Derek Webb

It’s been a busy season for one of our favorite singer/songwriters. Amidst the normal ebbs and flows of a musician’s life - writing, recording, touring - Derek Webb has been quite busy with another project - a website. But this isn’t any normal website: Noisetrade.com is revolutionizing the way you find and listen to music. With a pay-what-you-want or tell-your-friends-about-it system, the music is yours either way. And the site is taking off, with new additions each day and artists like Sandra McCracken and Sixpence adding their own music to a site with plenty of impressive indie musicians.

Still this hardly slows Webb enough to enjoy it, since he’s been busy recording an EP with his wife, helping her with her own solo album and now readying his follow-up to The Ringing Bell. We recently caught up with Derek to discuss the recording side of life - and what you can expect on his new album.

Soul-Audio: I interviewed your wife a few months ago about the Ampersand EP. We got her side of the story but why do you think it was the time to finally collaborate together after years of maintaining your independent, solo careers?

Derek Webb: I don’t know. [Pause] It was sidelining in one sense because we were just about ready to start recording another record for Sandra, which is finished now. We master it tomorrow actually. And I was a little ways from starting a new record, which I am starting in a few weeks. But it was the holidays and we were usually touring during that time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. For years prior, we’ve had various Christmas related tours we would do but last year we didn’t do any of that. We literally just had a month or two almost completely off, which was really nice.

We have a studio in the house - I made my last two or three records here - and we both had songs that had no home on any record, some we’d written together and some solo. So it was a neat little collection of songs and while we definitely didn’t want to do a full record - because we didn’t want it to compete with our solo careers, we have no interest in being a husband/wife duo or something - but we do play shows together inadvertently and we thought it would be a nice to have songs uniquely ours together. The whole thing just came together at once - the time off, the studio, the songs.

We have a one-year-old boy now, which is one of the reasons we travel together. So we thought it would be fun to put out a little EP every few years and develop a repertoire of tunes that will be ours together and we can have something intentional when we play together.

SA: So you’re doing your own album in a few weeks?

Derek: Yeah, we’ll start tinkering with it in a few weeks.

SA: Thematically, where are you headed?

Derek: [Pause] It’s pretty early on and, as usual, I’ve got pages and pages of ideas. It’s hard to say exactly where it’s going. I have a couple strong ideas, but I’m almost afraid to say because you never know once you get in and start. I thought Mockingbird was going to be full of different stuff. I intended that to be a record about art and politics and the combination of the two and it ended up just being about politics. [Laughs] There’s only one song about art on that record and it’s totally out of place.

Right now, if I had to give it broad strokes, I would say it’s going to be a record about race and sexuality - those are the big issues right now, but that’s what has been squarely in my line of sight for the last couple of years.

SA: Is that the typical flow - you wrestle with it, learn about it, it overflows onto a record?

Derek: Pretty much. Whatever I’m going through or dealing with or grappling with or talking with friends about, that’s what winds up on a record. But there is a bit more intentional thinking about it, too. It’s looking at what areas do I need to cover? What are the blind spots? What is not being talked about that needs attention? I think the time is now to make this record.

SA: So part of it is setting these sonic fires and making people put them out, to deal with the fire…

Derek: Yeah, I think there’s some of that. But I’m also definitely looking at myself and seeing what is needed. I’m definitely looking at my community and things right around me, but ideally it will speak to broader issues and demographics. But I am looking at myself.

SA: How hard is it to make it artistically viable? In other words, ‘This song is about turning a blind eye to the places and people in need around us and yet it totally rocks out.’

Derek: [Laughs] Yeah, well, that’s the challenge. And if it doesn’t rock out, then probably no one cares. That’s definitely the challenge. Hopefully with every record, I learn a little more about how to marry that content with good melodies and rhythm. I think Ringing Bell, we were pretty happy with that attempt. That record didn’t feel very heavy to me in terms of content. Mockingbird feels very heavy and was so sparse and bare, you had nowhere to go with that heavier content. I’m not disappointed with that, but I feel that with Ringing Bell, we built a better Trojan horse than we did on Mockingbird. And I hope to do even better on this one.

And there’s the challenge. There are some artists spreading a lie saying it can’t be done well, that it’s hard to marry content like this with music. But I’m an idealist. I come from the school of the ’50s and ’60s protest music like Joan Baez and Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan - this was pop music at the time and yet these folks, their consciousness was right on their sleeve. So I think it can be done, but it’s not easy.

SA: One more question - Paste Magazine, full page review, 5 stars. What does that do for you?

Derek: It totally ruined Paste’s credibility. [Laughs] It meant a lot to me because we know some of the people at Paste and have for years. And the approach of our relationship there has never crossed over or affected our profesional relationship and what they review. For quite a few years, we were good friends and I would be truly frustrated, asking ‘Why won’t you guys give me any coverage? Why won’t you help me out?’ And rightfully, they would say, ‘We cover certain kinds of music and…’ They would admit they listen to my music for pleasure but that it was hard for them to, without setting a precedent, cover my music. They definitely have a certain way of doing things and I totally respect that, so I understand.

But of course, they love my wife’s records, as well they should because they’re great records. Sandra had become a bit of a darling for them, but for me it was frustrating. I want to feel like I am making music that competes with anything out there. I’m making the best records I can make, which may not be that great, but I would love to see them put up against anything else, regardless of the content. Again I’m an idealist, so I don’t think it should matter what you’re talking about or the language you’re using to talk about it - if art’s really great, you should be in the fray and conversation with others making good art in the marketplace.

I’ve always believed that to be true, because I’ve seen the reverse - people with absolutely nothing to say given a chance in that marketplace because their music was great. So I’ve always felt like if the art is good it’s not going to matter what you’re talking about - you will be able to get through. But I had never seen that work for me. Of course, that was me presuming that my art was really good. You have your blind spots, you do the best you can, and then you look back on it and it drives you crazy and you try to do better the next time.

So I don’t presume that I was making records good enough to get that kind of coverage in Paste. But when it came to The Ringing Bell it was obviously amazing and very encouraging to me, not only that they would cover my records, but give it such a glowing review. That was really satisfying because I knew they wouldn’t do that unless they really liked it. They withheld for such a long time and I think rightfully so. So when they finally handed it down, I knew it was real and that they really dug it. It was amazing and very unexpected.

Reprinted with permission from StereoSubversion.com.

• www.derekwebb.com
• www.myspace.com/derekwebb

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