Bry Webb “Run With Me”
For about half of 2001, I worked in a cubicle upstairs from Tower Records — the great, big one, across the street from Other Music — where I sat next to a guy who wore linen shirts with two of the buttons undone and who was unerringly generous with his corporate credit card. Several times each month we’d get lunch together near our office, which was in Soho, which meant that even our modest meals were expensive to the point of being indulgent. It was during one of these lunches that I discovered his origin (Toronto), his job (procuring new revenue streams for the record label) and the fact that — like me — his job was actually a side hustle for his real job. Which, in his case, was managing bands.
After a bunch of these corporate subsidized, get to know each other hangs, he did the thing that all band managers do and which I’d expected him to do months earlier. He handed me a CD-R. During my relatively young career in the music industry, I’d been handed countless CD-Rs. Some were offered with hopes that I might in turn hand them to somebody more important. Some were presented as a request for (positive) feedback. Some were just promotional handouts, sowing the seeds of awareness. But this one felt different. This one felt like a gift. And so, more than a little curious about my Canadian bon vivant friend and the band he managed, I brought it home, placed it in my Sony Discman, put my headphones on and pressed play. Forty-three minutes later — and to my indescribable surprise — my life was changed.
Whereas, hours before, I had reasonably assumed that I was the one doing him a favor, I quickly realized the opposite was true. What I had expected to be middling or simply not my thing was in fact fully, exceptionally, absolutely my thing. The songs on that CD-R sounded like Bruce’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town” reimagined by Fugazi. It was something so familiar, but I’d never heard anything like it before. More than familiar, though, it was affirming. It made all those other CD-Rs I’d accepted and reluctantly (half) listened to worth it. It made me wonder not whether this CD-R band were really any good but whether I’d just heard the best band on the planet — a band that nobody except my linen-shirted friend seemed to know about.
That was my introduction to the Constantines, the band whose first song, from their first album, was about an aging, former Pop star who — many years later after his one, great hit — put a bullet in his head at a motel outside of Phoenix. On that song, which was uncoincidentally also the first track on my gifted CD-R, Bry Webb howls:
In my hands
A hymn of dispossession
In my head
I'm hearing love songs
I'm going to run my tongue
Over the body of the nation
I'm going to sing sing sing
To all the dirty little engines
As long as we are lonely
We will dance
As long as we are dying
We want the death of rock and roll
What kind of twenty year olds introduce themselves that way? Moreover, what band of twenty year olds introduce themselves that way and make it work? The Constantines — that’s who. They were not the first group to find catharsis between tragedy and triumph — The Clash invented that gambit. But The Cons were great at it from the start. Maybe not Clash level great. But also — to my ears at least — maybe not so far off.
It would be nearly two more years before I actually got to see Bry Webb (guitar & vocals), Steve Lambke (guitar & vocals), Doug MacGregor (drums), Dallas Wehrle (bass) and Will Kidman (keyboards) — the Constantines — perform live. But, it took me all of one minute at that first concert to confirm everything I’d assumed based on their CD-R. They were far too important to be playing clubs. And yet, I somehow knew that their destiny was to be the greatest club band in the history of Rock and Roll. That theaters and arenas did not deserve them. That radio did not deserve “Hyacinth Blues” or ”Nighttime Anytime” or “Tank Commander.” The Cons seemed too meaningful to be wasted on fame.
Frankly, I have no other explanation for how they did not become massively fucking huge. Back then, I would occasionally book shows that were really parties on the outskirts of music festivals — SXSW, CMJ and the like. Any chance I could, I’d book The Cons. Without fail, they would show up to a tiny room, packed with two hundred sweaty believers, and positively slay. And after every show I’d feel like I’d just seen The Beatles in Hamburg. But not “young, work in progress Beatles” — the actual, fully formed Beatles.
