Benjamin Scott "Ben" Folds (born September 12,
1966) is an American
singer-songwriter,
multi-instrumentalist, and the former
frontman of the
band Ben Folds
Five.
Early life and career
Folds became attached to a piano when his carpenter father brought
one home when he was nine, the result of a
barter trade his father made with a customer who was
unable to pay for his work. During this time, Folds listened to
songs by
Elton John and
Billy Joel on
AM radio,
and learned them by ear. During his years at
R.J. Reynolds High School in Winston-Salem,
North Carolina
, Folds played in several bands as the pianist,
bassist, or drummer.
In the late 1980s, Folds (as a bassist) and longtime friend
Millard Powers formed the band
Majosha. The group released several locally
produced records.
They played their first gig at Duke University
's Battle of the
Bands in 1988 and won. They played at bars and
fraternity parties for a while,
and eventually put out a self-produced
EP sold at a few local stores called
Party
Night: Five Songs About Jesus (1988). The record featured only
four songs, none of which were actually about
Jesus. Gradually, their popularity grew and they
played larger and farther-flung gigs. They recorded
Shut Up and Listen to
Majosha in 1989. It contains, among others, the four songs
from
Party Night (remixed and/or re-recorded), "Emaline",
and "Video".
At about the same time, they did a dance mix
of "Get That Bug" that was released in Japan
.
Majosha broke up in early 1990, and Folds formed Pots and Pans with
Evan Olson (bass) and Britt "Snuzz"
Uzzell (guitar and vocals). Folds played drums. They only lasted
about a month, after which Olson and Uzzell went on to form Bus
Stop with Folds's brother Chuck Folds on bass and Eddie Walker on
drums.
Folds
eventually got a music-publishing deal with Nashville music
executive Scott Siman who saw Folds open
for musician Marc Silvey (as well as playing bass for Silvey's band
Mass Confusion) and moved to Nashville, Tennessee
, to pursue it in 1990. He played drums for a
short stint in Jody's Power Bill, headed by
Millard Powers,
Bill Owsley, and
Jody Spence. Jody's Power Bill was later renamed
The Semantics. Folds did not take a
creative role in the band. He again attracted interest from major
labels. He ended up playing drums there as a
session musician.
"In Nashville, I was running eight miles a day, hanging out with my
friends, walking around eating chocolate-chip cookies and playing a
lot of drums, which I enjoyed. Life was easy. I was never
frustrated -- even though I wasn't fulfilling my contract
obligations. If you are failing in Nashville, at least your
standard of living is nice. Nashville is a nice way to fail."
Folds
attended the University of
Miami
's Frost School of
Music on a percussion
scholarship, but dropped out with one credit to go before
graduating. He devoted a lot of time to working on piano
technique. "I spent maybe six months just running scales with a
metronome like a freak," Folds said. "I
suppose that did something."
Folds tells audiences about a jury recital while a student at the
University of Miami’s music school. A jury recital consists of
playing a prepared repertoire (and sometimes unprepared pieces from
prior years of training) before faculty members who then apply a
grade for the entire semester. Folds, a drummer, showed up with a
hand broken from a previous night’s partying, but was required to
play anyway. He ended up losing his scholarship, and threw his
drumkit into a lake on campus.
After leaving Miami, Folds moved to Montclair, New Jersey and began
to act in theater troupes in New York City. He had previously done
some theater in high school. He enjoyed it in 1993 to the point
where he didn't want to keep pursuing a musical career.
He also
played weekly gig at
Sin-é
, famous for
being the cafe which had helped start Jeff
Buckley's career.
Soon
after, Folds moved back to North Carolina
. The trio of
Folds, bassist Robert Sledge, and
drummer Darren Jessee formed Ben Folds Five in 1994 in Chapel
Hill
. As Folds put it, “
Jeff Buckley was being signed at that time by
Columbia and I was talking to
Steve, his
A&R guy, and somehow we knew
the same people or something."
Ben Folds Five
In 1995,
Ben Folds Five released
their self-titled
debut album
(songs included "Philosophy" and "Underground"). The debut was
followed by
Whatever and Ever
Amen in 1997, and the odds-and-ends compilation
Naked Baby Photos was
released in early 1998.
Whatever spawned many hits, such
as "
Brick", "Song for the Dumped", and
"Battle of Who Could Care Less". In 1999, the band released their
final album,
The Unauthorized
Biography of Reinhold Messner, which included the hit,
"Army".
