Yeah.

Uh, you know, the music that I'm listening to in my personal life at this point, which is a weird way of putting it, the music that I'm listening to, I listen to less... music that would be considered in my genre than I've probably ever listened to.

So if you were to walk into our house this morning, you would have heard like a weird ambient Harold Budd jazz record.

You would have heard, uh, I'm wearing the t-shirt for the wackies label right now.

You would have heard like a somewhat obscure, like lovers rock, uh, slash dub record that Wacky's put out in 1980.

You would have heard a Mal Waldron record, Jazz Pianist.

You would have heard the Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat record that Light in the Attic just put out.

Mm-hmm.

What I was gonna ask you was what is the best pep talk that you've ever received and who gave it to you?

That's a good question.

Well, before I answer that question, I want to go back and just reference.

Are you familiar with Ricky Henderson? Do you know who Ricky Henderson is? He was a baseball player.

He played for the Oakland A's for a long time.

And he would he would allegedly he would be in the box and he'd be he'd be like, OK, Ricky's going to get a hit.

He would speak to himself in third person.

How are you feeling about going into 50, by the way?

Mm.

There were things I could have done better.

You know, there were, there were cues I missed.

There were ways in which I framed myself and my interests above another person's.

We all, when we enter a relationship with somebody, are, for all intents and purposes, a willing participant in that relationship, and I wanted to kind of connote with that line that, yeah, I mean, there's no winners here.

We stood up in front of our friends and said we'd be together for the rest of our lives.

This is the second time I've done this, and this is not, uh, this is not how it's gonna be.

Mm-hmm.

Really?

Uh, yeah, I live not that far from it.

So I, I drive past her, run past, walk past almost every day.

Like it's, it's, it's not that far from where I live.

And, uh, and, uh, You know, the building has kind of fallen into disrepair a bit, but it's still there and it's still, you know, people live there obviously.

But I was just, I was so, I was almost like kind of like heartbroken at how much our city has changed since then.

And I don't mean like, you know, like it sucks that you can't go down the street and see, Alice in Chains playing at, like, the weathered wall or whatever on your club that doesn't exist anymore.

I'm like, yeah, I'm like, shut up.

I'd love to get your take on how important those things are to you.

you.Yeah, I, I mean, that has also shifted the, you know, the, the, the time of day and the place have, have shifted a lot for me since the pandemic.

Um, I used to rent a space outside of my house or wherever I was living to go to and write.

So I lived, uh, on Capitol Hill for many years in this open floor plan, uh, kind of loft area.

And my pa-- you know, my girlfriend, then wife for a period of time, we lived in there together.

There was not a separate space to write in, or I should say there was, uh, you could slide a door closed, but it wasn't a, it wasn't a, it wasn't a closed space.

And I felt that it was, it was-- I found it very difficult for me to write when anybody else was in the residence, let alone, you know, in the room, in the, virtually in the room.

Do you-- What's your take on that? Do you need distance to be able to write about something, or is immediacy better?

Um, when you went into this process or I guess any process for, for a death cab record, is there ever a sense of, um, not, um, necessarily a nostalgic lens or looking for ideas, but is there ever looking back on what the band has achieved and what you've already done and does that play into how you then create that new forthcoming record?

Well, I think that the...

The constant forge and the tightrope walk of any career artist or bands, or someone who's had a long career, I should say, is to recognize what you're good at and what makes your work resonate.

Because those things tend to be the same thing.

What you're good at and what resonates tend to be the same things.

while also trying to push forward and experiment and try new things.

And I think over the course of our discography, there have been moments that we have done that well.

Wondering if you might be able to talk to us about the creation of that song or where it kind of was inspired from and how it came to be on the record.

Mm.

But, um, it wa- one of the, o- one of the, the elements of, of, of that time that I, I, I feel so, um, I, I'm still very regretful of is that we were not given a proper opportunity to, to, uh, say goodbye.

And, uh, during COVID, uh, after she passed, um, there was, there was a number of, uh, her friends in Seattle, her, uh, her longtime producer Megan Griffiths and a number of other people who'd worked with her.

Because Lynn, I really believe that this might be not the best person to reference now, but you know, Lynn Shelton did for Seattle what Woody Allen did for New York.

What are some of the films that sort of really get to the heart of that city for you?

To this day, I was just...

I was talking to a friend about this film recently.

I live not so far away from the building that Singles was filmed at.

Hear it here first.

I, and I'm saying that, I'm putting it over Nevermind.

I'm putting it over Ten.

Not to diss those records.

Bad Motor Finger and those records.

And the reason I believe that is 'cause I think on that record, Modest Mouse, and specifically Isaac Brock, embodies what it means to be from the Northwest more than any other album.

And musically, you can hear that in just kind of the sprawling messiness of some of the longer kind of jams.

Wow.

[laughs]

But I thought it was...

But I do th- to your point, I completely agree.

I think that the, the growing number of people who kind of, like, and I think social media has a massive part to play in this, the sort of like everything's got to be bigger and grander and all this sort of stuff.

But I think that at the, the, the, the brutal end of it, there's always just gonna be a niche little bubble of people who are gonna want to do these distances.

And if you include backyards-

Oh, nice.

Uh, he's run a number of 100-milers, and we, you know, we both live in Seattle, so we run a lot together and meet up and talk about running and stuff like that.