The kick of the bass. The ring of the organ. The stomp of the drum. The way one guitar hurdled like a freight train while the other cut odd angles like grad school math. All of it. But mostly, it was the way Bry Webb sang. With weight of a hoarse deadpan that had no business possessing range or melody, but which had an abundance of both. At one point, during every show, they’d do this thing where they’d stop in the middle of “Shine a Light,” let the organ ring on a loop, put their hands up in the air as an act of solidarity — with each other and with the audience — wait a minute, hold the pose and then roar back in for the final mile. I knew it was a performative trick, the kind of thing they practiced every night — except it never felt like a trick. It felt honest and spontaneous and positively thrilling.
And just when you thought the show was over — when you finally had a chance to exhale and when you could not not smile — they’d return for an encore. They were renowned for closing with astonishing cover versions of Neil Young or Lou Reed or Talking Heads. Their versions of “Fuckin’ Up,” “Temporary Thing” and “Thank You for Sending Me an Angel” were legendary. But their ultimate flex — their blow the roof off, don’t try this at home gambit — started around 2007 when they would close shows with “Thunderstruck.” I’m pretty sure that there’s an unspoken rule in Rock and Roll which states that, unless you are AC/DC or an AC/DC cover band, you do not un-ironically cover “Thunderstruck.” But The Constantines were the exception to that rule. They were a reminder that, without AC/DC, there is no Fugazi. They toed the line between dead fucking serious and utterly joyous. To this day, my favorite “Thunderstruck” is The Cons’ “Thunderstruck.”
Back then, for as much as I dealt with bands through work, very rarely did I hang out with them. For one thing, I was not a musician. Also, I didn’t drink or smoke — I was more of “the responsible guy” than the “get fucked up in the van guy.” And so, as much as I adored Constantines, I never said more than “hey” or “thanks” to the guys in the band. Until, one night in the mid-Aughts when, a couple hours before they were due to play The Mercury Lounge, while my (now) wife and I were wondering how to pass the time, Bry, Steve and the guys huddled up nearby, seemingly trying figure out the same. Which is when my wife, who is barely more of a party starter than I am, called out and said, “Hey guys — want to grab a drink?” Which is how I ended up drinking Jameson Whiskey (which I don’t think I’d consumed before or since) with the Constantines at The Library Bar on Avenue A in New York City.
As expected, the guys were kind and smart and cool. Not cool as in hip — cool as in good hangs. Fun. Funny. Normal. But at the bar that night, before another club show, during another year of touring, I noticed something in Bry — their reluctant frontman who transformed into Joe Strummer onstage. I noticed a tiredness. And also, maybe, a sadness. Both of which seemed like reasonable reactions to years spent in vans, thrilling a discerning few while being widely ignored by the rest of the world. It made some sense that Bry might feel exhausted or dejected or both. But that sadness stayed with me. At least for an hour, at which point my wife and I walked into the venue, sauntered close to the stage, and had our lives changed, one more time, by the Constantines.
The next day, giddy from the show and happy to have finally, properly met the band, I considered whether the sadness I had detected was, in fact, my own. Maybe I was sad for them because they were not and never would be The Clash. By that point, they were not even be the most Important Band in Canada — having been lapped by Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene and New Pornographers. Maybe the hopelessness I felt was my own. That pang stuck with me over the next few years as Constantines packed and unpacked their van, rinsed, repeated and then, slowly but surely, wound down.
“Arizona,” the first song I ever heard by The Cons, is about death, but it’s really about the defiance of death. If they were gonna die, they were gonna take Rock and Roll with them. “Nighttime Anytime,” however, was the apotheosis of their brand — a song unafraid of death. A song about perseverance as defiance — as revelation. This was their promise:
It's hard not to surrender
But I will dance down through the alleyways
With one foot in the gutter
Take the city as a sister
The nighttime as a lover
Nighttime/anytime, it's alright
In time, however, the defiance faded while the work remained. Mid-period Cons celebrated their own tenacity. Their passion. And their reliability. By the time of “Working Full Time” from their third LP, their brand had donned a blue collar.
We will be all undone
Working full-time
We won’t be undersold
As the members approached thirty, their dreams were less about earth shaking and more about doing good work — day in and out. While they’d never be The Clash, they certainly could take pride in their effort and commitment. But, by 2008, that tirelessness began to waver. “Kensington Heights,” the final Cons’ album, is far from Punk. It’s not an album of defiance or commitment even. It’s an album of self-acceptance. It’s an acknowledgement that, while they had come this far, they would not make it any further. This is who they were. Nearly a decade in, they could not outrun their fate as the world’s most important club band. That was who they were. And that was the subtext to “Do What You Can Do,” the final song on the final album of their career.
