Derek Webb Says the Stigma of 'Christian Music' is Not Helpful for Evangelization (INTERVIEW PART 2)

Interview for the Christian Post. Read my original article in its entirety here.

Derek Webb, former singer of Caedmon's Call and President of NoiseTrade music sharing website, discussed his new album, I Was Wrong, I'm Sorry & I Love You, what it's like being a 20 year veteran in music, and why the label of "Christian artist" is not always the best thing for getting the gospel heard.

Read part one of the interview here.

Christian Post: Do you feel music is a gateway to evangelism, and why do you think people are more receptive to music?


Derek Webb: I don't really feel like music is a gateway to evangelism. I certainly don't use it that way. There are some people who feel called to be professional vocational ministers, that their job is ministry, I don't personally feel that way. When I go and I play shows, make records, write songs, I don't consider that vocational ministry for me. I'm a singer/songwriter. I'm an artist. My job description and the basis upon which I make choices about how to do my job is hoping to make excellent art and to write and perform songs with excellence.

Now in any job there are going to be opportunities where ministry can happen and you want to be ready and aware of those moments. My brother, for instance, is a family practice doctor in Lincoln, Nebraska. He's also a Christian, as am I. He's not a vocational Christian minister; he is a professional doctor. He doesn't go to work everyday to evangelize, he goes to work everyday to provide excellent healthcare. It's very much the same for me. I don't do that in order to evangelize, I do it to make excellent art that's engaging that people resonate with.

I do acknowledge that music is really powerful and I've seen that. But I think that art is not at its best use when it's being used as a tool to do something else. The entire first chapter of the Bible is our marveling at God for making all things out of nothing. In the beginning God created. It's the first attribute we learn of His in the Bible; He's creative. There is intrinsic value in creativity and making things that are excellent and that's more how I approach my job.

CP: Do you think putting the label Christian over an artist hinders what they can do musically, and also alienates them from a group of people who might genuinely enjoy the music?

DW: I've always felt, even back to the first earliest days of Caedmon, that the term 'Christian' has never been helpful, in my opinion. Caedmon got its start playing at a lot of colleges. If the promoters put "Christian band" on the flyer, then half the amount of people would show up just because they weren't interested; not because they had heard us, not because they had any idea of what we were going to say or how it was going to go down. They just weren't interested and I probably wouldn't have been either.
I feel like even if you're intention is to evangelize and do ministry, it's smarter to not put a category on something before people even have a chance to hear it or experience it. That might alienate them and keep them from even wanting to give it a try in the first place, especially if they might really love it. If you have no idea what people think of that word, why would you use it? Especially when, in my opinion, the term Christian when applied to anything other than a human being is a marketing term.

CP: Between Caedmon's Call and your solo career, what was your defining moment as an artist that made you say, "Wow, I did it."

DW: I don't know. I feel like it's probably a thousand seemingly insignificant moments along the way. I remember Caedmon spent three or four years independent. We put out a couple records and were touring nationally before we found our first record deal. When Caedmon signed our first deal, as a songwriter, for me, I was poor as poor gets. When I started to make money, I had to go open a bank account and I realized that I was going to be able to support myself, that this is actually a job that I could do. Now that was a big moment.

I remember several moments along the way where it was dawning on me that I was going to be able to do this for the rest of my life. Nowadays, the dream is just different. The dream now is to make a sustainable wage being blue-collar, learning how to find your tribe and make art that resonates with them. If your ego can bear not being a household name or ever making seven figures in a year, you can have a great job as an independent artist. But if what you're looking for is fame and fortune, you should probably get into another line of work.

CP: Aside from the new album, what's on the horizon for you?

DW: I'm going to spend some real time promoting the record. I'm going to get out on the road before the end of the year. I also am the President of Noisetrade and run that company, so that's about three days a week for me and part of my every day work that I do. I have two small kids and a wife. So that sounds like three or four full-time jobs right there.

I Was Wrong, I'm Sorry & I Love You will be released September 3. Webb wrote, recorded, and produced every song on the album.

Website // www.derekwebb.com
Facebook // www.facebook.com/derekwebb
Twitter // www.twitter.com/derekwebb

Derek Webb Says 'I Was Wrong, I'm Sorry & I Love You' Are Words to Build Relationships By

Original interview I did for the Christian Post. Read the original here. 

Derek Webb, former singer of Caedmon's Call and President of NoiseTrade music sharing website, discussed his new album, I Was Wrong, I'm Sorry & I Love You, what it's like being a 20 year veteran in music, and why the label of "Christian artist" is not always the best thing for getting the gospel heard.

His new album will be available on September 3.

