alexander webb

"Former quarterback steals the stage"

by Taylor Coe '13
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR

Not too long ago, Alexander Webb was the rookie quarterback on the football team at Northwestern. His career cut short by a liver injury in his first collegiate game, Webb reorganized his priorities around music and has been writing and playing ever since. Boasting a sweet voice and skills on the guitar unusual for a confessional-style singer-songwriter, Webb was the perfect opener for Jessica Sonner last Thursday night at the final Acoustic Coffeehouse of the year.

The idea of being a professional musician did not even occur to Webb until his injury. “Probably the most exciting component of everything was the pre-game bus ride with the headphones,” Webb noted. “I thought it was the sport, but it turns out it was probably music that was giving me the adrenaline rush.”

Webb insisted that, despite the seeming gap between the two, he found similarities between them. “Both are reactional—I’ve always loved using my body to do a performance.” As for the inherent social pitfalls of being both an athlete and an artist, Webb said, “I ran into different dining tables.”

The majority of Webb’s songs occupies a first-person voice and emerges directly out of issues in his everyday life—religious belief, relationships and family. Aiming for an honesty through his songwriting, Webb thinks that in order to write a song about something, he must experience it first.

“I’d love to make music my life, but that’s a dead end for me, and I wind up not having very much to write about,” said Webb. “I have to live life. I have to take the spotlight off music.”

Despite his insistence on the first-person narrative, Webb has written one so-called “story-song” for a soldier whom he knew in Iraq. While he does not see himself as a storyteller, he believes that he ought to branch out in that direction. That song, with which he opened his set, was arguably one of his most affecting.

There are only so many songs about old girlfriends that can be written, and hopefully the success of this song pushes Webb to the same conclusion. Only a truly thorny topic can emerge with the gripping line: “A rule could never change our hearts.”

Sonner, a far less dynamic stage presence than Webb, played a slow, quiet set that seemed to intentionally lull the audience into sleep. If her voice had been smooth and mournful, everyone would have been a goner. But her voice had a sharp edge to it; she sang with a crispness that cut straight through the waves of gentle strumming and finger picking.

Admittedly uncomfortable on the stage, Sonner’s chatter between songs was either explicitly related to the material or total non-sequiturs. Suffice it to say that sometimes I had no idea what she was talking about. Despite her clumsiness on the stage, Sonner’s music—particularly her songwriting—displayed a concise clarity and, sometimes, even a sense of beauty.

Once given the advice that “on paper a good song should read as well as a poem,” Sonner is admittedly careful about the words to her songs. “If I don’t have something to say, then why sing it?” said Sonner.

But even with her careful lyrics, Sonner could not quite top Webb’s first song. You set the bar pretty high with an honest tune about the war in Iraq.
- The Spectator (Hamilton College Publication)