On a chilly Sunday evening, the sky above downtown Oakland seemed indecisive. It was painted that shade of deep, mysterious blue that holds you in suspense. That shade of blue you find in the depths of the ocean, where the sunlight just barely makes it through. That shade of blue that lets you in on how there’s rain coming, but doesn’t let you in on when the rain will descend.
Juxtaposed against this backdrop of blue were the brilliant lights of the Fox Theater and the rest of Telegraph Avenue. The marquee underneath the iconic Fox Theater sign read, “Oct. 17 & 18 – WILCO” in that classic white on black type. Concert goers trickled into the theater entrance, clutching their eTickets, anxious to get inside.
As the clock ticked closer and closer to the concert’s official start time, conversations began to reduce in noise, and more and more eyes began to find their way to the stage. Out of the blue, dressed in all blue, and under blue stage lights, Faye Webster entered stage left, followed by the rest of her band.
Without an introduction, Faye pulled her guitar over her shoulder, made eye contact with her bandmates, and dove right into her set. Interestingly enough, there’s a metaphor hidden in there: one that describes what it’s like to listen to and experience the talented, relatable, and ascending Faye Webster.
Faye Webster in all blue for her performance at the Fox Theater in Oakland on Sunday, Oct. 17th, 2021. Webster opened for Wilco and their “Ode to Joy Tour,” where she performed songs from her two most recent albums.
Hailing from Atlanta, Georgia, the 24-year-old musician has been making music in one form or another for most of her life. By elementary school, she described guitar as “second-nature” to her. By fourteen, she was writing her own songs. By sixteen, she had released her debut EP, Run and Tell.
Listening to Faye Webster’s early work may surprise many of her listeners. In contrast to her later music, Run and Tell centers around the sound of Webster’s acoustic guitar and is undoubtedly a folk album. Songs like “Sweet Lad” and “Give Me a Chance” pierce with classic vocals and production, evoking nostalgia for country life. The talent and promise of Webster was clearly apparent: a lyricist whose words were both relatable and poetic, delivered with a voice that fluctuates, peaks, and dips at all the right times.
In the subsequent years, Webster briefly attended Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee to study songwriting, but quickly realized the value of her own talents and skills. In an interview in 2019, Webster recalls this sentiment: “If you’re good at songwriting, you’re good at songwriting. Going to a school for thousands and thousands of dollars isn’t going to help you.”
In 2017, Webster joined Awful Records where she released her self-titled debut Faye Webster. Webster has on numerous occasions recalled her experience in the Atlanta-based label with joy and gratitude (In a 2021 Reddit AMA, Webster was asked if she was still close with anyone from Awful Records after she had left to join independent label Secret Canadian. She answered saying “They will always be family to me”). It was, after all, where her Instagram DMs turned into an opportunity to be around a plethora of emerging Atlanta talent. Webster’s other creative interest in photography benefitted from her proximity to the Atlanta hip-hop scene, where she scored photoshoots with Atlanta stars including Migos, EARTHGANG, D.R.A.M, and more.
By the start of 2019, Webster’s popularity was steadily growing. However, it was her May release of Atlanta Millionaire’s Club, her debut album for the Secret Canadian label, that garnered her significant attention. In particular, “Kingston” and “Right Side of My Neck,” the record’s sixth and second tracks respectively, found their way into many listeners’ rotation (they remain two of her most popular tracks, with “Kingston” touting over 37 million streams as of this writing). Atlanta Millionaire’s Club’s effortless ability to blend indie production with hints of folk, soul and bedroom pop set the stage for a highly anticipated follow-up project.
2021 brought with it the release of Faye Webster’s second album with Secret Canadian, I Know I’m Funny haha. Arguably Webster’s most mature and nuanced album yet, I Know I’m Funny haha ebbs and flows through eleven tracks and a 41 minute length time. To listen to it is to precisely ebb and flow, slowly and weightless. This is Webster’s most indie-sounding project to date, yet it never drowns under the weight of its own sorrow-laced verses and unapologetically dreamy production.
While I enjoyed Webster’s music before the release of I Know I’m Funny haha, this newest album in her discography is the one that brought me out to the Fox Theater on a chilly Sunday evening under deep blue skies.
Listening to I Know I’m Funny haha (and Faye more broadly), both recorded and in concert, is like immersing yourself in the wonders of the color blue. Like the many shades of blue, Webster’s record is defined by the plethora of emotions it evokes. “A Dream With a Baseball Player” has a light blue groove, one that’d feel right at home in your earbuds on a relaxing day at the park. The album’s closing track, “Half Of Me” is a grey-blue, tear-jerking ballad for anyone still searching for their other half. Her live, concert rendition of “In A Good Way” was the signature piece of her set, and felt the most like her signature cobalt blue—familiar and versatile, with Webster’s mellow lyrics resting atop a melancholy mix of genres.
It’s no surprise that in the months leading up to the release of her fourth album, Webster found herself latching onto the color blue. In an interview from June of this year, Webster remarked “I have this relationship now. It’s not deeper than that. It’s not sensory nostalgia, but the color speaks to me and makes me happy,” she continued, “it just makes me feel like me.”
Seeing Faye Webster, clad in a knee-length blue dress with long blue socks under those bright blue lights—holding the audience with every word spoken and every chord played—just felt right. Her performance had me adrift in that deep dark blue, the same blue that hung above the Fox Theater all night long,
Article and Photos by Joe Sison