Christian Post: In creating I Was Wrong, I'm Sorry & I Love You, you went back 10 years to your first album, and wrote it as a follow up of who you are now. Well, who are you now, and what are some of the major changes since then?

Derek Webb: The new album is very much connected to my first album, She Must and Shall Go Free, which came out a little more than 10 years ago and was the result of questions that I had about the church. Having spent 10 years prior in Caedmon's Call and after years in the Christian culture, I found myself with a lot of questions about my role in the church. My first record was me trying to answer those questions.


For the 10 year anniversary tour of my record, we played through every song off of She Must and Shall Go Free each night. I was grateful for the fact that I could sing every word of all 11 songs on that record and still agree with every word. I think that people over the years have heard me say a handful of things that would cause them to wonder if I did still agree with all of the words from my first record, and I do.

But a lot also changes in 10 years. This record, I Was Wrong, I'm Sorry and I Love You, is just my trying to ask those same kinds of questions and see what the different answers are. I'm different and the church is different and the culture is different and so, there was a lot to write about.

CP: Why do you feel those three statements are important to a relationship?

DW: Growing up, I always heard that "I was wrong," "I'm sorry," and "I love you" were the three things you had to learn how to say to keep any relationship going. In my 12 years of marriage, I've certainly found that to be true, as well as in my other relationships and in business. There is a moment in an argument or disagreement when someone is willing to confess, say they were wrong, ask for forgiveness and express love that softens the other person. So, when you're gridlocked in a moment where you have two people that are fighting for their side of an argument, building their case like lawyers, and there is a moment when somebody can soften and be the first to confess, it immediately changes everything. The whole room changes when that happens. Those are powerful statements to be able to make.

CP: How do you feel these words can relate to God, forgiveness, and giving and receiving love?

DW: That certainly was a focus for me writing this record. I feel like the concept of the album has a lot of different audiences. I wasn't just saying it to one group of people. Whenever we let people down, whenever we betray trust, whenever we sin, primarily we are doing that against God. So that is the first place we take our confession. From there, because of His kindness, we repent and go and make it right with the folks that we've secondarily sinned against.

CP: What makes this work stick out to you, as opposed to your last album Ctrl, and how does your musical style evolve from album to album?

DW: Every record for me over the last 10-11 years has been really different. I approach every album as though I've never made an album before. Every record takes on its own sonic identity. Ctrl was a really peculiar album for a lot of reasons and probably the album that I'll be most proud of out of my whole career. It's is a complicated piece of work. It's really abstract, really high concept and it required quite a bit of attention currency, which is understandably in short supply nowadays for people.

On this new record, I really want it to be a bridge or an olive branch. I realized 10 years in that I had maybe unintentionally pushed people away a little bit. I have always seen it as part of my job to agitate. I think I'm good at it and that there is a place for that. But I realize you can't only agitate people, you have to also resonate with people. I think it had been awhile since people had felt that resonance from me.

Although I'm never interested in restating things I've said previously, this felt like a moment to make an investment in my next 10 years. I love my job and I want to stay in my job. It felt like a moment to make an investment like that. This time around, the challenge was figuring out how to pull it all in together and make something that to me felt really fresh, like something I'd never done before.

CP: 20 years playing music professionally, is there anything you felt the same about in 1993 that you still do now regarding music? What about the other way? What has changed most for you as an artist?

DW: 20 years is a long time. I'm not even near the person I was 20 years ago, thankfully so, other than the fact that I'm the same height, unfortunately. I feel like I am more appreciative of my job now. I think I had a bit of a sense of entitlement early on because I was so young, right out of high school, when we started Caedmon's Call. We had so much immediate success and had such a great run for so many years. When you learn to expect it and feel entitled to it, it becomes dangerous and you aren't grateful for it. I'm really grateful for it.

20 years in, I've already had more than twice what most people get in a job like this and I'm so grateful for every year that I have. I think I've learned how to apply my creativity beyond just the making and writing of albums. I've learned to enjoy the business side, enjoy all the other peripheral parts of the job.
An example of that would be NoiseTrade, which is a company that I founded about five years ago with some friends, giving away free music and content for data (fan information, emails and zip codes). We give away more than half a million records a month at NoiseTrade now. I wouldn't have been able to come up with that idea if it weren't for learning to apply the same creativity that I applied to making records to distributing and promoting those records.

I would encourage any independent artist to learn how to do that. Learn how to apply your creativity across the board to every part of the business. You're running a small business when you're an independent artist. 20 years in I'm really grateful that I've had mentors around me and people that have helped me learn how to do it.

Part two of this interview will be posted tomorrow. Webb discusses the term "Christian artist," and talks about being a struggling artist as well as his plans for the future.