Backstage at Garden State
A little recap of the Shins' journey to LA for the 20th anniversary of Garden State
Late last month we went down to Los Angeles for Zach Braff’s 20th anniversary celebration of the release of Garden State. The idea was to make a live show out of the soundtrack, as a fundraiser for the fantastic Midnight Mission.
Zach initially reached out about the anniversary show maybe in 2023, and my immediate reaction was, “Yes, of course, we’d love to do it.” I had no idea what to expect. But they did an incredible job, and made the whole night so entertaining by bringing in interesting people who were connected to the project (like Danny DeVito, who was a producer, who knew?). It was really heartwarming to see how people went out of their way to be a part of it. But not surprising, because Zach is so endearing, you want to help in any way you can.
It was early on in our Shins touring life when we got a call from Sub Pop about the film. I was on the road in my little red van. The story was that there was a new indie director who also happened to be in a TV series (I didn’t know about Scrubs at the time), and he wanted to use two of our songs in his film. I immediately said yes. There