Thao, ‘cause damn — she's bringing it.

EA: Nice! I was happy that she got tapped to come in because she loves playing here, it seems like. And she's a really fun interview, too, so it seems like a good fit.

DD: Totally. We were so thankful she could do it. It was so last minute and she was just game, put together a totally new band, and slayed it.

EA: [laughs] Awesome. Yeah, I”m definitely getting there early. [laughs] Well, I was curious how your role in the songwriting process has evolved in the years since you've officially joined Death Cab.

DD: I guess the first thing we all did together once I was officially in was Thank You For Today. And that record was…Ben pretty much wrote every song before we went in and had a lot of the parts in mind. And I was still figuring out what my own role was, in a lot of different ways. Like, what do I even play on this record?

Zac [Rae] joined at the same time as me and we both play guitar and keyboards and weren't sure what the breakdown of labor would be. And Ben was like, “Yeah, any comments you have about the songs or whatever?” And I'm like, “OK…Ben Gibbard…I'll tell you what I think of the song you just wrote.”

EA: [laughs]

DD: And at that time, I'd known him for a long time and I'd been touring with the band for a while, but still it was a very intimidating proposition. And I think we made a good record out of it. But in the years since, everyone has just become so much more musically tight. There's so much more trust in everyone's skills and instincts. My role, I know what I'm good at versus what Zac's good at. So, it just feels a lot more collaborative and creative in terms of an ensemble.

And then specifically about songwriting, we actually this time around made a concerted effort to have everyone in the band write some music for this record, which kind of happened through this experimental process during the pandemic where, every week, one person would write a piece of music that the rest of us would complete. And we did that, like, 50 weeks in a row or something. So, everybody ended up writing at least a few things on the record. And Ben still writes the lyrics and the melodies, but in some cases wrote to music that other people in the band had written, and it think it worked out rather well.

EA: Absolutely. And was that experiment something that was kind of a necessity during lockdown periods or were other factors driving that?

DD: I think a little bit. Strictly necessary? No, because Ben could have still just sat down and written 40 songs and we could have chosen 11 and recorded them, and that would've been that. But I think that the pandemic created a situation where we had nothing else to do. We literally couldn't tour. We couldn't go into a studio and make a record, and so Ben very wisely suggested we just kind of stay active. He was interested in a new way for us to interact with each other and stay musically connected during a time where we couldn't actually play together.

I don't think it was some vision of, “Ah, yes: this is how the new record is gonna be written.” It was just sort of an experiment that went really well. And it did result in the new record getting written that way.

EA: Yeah, it seems like his writing style is almost a perfect fit for these weird existential pandemic times.

DD: [laughs] Yeah!

EA: And I was wondering, as his songs were coming in, were there certain songs or lyrics from what became Asphalt Meadows that really helped you particularly get through any difficult stretches of these past couple years?

DD: I have my own guardrails for mental health and stuff that don't necessarily come from lyrics. No disrespect to Ben's lyrics or anyone else's. But, certainly, when some of the songs like "I Don't Know How to Survive" and "Roman Candles" came down the line, it was very comforting to know that a close friend of mine was going through something very similar to me,  just in terms of anxiety and dread and that stuff.

So, yes, songs like that, and "I Miss Strangers” — that's such a perfect sentiment of, like, "Yeah, I'm seeing my close friends, finally, out in a backyard or whatever, but I actually miss just going into a bar and seeing a bunch of random people that I'll never see again." So, things like that — I don't know if it helped me necessarily, but it certainly was a comfort.

EA: Yeah, sounds like it! And kicking the tour off last night, what was it like sharing these songs with an audience?

DD: You never know how it's gonna go, so there was a lot of nervous excitement. And, I gotta say, it was the best tour kickoff we've ever had. And people were singing along. We played a ton of the new songs and people were singing along to stuff that we were playing for the very first time. It was so gratifying to hear people connecting with this new record that we're so proud of. We just have such a wind in our sails after that show last night.

EA: Awesome! Well, I asked this of…I got to interview Alex [Fischel] from Spoon a couple weeks ago before they came to town, and there’s kind of a similar situation with you in Death Cab, it seems — having this very rich band history before you're joining and then you continuing that legacy after. And I asked him this — but I'm asking you for Death Cab [laughs]: which songs from before your tenure with the band do you most enjoy playing live?

DD: It's funny you mentioned Alex from Spoon, because I've never met him, although I know a few of the rest of the guys in Spoon a bit, but for whatever reason, timing never works out for me to say “hi” to Alex. But I definitely feel a kinship with that dude. I think we joined our bands at the exact same time in like 2013 or ’14. And I've seen our roles grow in similar ways, and I'm like the biggest Spoon fanboy ever.

EA: Nice. [laughs]

DD: So I'm always looking at that guy as like my little twin out there, in a way. Alex, if you're listening — let's get drinks.

EA: [laughs]

DD: But to answer your question, "Transatlanticism," the song, is just one that, whenever we play it, I'm sort of transported back to the first time we played it with me [in the band]. And I'm playing that iconic guitar riff — I just can't believe I'm in this band, playing that song. I love that song. It's my favorite Death Cab song. And it's just a song that connects so powerfully with the audience. It just hits me on so many different emotional levels that it kind of stops time when I'm playing it.

That and "What Sarah Said," which, prior to me joining the band, wasn't a song I particularly cared about or paid attention to. I think I was just younger and hadn’t…you know, it's a song that deals with losing someone — someone losing their life that's close to you. And I just hadn't had much of that happen at that time. And being older and having experienced a bit of that, and then just seeing the way that the crowd reacts to that song each night — people are just sobbing while Ben is playing it.

So many people see themselves in that song. And it's an unbelievably easy song for me to play. I'm just kind of strumming a guitar. I could be half asleep and playing, but it's one of my favorite moments of the night just because it's this wave of powerful emotion, every time. So, probably those two.

EA: Alex said kind of a similar thing that you were talking about with “Transatlanticism.” He was saying that “The Beast and Dragon Adored” was one of the first Spoon songs he heard. And he's like, “It's not lost on me that I get to play that every night.” He just gets tingles. [laughs]

DD: That’s so great to hear. [laughs]

EA: Lastly, The Georgia EP that y'all released was such a nice treat and hit at the right time. It was such a fun collection. I didn't know if there were any other Georgia songs that y'all considered that didn't quite make the cut and might make it onto something else down the line.

DD: Oh, gosh! That is a good question. I'm not sure I have an answer for you. I know there was definitely a band text thread where we were just kind of like having fun, naming every Georgia song we could. Like, someone mentioned Outkast, and we were like, “Dude, we cannot do Outkast. No.”

EA: [laughs]

DD: [laughs] TLC was a stretch, but we got it in there. But yeah! I'm drawing a blank, but that project was so fun and we did it in literally four days. It was crazy. We recorded it and mixed it all remotely from our home studios, and then sent it to our friend in LA who mixed it. And it was just done within in the week. It was wild.

IF YOU GO

Who: Death Cab for Cutie with Thao
When: Friday, Oct. 7, 7 p.m.
Where: Rabbit Rabbit, 75 Coxe Ave., rabbitrabbitavl.com
Tickets: $49.50 advance/$55 day of show

(Photos by Jimmy Fontaine)