Derek Webb sings about his courtship with his wife, Sandra McCracken, and talks about the fun he had recording The Ringing Bell.

In this fifth installment of our six-part interview, Derek shows that he is capable of having some fun. He tells us about the song he wrote about his Courtship with his wife and just how much fun the CD was to work on.

Suite: One of the songs that I really enjoyed, I thought it a had great sound, great lyrics, was “I Wanna Marry You All Over Again”.

Derek: Yeah.

Suite: It seems to be your and Sandra’s story, courtship.

Derek: Yeah, it is, yeah, literally to the detail. I was out on the road last year, you know you tend to write what’s right in front of you.

That chorus is something I find myself saying to my wife all the time just because we’ve had such a really fun story and, she’s an artist as well, and we’ve done a lot of traveling, so it’s been really fun. I always find myself saying how much I wish we could really start from the beginning and do the whole thing again because it’s been so much fun.

As I’m traveling I’m kind of writing these things down. Basically the song wrote itself. Once I had the idea and I started to go through all the different details and different parts of our story, there was too much to even put in there. And it was funny, when I started to pare it down and really look at it, I thought this sounds absolutely outrageous. It sounds hysterical, but all of this is completely true, I mean every detail of it.

I really did meet her parents in an airport bar in St. Louis. I happened to be in that airport playing a show with Caedmon’s and she was flying out. Her parents were dropping her off and we met each other randomly. Her parents and I sat in the airport bar in St. Louis for an hour and had drinks and talked about Sandra.

There are all of these different great details that when you put them together, string them together like that, it makes for a pretty funny song. Yeah, I was really happy with that.

Suite: It was a neat story, I really liked that. I liked the sound of it too, the little nuances, the little things. I liked the clapping and playing the old upright and then you hear a little piano banging.

Derek: Yeah right. We tried to put lot of punctuation in there, so to speak. To punctuate some of those lines to where you hear something and we wanted to put a little extra detail in there to make it a little more visual.

We had a blast, literally, making this entire record. I think you can hear that in the sound of the record. We had a really incredible time. Cason Cooley helps me make all my records, he produces my records with me and is one of my best friends. We had a blast making this record.

I think compared to Mocking Bird, The Ringing Bell probably has moments that are just as heavy on it, if not heavier, content wise than what was on the last record. But you just don’t seem to notice it very much on The Ringing Bell because it’s just a lighter record which, I think I did a better job with The Ringing Bell than I did on Mocking Bird in terms of building a better Trojan horse.

Making the melody a little more fun, exploring it a little more, striking a better balance between the heavy content and trying to make a record that’s kind of fun and lighter. Mocking Bird, I don’t regret anything about that record, but it was really heavy.

There were shows that we played the Mocking Bird album back to front and that would be the show. We started with the first song and played all the way through the whole record and by the end of the show it was just exhausting. It felt just kind of heavy. It was emotionally draining to do it. I realized wow, maybe we should think a little harder about how we’re delivering it. I think we did a little better job on this record.

Suite: It’s like you slip things in there. It’s fun, but then you catch something that makes you think. Every time I listen to it, I pick up something more that I look at in a different perspective or I didn’t pick up exactly that way before.

Derek: Yeah, that’s great. That’s certainly my intention. I’m really glad to hear it.

Derek Webb Interview Part One: Derek talks about the title of his new CD and writing songs.

Derek Webb Interview Part Two: Derek talks about peace and pacifism.

Derek Webb Interview Part Three: Derek expands on pacifism and tells us about his graphic novel.

Derek Webb Interview Part Four: Derek talks about using different mediums to communicate a concept.

Derek Webb Interview Part Six: Derek talks about reuniting with his friends in Caedmon's Call