Death Cab For Cutie’s Benjamin Gibbard – HuffPost 7.18.11

Mike Ragogna: What advice would you have for new artists at this point?

Benjamin Gibbard: Well, we were just on tour with a band, and they’re kind of a new band. I was talking with the songwriter, and they’re struggling with that whole thing that artists tend to struggle with when they first get recognition in the sense that they’re concerned that any level of success–or not even success, but just not starving–is going to adversely affect their work, as if their creativity was completely tied into the fact that they have to wash dishes at an Applebee’s or whatever for a job. And one point that I always want to stress to people who are certainly younger musicians or artists. Whatever it is, your creativity comes from within who you are, your creativity is not going to go away because your life changes. It’s going to morph and reflect who you are and who you are continuing to be. As I was talking to this gentleman, I was like, “Listen. You’re a great songwriter. You’re going to be a great songwriter if you can make your rent playing music. It’s not going to go away because you no longer have to work minimum wage jobs so that you buy guitar strings. It’s not going to go away.” I think that we’ve bought into this myth about the “starving artist” to such an extent that people question their own creativity at times. That’s just kind of unfortunate.