Recently, I was fortunate to be able to interview Derek Webb about his new album, Stockholm Syndrome (available in stores today). During the interview we spoke about his music, the new album, the reasons he wrote the album and some of his thoughts on Twitter and other social networking tools.
(Also, Here is my review of Stockholm Syndrome)
Audio:
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Transcript:
Me: How did you come to be a follower of Jesus?
Derek Webb: Kicking and screaming. I grew up in the south, so I was very familiar with the categorical spiritual language. There were no surprises or anything like that for me. You know, it was just by some mystery of the universe, partway through high school, after my sophomore year of high school, I chased a girl to a young life camp and, and I wound up kind of having an experience there. But, I can’t really explain.
Me: Ok, let’s move on to music. Um, what kind of music styles helped shape you as a musician and as an artist?
DW: Like generally, or specifically for this record?
Me: Well, first of all, what kind of music have you always enjoyed, and in terms of your art, what artists made you into who you are?
DW: I was always a fan of pop music, I mean, when I was really young I was, you know, I found my way into a lot of good pop music: Michael Jackson, Van Halen, anything that was on pop radio when I was a kid. But the first music that really connected with was like singer/songwriter music. Everything kinda changed when I heard Indigo Girls or you know, Bob Dylan or you know, those folks who… There just seemed to be something really, a kind of urgency about some of that music. There was something about the language, the words that these people were using, the way they were stringing the words together that was just … projected some kind of importance like the music was kinda of important. Even the way the words were coming out of their mouths. I was really attracted to that. I was immediately attracted to … music as a tool in service of, kind of something bigger than the music itself. And, even before I was aware of any kind of spirituality, and… that held pretty true over the years. I’m still very much into, you know, maybe not acoustic music like I used to be, where you would typically, where most people would typically find singer/songwriters, or folk, I mean, I think folk music would be a better category, because folk music doesn’t really imply a style. Its music is for folk. It is music about the people, kind of about what’s happening in the culture, Folk tells the story to the people. You know, the music that initially did that for me, that initially connected with would be. Bob Dylan … Woody Guthrie, Pete Sager. You know like the protest music, the protest songs of the 60s and 70s. That’s been a huge influence on me. Really formidable stuff. But then more recent years I have kinda traced the thread of folk music, music of the people, telling the stories, you know, of the people, out of acoustic music that I don’t really think does it as well as in the 60s or 70s into genres more like urban music, hip hop music. I think hip hop is really the new folk, in terms of telling the new stories, the unfiltered stories of the people. That’s really where you heard it now, more so than in a lot of places. And, which is kinda the music that has more recently been informing the music I’ve been making: the inorganic, urban, you know, electronic, programmed, computer based music that has been… I mean, I initially followed the concept there, and over time that sound and the possibilities of making music that way really compelled me, so that’s kinda of how I got where I am now, I think.
Me: Do you have any concept of where you think your music might go?
DW: Never. No, I have absolutely no idea. I am as surprised with every record as anybody else is. I never know what’s around the corner, creatively. I never could have guessed that I would have wound up a solo artist after ten years playing in a band I was really happy in, a great creative outlet for me… I never would have thought I’d wind up being a solo artist, and here I am seven years into that… you know I never would have imagined She Must and Shall Go Free would be a debut record for me, that I’d have written songs like that. I never would have imagined Mockingbird a few years later and I would never would have imagined Stockholm Syndrome, the sound and the content… I am on God’s good humor, I have no idea what’s coming next. I make no plans. I don’t make plans of any kind.
Me: In terms of your music, you said it kinda comes, you don’t know where it’s going… is that how you learned to write music, especially the lyrics … they’re exceptionally strong I think in many ways. Did you learn or have any formal training, or was it more along the lines of picking up a guitar, sitting down at a piano and learning how to write?
DW: Ya, it’s just all gut instinct, trial and error, I mean, I’ve been playing music, playing guitar, since I was seven years old, you know, playing piano a few years before that…. I never, I mean I can read music about as much as I can read Japanese, which is not at all. I don’t know how to read it, I don’t know how to write it down, I have zero musical training, it’s on pure instinct. You know, you do something for 20 some odd years, trial and error, you learn a few things. You find out what you weakness and strengths are, to turn one into the other or vice versa, you know, I just work at it. It’s my work, really enjoy it. I still enjoy it as much now as I ever have. So, you know, that’s probably why what goes in comes back out in terms of what I’m listening to and um really into. You know, because I don’t have anything to stick to. There’s not one kinda of music I’m trained in that I’m having to filter everything through. I make sharp turns. I do that because I grow up learning how to play music by listening to music. I learned how to play guitar buy listening to people play guitar. I’ve gotten pretty good at that. So, if there’s a style of music I really enjoy, then I can pick it up. I’ll adapt it. And try to, you know… you know you hear so many stories about guys like Dylan… Dylan didn’t grow up knowing much about music, but he’d go to friends houses who owned a lot of vinyl and he would just sit there in front of the record player, and learn, soak in as many songs as he good. as many styles of guitar playing and singing and he adapted all of that and made something tremendous out of it. you know, id never presume to compare anything to like Bob Dylan, but there are two positions. There are people who really are well trained, and that enables them to do one type of thing. There is a whole other community of artist throughout the years who’ve just listened to one another and learned from what cam before them. And I think I’m definitely a product of what came before me.