Folds has described his former band as "
punk
rock for sissies", and his oddball lyrics often contain nuances
of depression, melancholy, self conflict, and humorous
sarcasm.
Despite its presence on multiple
Billboard genre charts, no Ben Folds Five
singles reached the US
Hot 100, although
they did show well on both adult contemporary and modern
rock charts.
However they gained a strong following in the
United Kingdom and Australia early in
their career, and like many other 'alternative' American acts this
was largely thanks to consistent support from national broadcasters
in those countries, the BBC in Britain and the
ABC's
Triple J youth radio
network in Australia (and ABC-TV's music video show Rage).
The group's first chart breakthrough came in the UK, when
"Underground" made the lower reaches of the Top 40, peaking at #37.
Britain was the Five's strongest territory in terms of chart
success, with five singles making the national Top 40 there --
"Underground", "Battle of Who Could Care Less", "Kate", "Brick" and
"Army" -- although none managed to crack the UK Top 20.
In Australia "Underground" likewise broke the band locally and
while it did not make the ARIA chart, it came in at #3 the 1998
Triple J Hottest 100 poll. The 1998 single "Brick" became the
group's only major chart placing in Australia, reaching #13; it
also came in at #53 in the
ARIA Australian Top
100 for that year and earned a Gold Record award while its parent
album
Whatever and Ever
Amen peaked at #9 and charted for 32 weeks.
Ben Folds
Five reunited to perform its first concert appearance in nearly 10
years on September 18, 2008 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill
's Memorial Hall. The one-off gig was part of
the
MySpace "Front to Back" series, in which
artists play an entire album live. The band played its final album,
The
Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. The concert
aired during October and can be viewed at Nowwhat.com. All proceeds
from ticket sales benefitted the charity
Operation Smile.
Solo career
Folds performing in Knoxville,
Tennessee (2006)
As of 2008, Folds had released six
solo
LPs, including an experimental side project
called
Fear of Pop, which was
released while Ben Folds Five was still together.
Folds's first solo release after the breakup of the band was
Rockin' the Suburbs in
2001, on which he played nearly all the instruments, notably
guitar, an instrument seldom used during the
Ben Folds Five days.
Millard Powers,
Britt "Snuzz" Uzzell, and
Jim Bogios
joined him on the promotional tour of the album. A year later, he
released
Ben Folds Live, a
collection of live solo recordings. In late 2003, two solo
EPs,
Speed
Graphic and
Sunny
16, were released, and a third, titled
Super D, was released in mid-2004.
Songs for Silverman was
released in the United States on April 26, 2005. The album featured
Jared Reynolds on
bass and Lindsay
Jamieson on the
drums, thus returning to
the trio format. This album includes the track "Late", a tribute to
the late singer-songwriter
Elliott
Smith, and also features
backup
vocals from
"Weird Al" Yankovic on
"Time" (Folds had played piano for Yankovic's song "Why Does This
Always Happen to Me?" on his
Poodle
Hat album. Yankovic also directed and appeared in Folds's
video for the "
Rockin' the
Suburbs" single).
Folds contributed to
William
Shatner's album,
Has Been, as
producer,
arranger, musician, and
backup vocalist. Shatner also sang vocals on
Folds's
Fear of Pop song, "In Love", which was performed
live on
Late Night
with Conan O'Brien on January 22, 1999.
Folds' friend and fellow musician
John
McCrea, lead singer of the band
Cake, contributed vocals to Folds' song "Fred
Jones, Part 2".
The
soundtrack for the 2006
animated film Hoodwinked! featured "Red is Blue", a
ballad underlying a
montage at the height of the sadness of
Red, the main character.
In May
2006, Folds contributed three original songs to the soundtrack of
Over the Hedge, a
DreamWorks
production, as well as a cover of The Clash song "Lost in the Supermarket", and a
remix of "Rockin' The Suburbs" with some new lyrics written to
complement the script of the film, to which Shatner contributed a
spoken rant. Songs for the movie are "Heist", which became
the main song for the movie, and "Family of Me", a short track
which introduces the movie.
On October 24, 2006, Folds released
Supersunnyspeedgraphic, the LP,
a compilation of songs that were originally released on the EPs
Sunny 16,
Speed Graphic, and
Super D. He
announced on his
MySpace blog that he
planned to work on his next
studio
album in October 2006, although recording did not actually
start until 2007.
