Ben Gibbard Is Playing Daily Livestreamed Solo Shows During Coronavirus Pandemic

Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

Ben Gibbard Is Playing Daily Livestreamed Solo Shows During Coronavirus Pandemic

Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

For now, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, live music has been put on hold. This sucks hard, and it could end up having devastating longterm consequences for the whole music economy. But it’s also been fascinating to see how different musicians are reacting. Right now, a whole lot of bands are playing livestreamed shows for entirely virtual audiences. This past weekend, Code Orange played their record-release show in an empty club and streamed it out to the world. Last night, Coldplay covered some songs in a charity livestream. Tonight, Dropkick Murphys are putting their annual St. Patrick’s Day show out into an internet world. And now Ben Gibbard is promising to do a livestreamed solo show every day, at least for the next few weeks.

Gibbard, the longtime Death Cab For Cutie frontman, was planning to head out on a solo headlining tour next month. Like everything else involving large groups of people congregating together, that ain’t happening now. So Gibbard’s solution is to sit down in his home studio every day at 4PM pacific (so 7PM eastern) and playing a solo set.

In a note posted on Twitter late last night, Gibbard writes:

For the next few weeks I will be playing songs everyday from my home studio. We will be streaming on YouTube / Facebook at 4 pm PST daily. We’re still working out the details but I’m hoping to take some requests and maybe even have a guest or two stop by digitally. The first show will be tomorrow. It will assuredly be a little wonky and glitchy but we’re gonna do our best.

For musicians stuck at home on quarantine, this seems like an incredibly cool thing to do, and the pressure of coming up with something new everyday could conceivably lead to some great things. You can keep tabs on Gibbard’s Live From Home shows here.

UPDATE: Here’s the first of Gibbard’s “Live From Home” webcasts.

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