Me: Why the album Stockholm Syndrome?
DW: Well, I mean, really simply, it’s what I do here. I make records. I make music I like. It’s what I do. It’s my job. And you know, why specifically this record, why the sound of it, why the content of it… like I said, it’s serving beyond any kind of intention I had. I didn’t intend on making a record like this. When I sat down to do my job, this is what happened. You know, it takes no effort for me to make records to write songs. It’s just what I do. I feel like it happens more to me than I have influence over it. I kind of sit for it and wait for it to happen. You know, all I can say is that the job of any artist, myself included is to look at the world and tell you what they say. And that’s basically…at this point in my life, at the station of life that I’m in, the things that are interesting to me right now, that are compelling to me right now are the things you’re going to see on this album. When I look at my world and I tell you what I see, you know… I have no explanation for why I made it or for what’s on it. I have no explanation.
Me: Is there one song on the album that means more to you than the rest might?
DW: I don’t know, I mean, you know, there’s different… some songs wind up meaning something to you for really different reasons than the others… you know, I can generally say that this is my most fearsome personal record, for a lot of reasons, and one reason for that is because I feel like I’ve always known that I would eventually make this record. I’ve always known, deep down that I wouldn’t be able to go … I’ve been feeling the last few years that I wouldn’t’ be able to go much longer and not make certain statements on behalf of my friends. And a lot of the subject matter on SS deals with sexuality; it’s one of a few topics that emerge when I look at the project as a whole. Some of my closest friends and my best friends deal with this contradiction of they themselves being a particularly lifestyle in their sexuality and me as their friend and my community that I claim to be a part of: the Church, followers of Jesus, Christians, something that I’m in no way ashamed of, it’s part of my reality, the grid through which I look at the world and make sense of it. This community that I’m a part of … as their friends, having this incredible judgment and hatred of them. There came a point where I couldn’t continue to be friends with them… I couldn’t’ give answers anymore for my community and why they do these things and why they speak this way and why they treat their community a certain way and why they’re so fiercely known for it. There’s a book relevant to this discussion, called unChristian, by a guy named David Kinnaman. And there was a fascinating statistic in this book that troubled me quite a bit. It might have been one of the last straws that broke the camel’s back that led me to make this record at this moment in my life. He said that when polled, young adults who live in America who are not Christian were asked of the first thing when they heard the word Christian, what’s the impression they get when they heard that term, more than 90 some odd percent , in the mid 90s, said the word Christian to them is someone who hates gay people. That that was the first thing they think of. And, that is a really disconcerting statistic. If for no other reason, the issue of homosexuality aside, being known for something we are against and what we hate rather than what we love and what we are for is a fundamental problem in people’s perceptions of Christians, it’s a fundamental problem. And that should concern us by itself. The added complication of the fact that we are known for hating a particular group of people is .. .and especially for me personally a group of people with whom I am so acquainted, because of so many of my good friends, again my best friend that I have is in this community, and I didn’t need to see that statistic to know that that was the perception, that was the reality in the evangelical community in America. And I guess there just came a point for me to use whatever resources I had, my art, my music, to create a barricade between the people I love in my life, who are coming under this hatred, this judgment a barricade between those people and those judgmental people in my own community. I needed to put myself on the side of those being judged, joining them, and absorbing some of that on their behalf. Because they can’t help it. It’s that personal of an issue for me. That’s why this record was such a personal one for me.
Me: Does it discourage you when you get that same frustration from other Christians yourself?
