Derek Webb Interview – 26 February 2005

G: ISTUD is very different musically as far as the performance and all that, and how much from your core fan base that, you know, had at Caedmon’s and sort of came with you as you left the band and the people that have followed you since you left the band …how weirded out have people been, people that have been like, “You know, I didn’t really get what was going on,”; have people been really confused about the album?

D: You know what’s weird? Here’s the honest truth: I just don’t really know. I hear things, here and there, I get to talk to you sometimes, and I get to read the board sometimes, so I get some reaction from people, and I’ve seen somebody on the board, and talking to people here and there… And it’s just like everything, people will really like it or they don’t, and there’s degrees of that, people like some things and don’t like other things. And I mean, that’s great, that’s what I was all about. I’m happy to be finally not making universally-loved commercial art. I mean, you know, because commercial art, the nature of it is to make it so that everyone will like it. That’s what commercial art is all about. And that’s great; I love that there are bands who are willing to make really commercial art in order to get our views out, in order to engage with a really big audience, that’s great. I just don’t really have any commercial ambitions; I don’t, I never have. I’m not interested in making music that I think everyone’s going to like. I know how to do that, I don’t know if I could, but I don’t know what it would take for me to make music that I think everyone really likes. I think – and this is a prediction that there’s no way we could verify – but I think I could go in, and make a record, and tailor it, and I think I know exactly what it would take to make a record that all of the hardcore people and the people on the board would love. I really do, I really think I know how to make that record.

Now will I ever make that record? I don’t know, because I might not have it in me to really wanna do that. But if that’s what I wanted to do, I really think I know what it would take; because I think I know what their tastes are, I think, in reading from their reactions to the record, and to the first, and to the house show and the new one, I think I see what people are reacting to, and I think I know what they like, what they liked about each one, and what they didn’t. But the thing is – and some people make their whole living trying to figure out what those things are, and how to make records that will sell like crazy, and that everyone will love. I don’t really want to make records that everyone will love; I want to make records that I think are good, and that are an expression of what I like, and I mean that’s what I’m doing.