He Sees Things Upside Down
by Andy Argyrakis | posted 11/01/2004
 1 of 3
When he was with Caedmon's Call, Derek Webb enjoyed the comforts of fame, selling out 2,000-seat theatres on a daily basis and selling over a million total CDs. Then he left it all behind, splitting with the band amicably and going solo with 2003's She Must and Shall Go Free. He played house concerts for about 20 people a night. His radio visibility virtually disappeared. So why the move? Webb wanted to express some things that didn't really fit in the Caedmon's context—or the typical CCM pop culture mold, for that matter. Indeed, the title of his new album, I See Things Upside Down, says as much. Webb is incredibly candid in his analysis of Christian culture and its music scene. He balks at the idea of spiritual celebrities, confronts the church with its need for reform, and basically takes every possible risk one could apply to a rootsy acoustic rock record. In short, Webb likes to push the envelope—and we wanted to know why. Of course, he was more than happy to tell it like it is …
What were your expectations and apprehensions when you left Caedmon's Call?
Derek Webb I was trying to not have expectations. I didn't know exactly how it would go and I tried really hard not to make comparisons to the group. When you walk away from a successful band like Caedmon's to do something on your own like that, there's definitely the temptation to want to hold yourself up against them. The thing is, I will never sell that many records. In my whole solo career, I probably won't sell as many as Caedmon's will sell of any one of its records. I'll never play those size concerts. But that's not the reason that I left. I didn't leave because I had ambition. I left because I had vision for something else.
If the band and I had not split so well, I think I would have been tempted to get disappointed or competitive, and there's been none of that—especially with the release of the newest Caedmon's record, Share the Well, which I think is tremendous. It's their first record without me and I find myself as a fan getting really excited. Truth be told, I've never listened to Caedmon's Call's records before!
Why don't you feel you were fully able to express yourself in Caedmon's?
Webb I didn't really stumble on the more purely artistic differences until after I got away from the band and had some time to think about who I was as a solo artist. So my first record was kind of a transition. It was a little more raw and rootsy than the stuff in Caedmon's. Everybody in that band has their own background and musical tastes that they bring together, and that's how we reached the conclusions in the music that we did. I always liked kind of rootsier stuff, so that's what I went for on my first shot.
But it really wasn't about what I could and couldn't do [musically] within Caedmon's Call. It was more from the content perspective. Caedmon's had built a certain thing over ten years, and I didn't know if it was worth risking all that on a vision I was afraid maybe I was the only one who had. I didn't know if my first record of just songs about the church could've fit within those contexts. I would've had to say to the group, "I have a whole record's worth of songs I'm hoping can all be included on our next record, which is a risk I'm calling you all to." Going that route didn't make sense, so I went to them and we decided it would be right for me to do this record on my own. I realized I don't have time to do something solo and Caedmon's Call because both are so demanding. I had to do one or the other.
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