I wish you twelve lanes of peace and quiet
And all speed away from human sorrow
You and I, we're gonna break even
Two animals on the road to animal heaven
You do what you can do with what you got
You do what you can do with what you got
“Do What You Can Do” is an anthem of self-acceptance. At the outset, it’s just two chords, sung quiet and stony. But then, after the set up, it explodes into a fist pumping plea. The Cons urging someone, everyone — mostly themselves — to give their best with what they’ve been given.
But, also, to be gentle to one another. It’s gonna be OK. Don’t try too hard. On “Kensington Heights,” as a closer, it presents like a victory cry. But, in retrospect, it was a tell — a resignation. On the “Too Slow for Love” EP which was released nearly a year after “Kensington Heights,” The Cons took another go at it. On this second, mostly acoustic version its intent is unambiguous. It’s not an anthem of self-acceptance — it’s a ballad about the pain of ambition. The LP version urges us to make the most of our situation. But the EP variation warns us against wanting too much — about dreaming too big. With the exception of “Call Me Out,” a digital only single released in 2020, the “Too Slow For Love” version of “Do What You Can Do” is the last song on the last thing The Cons ever put out.
There are many types of bands. There are corporations, like The Rolling Stones. There are communes, like Big Thief. And there are gangs, like The Clash. The Constantines, however, were more like a union — the genuine article. They were brothers in arms, in their jeans and flannel. But when their mission inevitably bumped against the realities of family and finance, the union dissolved. The miracle was not that The Cons broke up. The miracle was that they were so true and so committed and so good for as long as they were. Just four albums. Not even a decade. But they never stopped waving the flag. Never stopped working.
Which is why Bry Webb needed a break. Which is why, first, he moved to Montreal. And then to Guelph, outside Toronto, where he started anew, as a husband, a college radio programmer and the maker of quiet, plaintive songs. Songs wherein every string of every note and every breath in every word is audible. Where keyboards and guitar solos are replaced by lap steel and slide guitar. Where Bry is a lifetime away from the death of rock and roll and working full time, but where he is very clearly in the glow and glare of new fatherhood.
Bry Webb’s first solo record, “Provider,” is so named for that new role. He’s a songwriter, singer, guitarist and should-be rock star, but only during the minutes in between his real job — as a provider for his child and family. “Provider” bares some of the marks of his former band — resolve and surrender, deadpan and defiance, truth and dreams. But it turns all of those dials down from ten to two. Webb’s solo debut is an album best experienced at 3am, when you are bleary eyed and your infant has just fallen back asleep. I say this as a father whose first child was born in 2011 (the year “Provider” was released), who spent many late nights that were actually early mornings, holding and rocking my daughter, listening to Bry Webb and trying my very best not to weep.
Three years later, and the same year that our third child was born, Webb returned with “Free Will.” Whereas “Provider” was a dedication — a one way conversation between father and newborn — “Free Will” was an observation. A dad marveling at — and terrorized by — the burgeoning independence of their child. When interviewed around the time of these albums, Webb indicated that Asa — then a toddler — had awakened an interest in music that had waned during the end of The Cons’ run. But to whatever extent fatherhood nudged him back to the guitar and mic, it more so revealed a sadness within. On “Zebra,” from “Provider,” he sings:
You're just a man
Just a man
No vested interest
You're no master plan
Just a man
On “Free Will,” the delirium of new fatherhood becomes a dizzying helplessness. The singer, who was once capable of anything — including improving upon “Thunderstruck” — is struggling to adapt to this new season of life. In part, because the highs and lows are so different from the previous season, but also because, with children, the seasons change day to day. They adapt and grow up while we — the fathers -- watch and flail. Webb’s second solo album is every bit as lovely as his first — full of wee hour folk meditations and back porch country whispers. But the tenderness from his debut buckled somewhere on the way to album two. And without the resolve of his former band, that buckling gave way to a darkness — a depression.