DW: It doesn’t, I mean its discouraging in general that there’s not a more nuanced, a more loving discussion going on about these issues in general. I know that there is in some circles, but on the whole the perception is irrefutable, I mean its 90 some odd percent… regardless of how well some pockets of Christendom are doing on this issue, I know there are some who are doing great work. But, the perception is what it is. I would rather absorb the judgment and not the make comparisons to a great man, but Jesus wasn’t hated and killed because he took such a strong moral position against sinners. He was hated and killed because he loved people so radically that the “church”, the arrogant “church leadership” basically staged a coup, framed and murdered him because they couldn’t deal with how radically he was loving people who were complicated for them to love. And, so being on he side of people who are deemed you know, outsiders and sinners, whatever, is an age-old tradition, going all the way back to Jesus himself. So we need to be really careful that we are on the right side when it comes to these kinds of issues in our culture, because I think we send such a mixed message when we appear to be on the side and speak the language of those whom Jesus reserved his most harsh language for, rather than those for whom Jesus live his life with and gave up his life for. That’s more the side I’m trying to get on right now.
Me: Was this album written for, was the focus for your friends, was the focus for Christians or was the focus for both?
DW: I would say that I did not focus this album on or towards anybody. Again, this record was the process of me looking at the world and telling what I see. I think there’s going to be some of all of that one there. My intention was not in creating that. My intention was just in doing my job as an artist.
Me: One of the things I’ve seen on blogs and in talking to people, is the straight up truth is that you’re not one of the most well liked Christian artists out there. What would you say to people who hear what you say who get stuck on a curse word here or there or who have problems with one of the songs you write? What would your answer be to them?
DW: I would tell them that maybe they don’t need to waste any more time listening to my music. There’s a lot of music out there. Other than that, I have a pretty small tribe of people I think who really get and resonate with what I do and understand what I do. The music I make asks quite a bit of the listener, and there are not a lot of people who want music that does that. You know, if some people get hung up, I would tell them to listen to some other kind of music. There’s plenty of music out there, I’m sure there’s something else they’re rather listen to. I would ask people to be open minded, to give it a chance. But if they want repeated listening, they just don’t like it and don’t understand it, rather than wasting theirs and everyone elses time criticizing it ad nauseum, I would say, listen to something else. Maybe my music is not for you. I don’t have any real intentions for who this music is for. My job is to make it and do it as honestly as I can to try to remain trustworthy as an artist and to make art that people can trust and to put it out there and see who it resonates with. And, I don’t have a lot of control over that. I don’t have a lot of intention over that. The people who like it understand it. The people who don’t… maybe they just need to know that that is ok with me. It is ok with me that you don’t like my music. It’s ok with me that you don’t listen to it. That’s totally fine with me, I don’t have any problem with that. Because I’m not under any delusions that I make music for everybody and I don’t expect that everybody will like. I don’t make music for anybody, so I’m not shocked. If you don’t like it, listen to somebody else.
Me: I have one more question, and this is a bit of a turn from where the conversation has been. I’m a software weenie and I enjoy technology and I enjoy social networking and you used it extensively with this album. What is your opinion, what’s your perceptive on the role of social networking both in its role for you as an artist, and in social networking’s role in working for you as a Christian. Are there differences, are there similarities?
DW: I wouldn’t even know where to start in terms of me as a Christian. There’s not a category of my personality that’s me as a Christian that’s not integrated with me as an artist and me as a father and me as a brother and me as a husband and me as a human being, I don’t’ really think of myself as a Christian only. As an artist, I think its hugely important, because ultimately I am wanting to connect with people. I want to tell my story to people. I want to do that as efficient as I can. It used to be that you had to go door to door you had to go see the city and play concerts and get people to sit there physically in front of you to hear that music and hear those messages, and that’s still true to some extent. That’s still by far the most powerful way to do it. But social networking affords us all these new possibilities to connect to people. And ultimately as an artist I should be concerned with connecting to people well, using any resources at my disposal to tell my story to people. Social networking on the whole, many of these services which are free, have been a huge help in doing that work. Just like anything else, I think like, sororities, fraternities and handguns, social networking can be used for good or evil, they’re not inherently good or bad, I think you have to be very careful in how you use them, and when used in certain way they can be hugely helpful. They surely have for me, I think every artist is going to be different, but I’ve found them to be really helpful, absolutely.
Me: Well, for what it’s worth, the scavenger hunt was pretty fun.
DW: Ya, it was great, we did what we had to do. We certainly used every resource at our disposal to do it. It was just a matter of applying the same creativity you use to make songs, to making records to recording music and then distributing that music and figuring your ways out of tight spots with records labels and making sure that you’re making that connection, making sure the fans at least have the option of deciding for themselves whether or not they want to listen to a particular song and making sure they don’t get censured at the record labels. You want to make sure that people have that choice. You want to make sure they can hear what you intended and if they don’t like it or they don’t think that it’s appropriate, then that’s their decision. I at least want to make sure that fans have a chance to hear the music and make that decision for themselves. And a lot of online technology really enabled us to do that, so it was great.
