CMJ Snapshot: Ben Gibbard at \'Brownies\'

Taking note of distinctive scenes at this year's CMJ Music Marathon.

Jason Kempin/Getty Images Ben Gibbard in 2011.

The last time Ben Gibbard, the songwriter and frontman for Death Cab for Cutie, played at 169 Avenue A in the East Village was the year 2000. He was a much less famous musician and the space was still a smoky, beery club called Brownies, where young musicians could get a break.

So when Mr. Gibbard returned to the same space, now the HiFi Bar, on Tuesday night for a special party to celebrate the release of a solo album, “Former Lives,” on Barsuk Records, the label Death Cab started out with, he took a moment to make the obvious joke.

“I started playing at Bro wnies and on Barsuk Records,” Mr. Gibbard said as he stepped onto a small stage. “Now I'm back at Brownies and on Barsuk Records. What happened? The last 12 years didn't exist.”

Yet the long set he performed - accompanying himself on an acoustic guitar and, later, a piano - suggested quite a lot had indeed happened. He reached far back into his repertory, doing songs from most of Death Cab's albums, including 2011's “Codes and Keys,” and even dipping into songs he had written in his teens.

Many of the songs from the new album talk about the end of love and various other kinds of heartbreak. They seemed suffused with a mature pain, perhaps reflecting his split nearly a year ago from Zooey Deschanel, the actress and singer. (He has said the songs on the album are about several relationships and has declined to comment on the couple's divorce.)

The tables had been cleared out of the HiFi Bar and a stage had been erected near the site of the old stage. For people who used to frequent Brownies to hear new music, it felt a little like old times, except there was no fog of cigarette smoke engulfing the crowd and the musicians.

Mr. Gibbard, 35, who spent several years as a strict vegetarian, told the small but avid audience who had been invited to Tuesday's record release that the last time he had played in the bar had also been during a CMJ Music Marathon. Death Cab had put out two albums, and the band's popularity was rising. “I was impossibly sick,” he recalled. “I had accrued the name the Collapsing Vegan.”

The owner of the HiFi bar, Mike Stuto, then an owner of Brownies, intervened.

“He was kind enough to take me to the hospital, and not only that, he let me stay at his apartment until it was time to do the show,“ Mr. Gibbard recalled. “This is the kind of thing he didn't have to do and he likes to say that it was because he wanted to save the show. That's ma ybe partially true, but it has more to do with the fact he's a really good human being.”

Mr. Stuto remembers things somewhat differently. Death Cab were the headliners at the Barsuk Records showcase at Brownies. Mr. Gibbard was sick, so Mr. Stuto recalled sending him to a doctor for antibiotics, then letting him sleep on a futon until show time. “I was trying to save the show,” Mr. Stuto said. “But I'm also a good human being.”

It was the start of a friendship, and as Death Cab became a more famous band, Mr. Gibbard and the other members would still come to Mr. Stuto's establishment when they were in New York. “This was their New York hang,” Mr. Stuto said. “He's been very supportive.”

Mr. Gibbard will start a tour in November to promote the album, visiting New York City again on Nov. 5, when he will play Town Hall.