Apparently, it was always there hiding in plain sight. Bry Webb suffers from depression. Sometimes it's dull, but manageable. And sometimes it's immobilizing. I’m not breaking any news here — not betraying any confidence. I don’t know any details. I don’t have any privileged accounts. But he’s written extensively and publicly on the subject. As somebody who does not suffer from depression, I have no idea — I can only imagine and empathize. I can only assume that it’s hard to perform while depressed. I can only imagine that it’s harder still to perform the role of moon howling, full time working frontman while depressed. But, I cannot even imagine doing all of those things — any of those things — while also holding down a nine to five job and adapting to new fatherhood. That sounds downright impossible. That sounds like a formula for depression.
I know I am not alone in caring. I know that many of us heard Bry Webb’s heavy-hearted howl as a calling. For us, there was The Boss and Joe Strummer and Ian MacKye and — yes — Bry Webb. And for those of us who saw that guy, in jeans and a flannel and a five o'clock shadow and an unruly swath of curls sparkling in the club lights like an unwilling crown, we simply could not imagine a world wherein he did not make music. But that’s exactly what happened. After “Free Will,” there was a short but positively necessary and sensational Cons reunion tour. And then, there was nothing. Silence. No news. A Tumblr left for dead. A LinkedIn post and profile that confirmed proof of life — life as a non-profit radio professional rather than as a working musician.
In the decade since “Free Will,” as my infants became kids and then big kids, and as my own young adulthood became parenthood and then middle age, I waited for a new Bry Webb album. And I waited some more. Occasionally, I even worried. But, eventually, I stopped. It was easier to reframe The Cons as a glorious memory and to dust off “Provider” and “Free Will” as secret talismans of new fatherhood than to hold out hope. Or worse — to confront the possibility that Bry Webb either could not or would not make music ever again.
And so, whereas I used to scour the internet several times a year for new tracks or old tracks or anything at all, I just cherished my records and playlists and opted to do what I could do with what I’d gotten. But somewhere along the way in my journey of acceptance — and to my amazement — I’d missed it. A flare, barely visible even in Canada, and certainly not audible from my home in Texas, had gone out. In late 2023, and completely unbeknownst to me, Bry Webb released a new album. “Run With Me” was the third in a trilogy for Idee Fixe Records. Same album packaging concept. Comparable length and size. Similar sounds — acoustic guitar, slide and pedal, spare drums, upright bass and piano. And, of course, Bry Webb, working his way through every word and every note with a delicacy generally reserved for lullabies, prayers and eulogies. He’s singing, but just barely. He’s speaking, but only loud enough for the microphone to crane its neck and hear him. As with his previous albums, it's unclear if Bry Webb really wants us to play his music so much as he needs somebody to listen.
When “Provider” came out, Bry Webb’s son was an infant — meaning he could not speak. When “Free Will” was released, though, his son was a toddler, meaning that they would be having wild, hilarious, mind-blowing conversations — but that only dad would remember them. By the time of “Run With Me,” the infant who grew into a toddler was approaching teendom. He could talk back. And he would remember. Which is why Webb’s third solo album is less a fatherly dedication and more a personal meditation.
“In early 2023 my personal life exploded. In the process of dealing with that, I started writing music again and started recording at home. Advised that I needed to figure out how to ask for, and accept, help from other people, I sent early recordings of songs to friends from twenty-five years of music making - many folks I hadn’t connected with in years - and asked if they’d contribute anything to the songs. People came through in ways that overwhelmed me to the point that I cried when I wrote out the list of players for the liner notes. I felt incredibly cared for.”
As to the nature of his personal explosion, I obviously have no idea. It reads like divorce, but that is far from the point. This is not a divorce album. “Run With Me” is a recovery album — a record made in the early days of devastation where the wounds are still visible and the outcome is uncertain. The songs (with one exception) are short and simple because the labor involved to be so honest and vulnerable demands so much. Every note sounds like it required superhuman bravery. Every song is a miracle of perseverance. Turns out that Constantines were not Webb’s vocation. This is his calling. This is the work.
