Derek Webb is no stranger to controversy. His self-described “protest songs” that tackle issues from politics and war to wealth and the American dream have earned major media attention, garnering features in USA Today, RELEVANT and NPR. His latest album, The Ringing Bell, (which hits stores on May 1) offers more insight about American Christianity and why, when it comes to big ideas, it’s good to remain a moving target.
Tell us about your approach to your new album.
It was a chance to turn the amps up and just make a lot of noise. It was really fun. After touring solo acoustic for the last couple of years and with the last album being sort of a mellow album, it was just my instinct to go electric on this one.
You’re releasing a graphic novel with this album. How did that come about?
It just kills a few birds with one stone, because I love comic books. I love graphic novels. I just love that medium, and I've got friends who are really, really gifted at producing art like that. I know the ones who designed the packaging and the cover of the album, and we just kept working and kept coming up with images that pulled more out of the lyrics, so the idea of the book just kind of came about.
It kind of takes the idea of vinyl packaging the way it used to be—people used to love buying records because there was this really tremendous packaging that you could go through and just some really tremendous artwork on some of those record covers and within some of those record sleeves.
Nowadays, with the CD booklet, it's not really the most ideal or impressive way to communicate idea! s visual ly, so we thought we could put together 100 pages of really amazing abstract art based on the lyrics, and that might be a compelling enough artifact to get someone to engage with the record.
You sing about being a moving target and dodging political labels in the song "Name." Is that something that's been a personal challenge?
Yeah, it's always a challenge. I feel like I've seen so many times, where somebody will come out with some fresh ideas, and then before you know it, they really become a spokesperson for something that's just the other side of the thing they're trying to do battle against. I think that coupled with the fact that I think Jesus was the ultimate moving target. He never really let anybody categorize Him.
| |||||||||||||||||||
Every time they would try to pin Him down in a way that He wasn't willing to be pinned down, He always had these gray and totally left-of-center and outrageous answers that He would give that really kept anyone from putting any kinds of names on Him. If, as a follower of Jesus, I'm going to speak into a political situation, it's really the hardest work that I have to do to keep myself from being a co-agitator, but never to align myself with a particular party. Jesus is who I align myself with, and beyond that, you have to be careful not to remain an agitator with everyone else.
That's something—especially in modern Christian circles—that is really a challenge.
I think that people would respect it when Christians speak more if everything we say wasn't so predictable. Because Jesus wasn't predictable.
Not by a long shot. He was always saying the opposite of what you'd think—and that's not necessarily the point, because there is a moment to say "this is what I believe to be true" and to stand on some of those things—but I just feel like there are so many people who don't even want to ask a Christian or somebody following Jesus a question because they think they already know what the answer is.
And worse, I think there are politicians and certain kinds of people in our culture who abuse certain types of leadership positions. They have people so figured out and decoded that they know they can come in front of a group of Christians and say any one of about three or four different buzzwords, and they can absolutely mobilize those Christians into doing whatever it is they want done.
"A Savior on Capitol Hill" has some pretty biting satire. When writing, do you ever get concerned with the response it will generate?
Well, no. I've really tried to set a precedent of not concerning myself! with wh at people think about what I'm doing—even if people really like it. I don't want to let any of that influence what I'm writing and how I'm writing it.
I feel like the people who listen to my music understand me well enough to know when I'm being sarcastic. There were occasions from my last record when people would tell me about the song "A New Law"—that they totally agree with me that our main problem in the Church is that people are not giving us clear enough instruction, that we just need people to tell us more clearly what we're supposed to be doing, and that they really agree with me that we need a new set of laws that we could just keep. I didn't have the heart to [say] that's completely not the point. That entire song was total sarcasm. But that's the minority of people—I think most people hear songs like that and know where I'm coming from.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment