Death Cab for Cutie is often synonymous with its frontman and principal songwriter, Ben Gibbard, but there are four other members of the Washington band that make their music come to life: Nick Harmer, Death Cab’s bassist and only other original member; Jason McGerr, their drummer since 2003; Zac Rae, who joined on keyboards and guitar in 2016; and Dave Depper, who also joined as a guitarist, keyboardist and vocalist in 2016. Studio One caught up with Death Cab’s oldest and newest members, Harmer and Depper, before their show at Harrah’s Stir Cove in Council Bluffs this past July.
Harmer has been with Death Cab since its inception in Bellingham, Washington, nearly three decades ago.
“In the scene in Bellingham, at the university we were going to, I worked in the arts department, so I got hired early on as a promoter. I was booking shows for campus, and that's where I met [Gibbard]. I would bring in national touring acts, and then I would pair them with local bands in the opening slot. Ben was in a local band at the time called Pinwheel, and I booked his band to open up one of the shows that I promoted. He and I met and became friends, and then later became roommates,” Harmer said. “I was the program director of our college radio station and had a radio show that Ben would come and do with me.”
“I was kind of plugged into the music scene in Bellingham and friends with [Gibbard]; [he] had recorded a bunch of songs, independently of this band that he was playing in in town, and he called that project Death Cab for Cutie. He was passing this kind of cassette around to all of us, and everybody was like, ‘This is amazing. Are you going to put a band together? Is this a real thing?’ And he was like, ‘Maybe,’ and then he asked me if I wanted to play bass, and the rest is kind of history after that.”
Depper is a seasoned touring musician who began playing with the band in 2015, then officially joined Death Cab the year after.
“I found myself in a unique position in the mid-aughts when I was writing code that I was kind of like working remotely before that was a thing,” Depper said. “I worked for this teeny company that had like five employees, and I had like this gigantic old PC laptop that I wrote on. But what it allowed me to do was say yes to any tour that was possible. So many of my friends had to quit their jobs or jump through all sorts of hoops to be able to get days off to go on tour. I could just take this laptop with me and do coding in the back of the van, so I never had to really juggle work versus going for it creatively. It was this incredible period for me where I just literally said yes to everyone. I was playing in like six bands at once. I was doing every tour. I just met so many people that way.”
In addition to being an accomplished touring player, Depper is a steadfast long-distance runner. He landed the Death Cab gig while on a casual run with Gibbard, an ultramarathoner. Depper has kept up with his daily running habit despite his demanding tour schedule.
“I ran seven miles today in the heat, which I'm still feeling a bit of a psychedelic buzz from. Running is therapeutic for me. It helps me achieve mental clarity. It's an anxiety reducer and it gets me in shape to be able to perform a very physical show,” Depper said. “I run six days a week and hope to do that till I'm a hundred years old.”
While Harmer may not be running seven miles a day, after thirty years of life in Death Cab, he's also learned to prioritize his health on the road.
“I wish I would have taken a little bit better care of myself in the early days. You know — smoking and drinking and carrying on,” Harmer said. “These days, I don't run quite as much as [Depper] and [Gibbard], but we all try to take care of ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally.”
Death Cab for Cutie isn’t the kind of band where the supporting members play parts assigned to them. Harmer and Depper were both heavily involved in the creation of Death Cab’s latest record, I Built You A Tower. There are two title tracks on the album that encapsulate Gibbard’s lyrical grief about his recent divorce, and Depper was the driving force behind the music of version B.
“[Gibbard] had written ‘I Built You a Tower’ as a demo, and we also were concurrently writing songs together as a band and sort of coming up with stuff. [Depper] had written the music for ‘I Built You a Tower (b)’ and it got to [Gibbard], so he stripped some of the lyrics out of that song and kind of adapted them to [Depper’s] music, thinking that was just going to be the next evolution of the song,” Harmer said. “We had always sort of put a flag in 'I Built You a Tower (a)’ as, like, this one keeps raising its hand as a song that I think we're going to go ahead and record. But [Depper], going through file management, was like, ‘Hey, what about this version of ‘I Built You a Tower?’, and we were like, ‘Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that one.’ And we listened to it again. We're like, ‘This is super compelling and really good, and it's really unique in its own way. Maybe that's the version.’”
“At some point in the studio, [Gibbard] kind of floated the idea, ‘Well, what if both versions end up on the album, and they kind of complement each other in this way that they're related?’ There's a lot of similar imagery, but one kind of fleshes the other one out in some ways, and I just think they're such unique expressions musically. They have such strong identities that became pretty clear early on.”
Depper and Harmer also collaborate extensively on the business side of Death Cab, making behind-the-scenes decisions such as selecting artists for tour merchandise. They each detailed how vital the other was to the band.
“[Depper] is like a musical ambassador. He knows so many people and so many players, [...] he adds this dimension of connection to this wider community of players around the country. His solo work is also really interesting because it is related somewhat to what he brings into Death Cab, but it also shows an entire other side of himself musically, which I think adds some depth and richness to what he brings into our band as well,” Harmer said.
“[Harmer] is the emotional heart of this band. So much of Death Cab is centered around [Gibbard’s] songwriting and his worldview that you get through the lyrics and the sound of his music, but I think Nick has this quiet groundedness that is coupled with this incredibly powerful drive, both as a bass player and as a personality, that are completely essential to how this band operates,” Depper said. “I can say with 100% confidence, if [Gibbard] had been working with someone else since day one, we wouldn't be sitting here with you. [Harmer] is not just a co-pilot; he has helped build the plane with his own hands and shaped it, and it doesn’t work without him.”
It's true that Death Cab for Cutie couldn’t function without Harmer and Depper. As the band's emotional and musical heartbeat, they provide the rhythm and groove that keep this indie rock mainstay in its prime, nearly 30 years into its journey.
