Stephen Webber’s resume reads like several different careers stitched together, an Emmy-winning composer, a Grammy-nominated producer, an author, and Professor Emeritus at Berklee College of Music, with stops along the way in hip-hop, rock, electronic music, country, jazz, and classical composition. He built Berklee’s Music Production, Technology and Innovation program from the ground up, wrote the book Turntable Technique: The Art of the DJ, and composed Stylus Symphony, a piece that fuses orchestral writing with hip-hop, trip-hop, and dubstep. These days he’s channeling all of that experience into something deliberately smaller in scale: Ukelately, a stripped-down project built around ukulele, plainspoken melodies, and social commentary delivered with a light touch of humor.
Here We Go
“Here We Go,” out August 14, takes on a genuinely current problem with real warmth instead of gravity, how to actually reconnect with people after years of working, talking, and socializing through a screen. Webber doesn’t scold anyone about it. The chorus leans on the joke of telling someone to put their pants on, a wink at remote work and endless video calls, but underneath the laugh is a more serious point, that screens were never a full substitute for being physically present with other people.
Musically, Webber’s own ukulele drives the track, giving it a light, immediately welcoming acoustic base, joined by lap steel guitar and banjo textures that add real color without ever crowding the arrangement. From there, the song builds into something bigger than a simple folk tune. Grammy-nominated fiddle player Casey Driessen and Grammy-winning dobro player Andy Hall, both former students of Webber’s at Berklee, trade fast, virtuosic runs that push the energy up several notches, while drummer Caleb Gilbreth keeps a steady, danceable pulse running underneath it all without sacrificing the song’s acoustic warmth.
Vocalist Zahara, known also as Annette Philip, founder of the Berklee Indian Ensemble and a longtime collaborator of Webber’s, brings her own distinct color to the track, and her closing improvisation pushes the song into something close to gospel territory, tying the whole thing back to its real theme: people genuinely need each other. That message stays deliberately open too, extending an invitation to connection and care that doesn’t carve out exceptions for anyone.
The video pushes the same idea even further, shot on the streets of San Francisco with ten Bay Area dancers choreographed by Amit Patel and Ishika Seth of Ishami Dance Company, filmed by dance-focused director Honna Afzal. Where screens tend to keep people still and isolated, the video puts bodies back in motion in shared public space, turning the city itself into part of the performance.
Final Thoughts
“Here We Go” never turns preachy about its own message, it would rather make you smile and want to sing along, and that’s exactly why the point underneath it actually lands. Stephen Webber has built a genuinely joyful, generous record out of a very ordinary modern frustration.
You can find Stephen Webber on his official website, on Spotify, on Facebook, on SoundCloud, on YouTube, and on Instagram. Stay tuned to MusicOnTheRox.com for all your music news and reviews.
