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Apr 02, 2020 By Christopher Roberts Benjamin Gibbard

In response to the COVID-19 Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie has been live streaming daily solo concerts from his home studio. He has now switched from daily to weekly concerts and today during his first weekly one he covered Fountains of Wayne’s “Barbara H.” in tribute to the band’s Adam Schlesinger, who died yesterday due to COVID-19. The song was featured on Fountains of Wayne’s self-titled debut album from 1996. Watch Gibbard’s entire home concert below.

Setting up the cover, Gibbard said he never met Schlesinger, but was thankful to him because he was instrumental in Gibbard writing a song for The Monkees, which was a dream come true. Following “Barbara H.” Gibbard performed “Song For Kelly Huckaby,” which was on Death Cab for Cutie’s 2000-released The Forbidden Love EP and was written after a weekend of listening to Fountains of Wayne.

Previously Gibbard also shared a video where he performed the new song “Life In Quarantine,” which is inspired by what we’re all going through with COVID-19, and last week he shared the studio version of the song (which is still solo acoustic), which was one of our Songs of the Week.

Gibbard previously announced that he’s taking requests. Previously during his live stream concerts Gibbard covered Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees,” New Order’s “Ceremony,” and other songs. He previously did an all-covers set with covers of songs by Phoebe Bridgers, Elliott Smith, Rilo Kiley, The Shins, The Flaming Lips, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Big Star, and Def Leppard.

Gibbard then did another all-covers set where he covered R.E.M.’s “Half a World Away,” The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” Morrissey’s “Everyday Is Like Sunday,” Hall & Oates’ “Out of Touch,” The Magnetic Fields’ “Strange Powers,” Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon,” Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge’s “Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Only Living Boy In New York,” and Spiritualized’s “Hold On.”

Death Cab for Cutie released a new EP, The Blue EP, last year via Atlantic. Death Cab for Cutie’s last album, Thank You For Today, came out in 2018 via Atlantic.

Read our 2018 interview with Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard on Thank You For Today.

Also read our 2018 The End interview with Gibbard about endings and death.

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