How does songwriting work in Death Cab For Cutie?
For the most part, Ben works on a pile of demos and then turns them over to us. Some of the songs are fleshed out, bass lines and all. But some need more of a contribution from the rhythm section. So I sit at home and write as many different lines and variations as I can. I wrote a fair amount of my bass lines for Narrow Stairs sitting in front of my computer listening to demos.
I’ve learned over the years not to get personally attached to anything I write. I leave it to the jury of my bandmates. And we have a good rule when it comes to songwriting: If you don’t like an idea, you can’t just shoot it down. You have to submit another idea, or you have to keep your mouth shut.
How did you get your bass tones on Narrow Stairs?
My secret weapon in the studio is my Epiphone Jack Casady bass, a gift from Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam. The way it fits in with our sound is magic. I switch between flatwound and roundwound strings, and it always delivers. I leave that bass hermetically sealed at home.
Chris is creative about choosing bass amps to record. We used guitar amps as much as we used Ashdown or Ampeg bass amps. I’ve never been the kind of player to insist on a particular sound. I’m far more interested in figuring out how to fit in.
Does that approach extend to your playing?
Yes. A good bass fill is a good bass fill, but I’ve never really felt comfortable stepping forward in that kind of way.
Your ominous, brooding bass line anchors “I Will Possess Your Heart,” the first single from Narrow Stairs. How did you craft that line?
Ben’s always written songs that are on the dark side—bittersweet sadness, love, and loss. When “I Will Possess Your Heart” came in as a demo, I was immediately drawn to its sinister stalker theme. It’s creepy and obsessivecompulsive, and that’s what I connected to as a listener. I wanted my contribution to reinforce that side of the song—a bass line that’s incessant and obsessive. When I explained ``what I was going for, Jason immediately clued in and picked up the beat. It was one of those songs where there wasn’t a lot of discussion— we just knew where the song wanted to go.
The song is a little amorphous in the beginning. It floats until it finds itself, and then pulls into focus over time. When we tracked it, I wanted the bass to have a certain scrappiness—a wabisabi aesthetic. A minute or so in, there’s a weird warp in the bass tone. We were tracking live, and when Chris got up to walk to the console, he accidentally unplugged my DI, which made a horrible noise. We kept that in, because it just added to the general scrappiness of the track. The new album seems to showcase the connection between you and Jason.
For Plans, Jason would track drums for hours while I’d be hanging out in the lounge waiting for my turn. In the subsequent touring, we realized it was so much more fun to play together. We need to feed off each other, so we pushed Chris and Ben to track this album live.
A lot of my growth as a player comes from playing with Jason. He makes up for my rhythmic deficiencies, and I bring out the melodic side to his drumming. We talk a lot about how parts are going to work together.
How do you foster your continual growth as a bass player?
I constantly try to re-imagine what I’m doing so I can break myself out of typical patterns. I took upright bass lessons in the downtime between the last two records. I’d never played an upright before, and it was great to have an instrument that was familiar on some level, but radically different on every other level. Even trying to figure out scales was entirely different, so I had to re-think my way through the basics.
CAN BE HEARD ON
Death Cab For Cutie, Narrow Stairs [Atlantic, 2008]
CURRENTLY SPINNING
Yeasayer, All Hour Cymbals [We Are Free, 2007]; My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges [ATO/Red, 2008] “I like listening to music that’s radically different from the kind I make. The technical proficiency of metal players is endlessly inspiring. Whether it’s Tool, Lamb Of God, or Mastodon, it all reminds me there are a million different ways a bass can sound.”
GEAR
Basses Lakland Bob Glaub, Epiphone Jack Casady Signature Rig Ashdown ABM 900, two Ashdown 2x15 cabinets, Summit Audio TD-100 DI Effects Fulltone Bass-Drive, Maxon AD999 Analog Delay.