ben gibbard

last wednesday, matt and i went to see ben gibbard perform a solo show at the keswick theater, which is this awesome little theater that is about 5 miles from our house.  it seats about 1300 people and gets some pretty amazing acts.  we've seen some great shows that we would never have gotten to see otherwise, and in such a small venue it's impossible to have a bad seat.  we've seen bruce hornsby (twice, actually), five for fighting, a beatles tribute called the fab faux (really really great if you're into the beatles), dark star orchestra (twice), elvis impersonators....there have been tons more but i can't think of them off the top of my head.  but i love the venue, and the fact that it's so close is a major bonus.

anyway, a friend of mine from high school works in marketing there, so every now and then she'll get in touch with me about a show that hasn't even been announced yet so that i can keep my eyes open for the tickets.  she knows what a huge death cab for cutie fan i am, so when they booked ben gibbard, she emailed me right away.  she gave the password to the presale, but then offered to just get the tickets for me.  i initially said i'd get them through the presale, but i was so afraid they'd sell out that i went back and took her up on her offer.  she got us tickets in the 2nd row.  awesome.  i've been looking forward to it for months, and the day finally came wednesday night.

the opener for the show was this guy called advance base.  he was really weird.  i was not a fan.  his music kind of almost put me to sleep.  he played for about 40 minutes, then they cleared the stage and set up for ben.  ben came out dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt.  he looks older than i thought.  but his voice....gah, his voice.  i could listen to him for days on end and never get sick of it.  he sang a great mix of stuff.  he's doing this small tour (we are one of i think 7 or 8 venues that he's playing) to promote his new solo album, but he also played some postal service stuff and some death cab for cutie stuff, including some old deep cuts that i'd almost forgotten about.  we were no more than 5 feet from the stage and it was amazing.

 

 

 

here are a few videos i took.  the first is of "title and registration."




and the second is of "cath," which is one of my all-time favorite songs.



my friend not only hooked us up with these fantastic seats, but she also got us a limited edition tour poster.  we're framing it and it's going up in the nursery.  you'll see that once we finally finish the nursery and i put those pictures up.  i dropped off a thank you note with a starbucks gift card for her the next day.

all in all, it was a fantastic show.  i am so so so glad that he chose our little keswick theater for one of his tour dates, and even more thrilled that my friend was so sweet to hook us up.  this show will definitely rank among my top 5 shows ever!