From the opening lyrics of singer-songwriter Derek Webb’s most recent album, “Survival Songs,” I could tell he’s a modern-day bard, using melody and rhythm to tell a story. The story he tells in this album is a love letter to the LGBTQ+ community—one that genuinely sees the struggles and oppression, triumphs and joys we experience as queer people in America.
In an April, 2025 podcast episode of Good Faith Weekly, Webb discussed his hopes for the then-upcoming album and three specific songs (“Queer Kid,” “Nail Polish,” and “I Was There, Too, It Won’t Be This Way Forever”).
I recently sat down with Webb to discuss “Survival Songs” and his motivation and spiritual influences for the album. The key theme for both is relationship. (Parts of our conversation have been edited for space and clarity.)
Webb knows the harm that well-intentioned but misinformed or ill-equipped allies can do. He did not want to produce something that would unintentionally cause harm. Before he wrote any of the songs, he reached out to some of his closest friends in the LGBTQ+ community and asked a simple but profound question: What would you tell your younger self?
Many of those exact phrases are in the last song of the album, which features those exact friends saying these affirmations themselves. Other songs were inspired by Webb’s experience of walking alongside close friends during their self-discovery process.
He spoke fondly of his relationship with Rev. Dr. Roberto Che Espinoza—activist, liberation theologian, and professor—as he navigates his life as an openly trans man. Webb noted how Espinoza’s vulnerability with him allowed Webb an intimate window into trans lives. Several parts of the song “In Your Place” are inspired by that relationship.
But there’s a couplet of songs –”Sola Translove” parts one and two—that speak to an intimate kind of relational spirituality queerness can show the world if only the world would hear. Webb spoke about the intrinsic value of our inner divine and how love operates far beyond and above the gendered constructs we try to place on it; if we allow that love to guide us, it can show us how to be in the world.
“It was about resisting binaries when it comes to the type of energy you can be for somebody, and that’s what it is kind of talking about,” Webb said. “If you need a mother, I could try to be your mother. If you need a father, you might find a father in an unexpected person. Even saying masculine/feminine energy is over-binary, obviously, but whatever it is you’re looking for, what you need: brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers. I liked the idea of playing with that language and mixing that up in a way that dismantled and untangled some of the over-binary ways that we think about relationships.”
To paraphrase Webb: only love. More love, more love, more love. “Only love beyond love.”
Webb said that this album was unlike any he’d ever recorded before. Where he’d normally collaborate with a producer to balance and mix the recordings, he recorded all the songs himself over a long weekend and released them shortly thereafter.
For him, the urgency of releasing these songs for those who need them superseded the need for them to sound perfect.
“There is a vulnerability and an authenticity, I think, in the actual recording that a lot of my albums don’t have,” he said. “Because I didn’t take the time to fix things and tune things and correct things and edit things. I just needed to get it out and available.”
Overall, the folksy, acoustic-guitar-forward music longtime fans of Webb have come to expect does not disappoint.
As a queer pastor, I felt incredibly seen by an ally who truly knows what it means to love queer people. I anticipate that this album will be one I visit often as we continue to fight for the rights and protection of LGBTQ+ people.
While Webb said he’d certainly welcome folks purchasing tour tickets or subscribing to his Patreon, he said the support he’d appreciate the most is simply listening to the album.
“For me, all I’m trying to do now is just steward the songs,” he said. “[For you] to listen and to think of who might need these songs and to share, that is the best thing. Do that before you buy an album. Do that before you become a patron. I mean, do that before you buy a ticket. Just listen to it in order that it might tell you who might need to hear it, and then just share it. That would be huge.”
“Survival Songs” is currently streaming on all available platforms. You can also hear these songs live on Webb’s current house show tour. Through the contributions of several generous people, all LGBTQ+ teens can attend the shows for free.
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A bivocational pastor, writer and spiritual director based in Williamsburg, Virginia, she currently works as a Spiritual Director at Reclamation Theology. Cawthon-Freels is the author of Reclamation: A Queer Pastor’s Guide to Finding Spiritual Growth in the Passages Used to Harm Us (Nurturing Faith Books), and a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.