“Run With Me” opens with “Webb,” the third in a series of album openers named for his son — the first being “Asa,” from “Provider,” followed by “Fletcher,” from “Free Will.” Whereas those first two were gentle invocations, though, the third is a dirge. Just horns. Less than a minute. It’s not funereal so much as it seems to be saying “good mourning.” It’s the end of something and beginning of something else — just after the darkest hour, right before the dawn. From there, however, Webb begins to stretch out — quietly and cautiously. At times he can sound like Joe Strummer whispering a Cat Stevens song. But more frequently, “Run With Me” resembles Beck’s “Sea Change” or Elliott Smith’s “Roman Candle.” There’s the devastation of taking stock mixed with a casually perfect knack for melody. It’s an album whose grandeur is a function of its humility.
Eventually, Webb picks up some pieces and regains his footing. By “Outbound Only, No Return,” there’s a hint of resolve. He even plugs in for a guitar solo, channeling the delicate warble of the third Velvet Underground album while he recites a list of the day’s to do’s. In the repetition, there’s practice. And in the practice, new muscles are built. Muscles that ably serve the next track, “Goodbye,” the album’s climax — a farewell to the past and an openness to the future. At one point during the song he even musters a cathartic “Woo” — the clearest signal yet that he’s ready to move forward.
After the emotional end to side A, the album’s second side returns to familiar terrain. Like many of Webb’s best loved songs, “What I Do” is about work — the doing of it and the meaning of it.
I work on the wires in all kinds of weather
When I fix the wires I make myself feel better
I owe to know the price of purpose
I paid the bill that came past due
Oh who would work to keep the water running
Not free, not me, will do
Ooo
What I am is what I do
It’s a long way from “Do What You Can Do.” In fact, it’s an inversion of The Cons’ final song. Webb has surrendered. He’s no longer the agent of work — the potential of energy. Now, work defines him. It’s drudgery not drive. It’s purposeless and yet it’s what allows him to feel some semblance of worth. It’s what pays the bills. It’s what keeps the water running. And it would be terribly, tragically sad if it weren’t also the means to tomorrow — where there is hope and where there might even be love.
And wouldn’t you know it? There is hope and there is love. “Modern Mind” and “Thunder Bay” are the album’s strident rockers — full of heart, fully present, evocative of his former band, but also resolved in his current place. They are as stirring as any songs he’s ever recorded — perhaps even more so because they are so unexpected. But ultimately not quite so surprising as what comes next. “Ask Me Everything” has the giddy exhaustion of Webb’s other pre-dawn ballads. But this time, he’s not singing a lullaby, he sending an invitation — an invitation that plays two ways. It works both as a pledge of honesty to a curious child and a as a commitment to love again. He sounds unsure. Maybe a little broken. But — for the first time in a long time — he’s open. There’s a bravery about it that has nothing to do with youthful rebellion. This is the other side of resignation. This is the real self-acceptance. So, when the horns show up again for the outro, they confirm what we’d hoped for all along. It’s not dusk — it’s dawn.
As with his previous solo records, “Run With Me” tries its best to be a minor album. No real promotion. Just a couple of reviews. Dropped into the world during the moments before the holidays. According to the label, only five hundred copies of the LP were initially pressed. And yet, it feels so important to me. It’s less fully realized than its predecessors. Certainly, nothing approaches the heights of The Cons. Yet, its small victories, born from perseverance and the kindness of others, are extraordinary.
And so is the craft. Webb’s singing and playing always delivers — even when it wavers. Especially when it wavers. It’s not overstatement — and I know I am not alone — in suggesting that Bry Webb is Canada’s greatest singer-songwriter since Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. You can keep your Gord (who I love) and your Geddy (who I don’t love so much) and even your Robbie (who is complicated). I’ll stick with Bry, who, many years ago, helped me locate that thing that I thought I had lost — joy. Hands in the air joy. Sharing something you love joy. Smiling at your baby who’s smiling back at you joy. Howling at the moon joy. Surely all this fawning might embarrass him. And so I’ll simply wish him twelve lanes of peace and quiet and all speed away from human sorry. Thanks, Bry.