On that same day, Folds became the first person to broadcast a live
concert over
MySpace. The concert was
complete with pranks staged ahead of time by Folds, including a
drunk man falling over the balcony during "Jesusland" and a suicide
attempt at the end. The concert is also notable for featuring a
"guitorchestra", a group of acoustic guitarists from Nashville who
accompanied Folds on some songs, as well as a
ringtone orchestra featuring members of the
audience playing their cellphone ringtones in unison.
Folds produced
The Dresden Dolls'
Amanda Palmer's first solo album,
Who Killed Amanda Palmer which was released September 16,
2008. He also performs on the album.
During a
concert at the National in Richmond, Virginia
on April 11, 2008, Folds announced that he had
completed his newest album, and played four new tracks from this
album. He played the first track, "Hiroshima", at the same
show in Richmond on April 11. He also debuted new music at an
impromptu gig at the
Exit/In on December 19,
2007 and at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival on January 25, 2008. Other
new songs include "Errant Dog", "Effington", "Bitch Went Nuts",
"Free Coffee", and "Kylie From Connecticut". Folds played The 6th
annual Langerado on March 8, 2008 and was a part of the lineup for
the 2008
Bonnaroo Music
and Arts Festival.
On July 16, 2008, an anonymous user posted what they claimed was a
"leak" of Ben's latest album on a fan site (eventually called
Way to Normal ). The
file contained nine tracks along with a
PDF of
supposed cover art, and was a mix of what appeared to be legitimate
songs from
Way to Normal, pastiches of dry humor and
melodramatic pop interwoven with bright, energetic melodies. Folds
explained on Triple J radio a few weeks later that in one overnight
session in Dublin he and the band had recorded 'fake' versions of
songs from the new album. His sources had then leaked them to the
public as a light-hearted joke on his fans.
Folds'
most recent studio album, entitled Way
To Normal was released on September 30, 2008 in the
United
States
and on September 29, 2008 in the United
Kingdom
. It became Folds' highest-charting album
ever in the US, debuting at #11 on the
Billboard 200.
Soon before
Way to Normal was released, Folds announced
that he planned to record an album with English author
Nick Hornby, with Hornby writing the lyrics and
Folds writing the music. The idea of the collaboration came out of
the 'fake' leak of the album
Way to Normal released in
July 2009. "(We will) write and record it in about three days, just
like we did in Dublin with the fake record," Folds said.
In 2009, Folds collaborated with Japanese singer-songwriter
Angela Aki on the song "Black Glasses" on
her new album
Answer.
On April 28, 2009, Folds released
Ben Folds Presents University
A Cappella, an album consisting of commissioned a cappella
arrangements of his music performed by some of the country's best
college a cappella groups.
Folds' song "
Rockin' the
Suburbs" has been featured as part of the music for
ABC's sitcom
Surviving Suburbia.
Folds was also an inaugural member of the
Independent Music Awards'
judging panel to support independent artists.
Tours
Ben Folds playing the piano in
2009
After Ben Folds Five split, Folds's first tour with a full band was
to support the album
Rockin' The Suburbs. He was
accompanied by Britt "Snüzz" Uzzell on guitar and
keys,
Millard
Powers on bass and keys, and
Jim
Bogios on drums. Powers and Bogios later went on to join
Counting Crows.
On a tour of
Australia, Folds joined with
solo artists
Ben Kweller and
Ben Lee to travel the country as
The Bens, at the suggestion of a fan on Kweller's
official website. The trio also went on to record a
four-track EP together.
In the summer of 2004, Folds co-headlined an American tour with
fellow singer-songwriters
Rufus
Wainwright and
Guster. Folds again
performed with Wainwright and Lee in the summer of 2005 as part of
the "Odd Men Out" tour. In addition, Folds has performed with many
other notable musical names, including
Weezer
and
Tori Amos. After seeing
The Fray perform with Weezer, Folds asked the band
to join him for 12 performances in 2005.
Folds also has shown the intricacy behind his original sound by
performing with the
West Australian Symphony
Orchestra (WASO) in March 2005, and with the
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
(BSO) in November 2005. A
DVD of Folds playing
with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra was released in
December 2005. On May 9, 2007, Folds performed with the
Boston Pops Orchestra. The orchestra's
performance was marred when a fight broke out between two audience
members in the balcony, though Folds had not yet taken the
stage.
Folds
performed with symphony orchestras again in August 2006 during a
tour of Australia, which included performances with the Sydney Symphony at the Sydney Opera
House
, Adelaide
Symphony Orchestra, Western Australian
Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra,
and The Queensland
Orchestra.
