Death Cab for Cutie bassist Nick Harmer sent us his fourth and final Buzzworthy tour diary a week before the band's latest album, Narrow Stairs, was released. In this entry, Nick, drummer Jason McGerr, and Death Cab sound guy Will take a train out to Kew Gardens and wander the eponymous greens, mired in Death Cab reflection. Two weeks later, the album became the band's biggest debut success to date when it opened at #1.
So, has success changed Death Cab, or are they still the same type of guys who take public transportation and recognize the meta-ness of documenting while being documented, just as we appreciate the irony of creating content about creating content? Likely they're still the same type of guys who look like dudes you'd see reading Tolstoy with a Hi-Liter in a coffee shop and who ruminate over creating "bizarre moments." And PopMatters' interview with the ever-humble, intensely honest Ben Gibbard pretty much proves that. Which is comforting, because a Death Cab that zooms around London in an H3 is not a Death Cab we wanna know.
Check out Nick's final Buzzworthy tour diary from London, check out the rest of their tour dispatches, and watch their "I Will Possess Your Heart" video.
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
Today was my last day here in London, and what a whirlwind trip it has been. I only was lucky enough to get one full night of sleep, which came at the best possible time, right before our show, and then last night I fell back into the jet lag routine. I suppose it is for the best because I really don't want to get completely on a London time zone schedule -- otherwise when I fly to Boston tomorrow, I'll be all twisted up there too.
These are the fun days of this kind of traveling, the days where you sleep where you can sleep and eat when you are hungry and completely abandon the "normal" schedule you perceive everyone else to be on. I'll be home soon enough, I keep telling myself.
I was lucky today to have a big break from press and promo right in the middle of the day. I actually had some time to myself to explore, and Jason and I took full advantage of the beautiful weather here to ride a train out to Kew Gardens with our sound guy Will. The three of us were keeping our fingers crossed for a big scary hedge maze, but when that didn't materialize we just wandered around the expansive lawns and let our heads clear of the oftentimes cramped winding city that London can be.
I brought my camera along hoping to take some great photos, but in the end I left the camera in the bag and let the memory of today just live in my mind. Somehow, after all this content we have been generating for press and radio over here, generating more content of my own seemed like overkill. Instead, I found a photo that I took the last time I was here in London of Big Ben against a stormy sky and thought I'd share that with everyone. So, here, let's just pretend I saw this on this trip.
Later in the evening we did a session called the "Black Cab Sessions" that was super fun. Ben and Chris got to ride in the back of a taxi with a camera guy and a sound man and perform songs while the cab drove around the city. There wasn't enough room in the cab for Jason and I but I decided to film some B-roll footage of the whole event just to capture the madness. What added to the madness was that ABC News was there filming a piece about The Black Cab Sessions and so there was this moment when I was filming ABC filming the Black Cab Sessions filming Ben and Chris. It was about the most meta moment of the entire trip and someday, when we find some use for my B-roll, it will be a hilarious look at how these sorts of things can balloon and spiral into some pretty bizarre moments.
Well, I'm off to Boston and then Rhode Island and then New York and then Chicago and then finally sometime next week... I'll be back at home for a few days, four to be exact, before we head off on our national tour. We play Letterman on the night of May 13th, which is the day our new album, Narrow Stairs, is released so look for me there, I'll be the guy with the beard holding the bass.
Take care,
Nick Harmer
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