Five Minutes With: Ben Folds

by David John Farinella

BEN FOLDS is just back from rehearsal with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, with whom he performed a pair of shows at Kings Park in Perth, Australia, and he’s starving. When his wife, Frally, asks why he didn’t stop for something to eat he answers, “I didn’t have time; I’m working. Geez.” Then he laughs. For Folds, who is playing some shows around Australia before heading stateside for a small tour to support his latest offering, Songs for Silverman, 2005 is stacking up to be a year full of both hard work and laughter.

On the day Performing Songwriter checked in with Folds at his Australian hotel, his cover of Dr. Dre’s “B*tches Ain’t Sh*t” had just been released on iTunes. “How’s it doing?” he asked with a nervous laugh. You’re No. 19, Ben. (At publication, the song had climbed to No. 8.)

Hell yeah. That’s excellent—it’s going to No. 1. See, I have an agenda with this tune. I want it to go to No. 1 on the singles of iTunes and freak everybody out. I don’t care about the other ones, but this one is my baby. I think the idea of covering gangster rap could be a very beat-up concept and done to death, but I am just into that particular version. I think it has some heart in it and I love the phrasing. It was a blast to take the phrasing and make it melodic. My goals are so high—to get a No. 1 hit on iTunes with a cover. I want a little plaque for that.

Well, except for the cover tunes, your songs are incredibly personal.

I think that’s what music is — it is personal.

Does it feel odd to put so much of yourself out there?

Well, it does sometimes and it does at first, but then it begins to feel a lot more odd not to put anything real in something. See, I can distance myself from a song after I’ve written it and treat it as an institution. What I lock into is the feeling. I don’t lock into it word for word or note for note. I think of it more as tension and release and cadences. That’s the way that I think about music. It’s all rhythmical, so I can go back to it and be OK. Even “Brick,” which was our sort of hit, was a really personal story that I hadn’t told my closest friends. I felt really funny about it, because I wrote it so fast and it came out on the album before… I had to call some people up and explain to them before they heard it. But then just as soon as it came out it was someone else’s and it wasn’t mine anymore and I didn’t really think of it as being that personal anymore. The hardest moment is unveiling it to whoever it might be for.

Does that feeling return when you play it live for the first time?

Very rarely. On the live record I started “Brick” and I really felt detached from it and I felt that the audience was attached to it only by the fact that it was a hit. So, I actually had a little Bruce Springsteen moment that I normally don’t do and I explained what the song was about. Then I launched back into it. That was really musically powerful, but at the same time it was uncomfortable for me. I did that because I thought it was just going to be another moment and I didn’t want it to be like that; I wanted it to be understood.

On this album you include a song, “Gracie,” that was written for your five-year-old daughter. What was it like to play it for her for the first time? Was that the reward of that song?

Yeah, it was, it was definitely a big reward. She knew it was coming, because I told her I was going to bring the tape home. She was very curious about the line that went, “until then you’ve got to do what I say.” She wants to know, now, how long she has to do what I say (laughs).

So, how do you capture the initial inspirations for songs?

Well, they come from so many different places that it’s almost like a general impulse or feeling knocks at the door sometimes. That can come in the form of an event or the way something made you feel or a bar of music or a movie and then it keeps knocking in different forms. Then there’s some kind of synchronicity and my mind is open at that point to a certain feeling of music or a certain cadence.

There were a couple of songs on this album— “Give Judy My Notice” and “Prison Food” that evolved in the studio. Is it important to leave space for that in the studio?

Sometimes, it just depends on the song. There are some that you know in your heart that you must wrestle down to the ground. I keep using these fighting analogies and I don’t know why, but if you get into an altercation, it’s never planned out and it’s always different. I think it’s the same way with laying music down. If you think you know how you’re going to do it every time or you have a formula, then that’s not good. It would be good if it worked that way, but it doesn’t. Something like “Give Judy My Notice,” I had something very specific in my head but that wasn’t working, so I loosened it up and did several versions of the song until the version that was done with Bucky Baxter playing the pedal steel was right. By that time I knew what I wanted out of the song and I was willing to open up to hearing new things.

With the addition of bassist Jared Reynolds and drummer Lindsay Jamieson you have a solid band again. Is it important to you as a songwriter to have that consistency?

Not in writing. I don’t think there’s anything in the way that I write that I can really change. When I became a recording artist and started playing live I was about 28 and that’s kind of late in the game. I was waiting tables and doing other things. I wasn’t putting out records and I was a little frustrated that no one wanted to put out my records, but my presentation was horrible. My songs were the same, most of the songs on my first record were written when I was 18, and I just walked around with that tape, which was terrible. I was overplaying, I was over-singing, I didn’t seem to understand why I wrote the song and I was self-conscious. There are all kinds of problems and people haven’t heard those tapes and they never made it to albums because I didn’t understand how to present the songs. I felt it from a songwriting point of view. I could try to change my songs, but I just can’t do it. They tend to come out like they’re going to come out and that’s it.

Our theme for the issue is passing it on, so I’m going to ask you who your early influences were…

That’s a nice way of putting it, passing it on. I’ve always had a pattern of being really into a biography, one person’s story and the way that they went about something, and in the back of my mind to a certain extent I’ll try those things on. Like, Bob Dylan. You watch him handle interviews in Don’t Look Back and think, “Wow, what a way to handle interviews. Maybe I shouldn’t say so much.” I also love Muhammad Ali— he’s so gracious with people. Then there’s Frank Lloyd Wright for continuing to question and develop into things later on.

How about musically?

I discovered the Beatles really late and I think as a result I was heavily influenced. My influences at a young age were all black. My father brought home records that were all R&B records from the ’60s. That’s all I heard, so my idea of music involved that kind of open rhythm and expression. Later, on my own, I discovered people like Neil Sedaka, Elton John, Peter Frampton and Kiss, stuff that you’d hear in the ’70s that was white people music. I think it’s probably like in The Jerk— I found my voice at that point. Elton John can’t be denied, because he’s the pinnacle of piano pop. That’s it, he did it. I don’t know how much of an influence he is or isn’t, because just as soon as he was an influence puberty hit and punk rock hit and all of a sudden I didn’t listen to that. I listened to the Clash and Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson— smart stuff.

What about these days?

I’ve always tried to listen to things and try them on for size. There are all kinds of specific influences that are new in my music. I hear something and go, “Man, that is so cool. I’m definitely going to suck the brains out of that one.” I don’t regurgitate what they did, I just go, “Wow that’s a new way of looking at music, that’s a new way of looking at the world” and just go for it the next time with that presence on my shoulder a little bit. During the Reinhold Messner record I was incessantly listening to Elliott Smith’s first record, which had just come out, and the Doors. The album before that, Whatever and Ever Amen, I was listening to anything by the Carpenters. On the new record I think the Streets was an influence, because the way that [Mike Skinner] relates lyrically reminds me of why I do it. That guy is a genius and he reminds you that it’s not about form, which is important. There’s nothing between what he says and the person listening. I thought I had to have that kind of transparency. I’ve always strived for that and then hearing someone actually pull it off… I thought it was an important thing for me to remember when I was making music. The Band was an inspiration on this record, because of the approach of sitting in a living room and playing music and being professional about it. They did things very live and I wanted to do things as live as I could possibly stand and still get what I was trying to get.

Do you see your influence in any current music?

Sometimes I’d like to think I helped just by the presence of piano. I hear some piano pop music and I think that [I’ve inspired it], or I hear a vocal or a lyrical thing here and there. I’ve heard younger corporate punk bands that I think must have been influenced by me. I’ll hear something in the lyrics that is so informal that I have to think I helped that a little bit.