Jimmy Tamborello Plays the Santa Barbara Bowl

With our proximity to Los Angeles, there’s never been a shortage of world-class, Santa Barbara–bred musicians. Baby boomers had the late David Crosby. Generation X had Toad the Wet Sprocket and Jack Johnson. Millennials? We had The Postal Service, whose glitchy, catchy, and danceable beats are the product of Ben Gibbard, the longtime frontman for Death Cab for Cutie, and Jimmy Tamborello, who spent much of his time at San Marcos High mashing buttons on drum machines and sending the results to hometown radio hosts. Together, the two made a chart-topping, generation-defining album, 2003’s Give Up, and then — barely a peep.

The Postal Service is celebrating the 20^th anniversary of Give Up with a cross-country tour that includes a night at the Santa Barbara Bowl — and two at Madison Square Garden. Soft-spoken, Tamborello is pleased with the reception to these songs after so much time. “It’s still really surprising to me that [The Postal Service] held up this long,” he mused over the phone last week. It wasn’t exactly the plan for a kid who grew up geeking out on obscure electronica and KTYD’s late-night prog rock show Fear of Music. 

And what of that Santa Barbara music scene in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s? “It was fun growing up there, being into music. The small-town thing was a big part of it. We used to make music and send it to the Independent to get some write-ups, and we sent music to DJs to play on the air. It seemed really open — people in town were game for that,” he recalled. “The music wasn’t very good, but it was interesting that kids were making it.”

[Click to enlarge] The Postal Service perform during their 10th Anniversary Tour from the film ‘Everything Will Change’, directed by Justin Mitchell. | Credit: Courtesy

For Tamborello, that music was experimental, rock-inflected electronica, encouraged by his musician (and dentist) father James, who gifted him some gear and built a home studio when Jimmy was in high school. Over the course of the ‘90s, Tamborello weaved through a few punk and electropop bands, all the while recording solo as Dntel. That’s where the Postal Service enters the picture.

While Tamborello’s band Arca shared a stage with Death Cab for Cutie back in 1998, his roommate happened to connect him with Gibbard a couple of years later. They got on quickly, recording Dntel’s “The Dream of Evan and Chan” and “right away started talking about making more music, not really talking about what we were going to make,” Tamborello admitted. “We didn’t know who it would be for. We didn’t even really talk about what kind of music either of us listened to or liked. It was just knowing each other’s past music and going from there.”

Named for the remote nature of their collaboration — Tamborello and Gibbard mailed burned CDs with their respective instrumentals and vocals between Los Angeles and Seattle — The Postal Service took off slowly before catapulting into the dance charts and every middle-schooler’s head. 

A generation later, their sound has staying power, commanding 1.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify and likely one sold-out venue on Milpas. Not too shabby for a group who hasn’t released new original music in 18 years. After a couple of decade-long hiatuses from life on the road — The Postal Service has only toured in 2003, 2013, and 2023 — Tamborello seems measured, refreshed, and genuinely happy to dole out the hits.

 “It was such a fun time in my life, making that record and the original tour,” he said. “I feel really lucky to have an excuse to keep reliving it, and not sitting at the end of a bar, telling someone what I did 20 years ago. I like this setup where I only tour every ten years. Though I’m feeling like this will be the last one”, he laughed. We’ll see in 2033, Jimmy.

See The Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie’s 20^th anniversary tour of Give Up and Transatlanticism at the Santa Barbara Bowl on Saturday, October 14^th.