After his
MySpace performance on October 24,
2006, Folds's tour performances began to feature a
synthesizer, which he uses in many of the songs
when played live. The synthesizer is a red
Nord Lead II synthesizer. During his
concerts, Folds performs two of his concert traditions:
palm-smashing and throwing his stool at the piano. Folds is
currently touring the United States with drummer Sam Smith and
bassist Jared Reynolds. Former drummer Jamieson was allegedly
unable to continue touring due to a ruptured disc in his
neck.
Folds toured with
John Mayer as an
opening act (though his set typically lasted an hour) in the summer
of 2007. During this tour, Mayer sometimes joined Folds on the song
"Narcolepsy", playing synth. At various concerts throughout the
tour, parents of young children going to see Mayer would file
complaints about Folds' lyrics. Folds responded by posting on his
website, "We have kids too, but we don't take them out to rock
shows that last until 11pm."
On March 29, 2008, Folds played the Cage Center Arena at Berry
College in Mt. Berry, GA. During contract negotiations, he was
asked by the administration to not play one of his songs due to its
explicit lyrics. Folds refused, citing artistic freedom and agreed
contract.
On May 9,
2008, Folds played his first completely solo show in years at
Western Connecticut State
University
due to the fact that his bassist Jared Reynolds was
with his wife who had just given birth to their first
son.
Folds
made a brief solo tour of Australia during August 2009; at his
Sydney Opera
House concert he was joined onstage for several songs by
Aimee Mann, who was also touring
Australia at the time.
Work with William Shatner
According to the track "Meeting Shatner" on the
iTunes original album released in 2005, Folds and
William Shatner became good friends
after he did a speaking part on the track "In Love." This led to
them later collaborating on each others' projects including Folds's
involvement in
Priceline.com and
Over The Hedge, and
the work on Shatner's album
Has
Been.
Shatner makes a
cameo appearance in
the
music video for "Landed". Folds
produced and arranged Shatner's album
Has Been, with most
of the songs co-written by Folds and Shatner. Through his
friendship with Shatner, Folds appeared in a late-1990s
advertisement for Priceline.com, and his song "Landed" was used in
a 2006
Hilton Hotels commercial.
Shatner later starred as 'Ozzie' in the 2006 animated film
Over The Hedge, whose
soundtrack features songs by Folds, including a reworking of
"Rockin' the Suburbs" featuring Shatner.
In 2007, a ballet
Common People, set to
Has Been,
was created by
Margo Sappington (of
Oh! Calcutta! fame) and performed by the
Milwaukee Ballet. Shatner attended
the premiere and had the event filmed. This footage became
Gonzo Ballet, a feature film
that world premiered at the
Nashville Film Festival on April 17,
2009, which includes interviews with Folds, William Shatner, and
Henry Rollins.
Discography
- Ben Folds Five,
(1995), Passenger/Caroline
- Whatever and Ever
Amen, (1997), 550 #42 US
- The Unauthorized
Biography of Reinhold Messner, (1999) #35 US
- Rockin' the
Suburbs, (2001), Sony #42
US
- Songs for
Silverman, (2005), Epic (Bonus
DVD) #13 US
- Way to Normal, (2008),
Epic #11 US
References
- According to Ben Folds on his iTunes Originals interview titled
"My Inner White Man Came Out In Full Bloom"
- Ben Folds biography - 8notes.com
- Bus Stop - Self Titled
- Ben Folds Five - Winston-Salem Journal
review
- Ben Folds Bares All Live - Ben Folds Live [PA] - Ben Folds
- Epinions.com
- VH1 Bio
- ARIA Charts - End Of Year Charts - Top 100 Singles
1998
- ARIA Charts - Accreditations - 1998
Singles
- The Suburbs.co.uk: "Did You Just Shit Your Pants? Cause I Sure Did;
Ben Folds Five Reunion"
- Rolling
Stone: " "Ben Folds Five Reuniting for One-Night-Only
MySpace Show"
- Dresden Doll Preps Solo Debut | Spin Magazine
Online
- THESHADOWBOX.NET :: View topic - Speculation: Solo
Album Title
- Buell, Gromt. "Way to Normal Leak". BenFolds.org.
2008-07-16.
-
http://www.thesuburbs.org.uk/news/_Way_To_Normal__UK_Release_Date_29th_September
- http://www.benfolds.com/info.html
- http://www.imeem.com/benfolds
-
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003871707
- [1]
- "Ben Folds Goes A Cappella, With Help - NPR
Music"
- Independent Music Awards - Past Judges
- Fight breaks out at Boston Pops - MUSIC -
MSNBC.com
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