Derek Webb walked into 2025 overwhelmed by the endless barrage of indignities and aggressions Trump 2.0 was already waging on the world. As an artist, he quickly realized he couldn’t put out every fire; his job was to find his “tallest fire” and focus on it. As the parent of a queer child, it didn’t take long to identify what that tallest fire would be.
He scrapped plans to focus on the 20th anniversary of his album Mockingbird and retreated into his home to write and record Survival Songs. Webb produced and mixed the album himself, with just a few weeks between developing the concept and releasing it.
The album is a nine-track statement of affirmation and admiration for the courage of LGBTQ+ young people in a world increasingly intent on erasing their existence.
After Survival Songs was released, Webb put out a call to friends across the country to host small house shows where he could share the album.
“There is no show too small for me to play,” he told a group of about 15 people gathered at University Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, last Sunday for the final stop on the Survival Songs tour. The Waco show capped off a year spent playing in living rooms, church basements, and small venues across the country.
“These have easily been the most meaningful shows I have ever done, and the most meaningful batch of songs I have ever recorded,” Webb said in an interview after the concert. “I learned about ten years ago that art doesn’t have to be useful to have value. But if it is going to be useful, I want the art I create to help people feel less alone in the experience of their lives.”
He added, “Once I saw that, I was like, ‘OK, this is the only reason I want to make music now.’”
Webb came to prominence in the 1990s as a founding member of the contemporary Christian band Caedmon’s Call, known for its folk-rock style and lyricism that transcended much of the genre’s manufactured simplicity. He departed the band in 2003 to pursue a solo career, but has returned for various projects over the years.
His musical journey has consistently tracked with his lived experience at different stages of life, producing an eclectic catalog that occupies nearly every space along the spectrums of faith, belief, doubt, and curiosity.
That dissonance surfaced during the Waco show when a young audience member requested “Wedding Dress” from Webb’s 2003 debut solo album, She Must and Shall Go Free. The song mirrors the Old Testament story of Hosea, a theological framework that sits uneasily alongside Webb’s more recent work. It is a tension he doesn’t avoid.
“I wrote this song,” he told the audience. “But I’m not the man who wrote this song.”
After the show, Webb reflected on the arc of his career and the shifting ways he and his audiences have invested in and divested from faith and religious institutions.
“I’m always happy to talk about it, especially if it helps give people more language to express their experiences,” he said. “Maybe the most meaningful thing that happens at this point in my career is only possible because of my random ‘zigs and zags.’ People who grew up listening to Caedmon’s Call, and maybe associate that music with a difficult period of their lives, sometimes come up and tell me how healing it is to hear the voice that was saying some of those things then say these things now.”
He added, “If I can be the voice that helps pull all those threads of their life stories together, then that’s beyond anything I ever could have accomplished with my work.”
Survival Songs is available on all streaming platforms. Physical copies of the album, including album artwork from Webb’s child, Ash, can be purchased at derekwebb.com.
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Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.
