Ben Folds straps it on
Now solo, piano man drives his own sound
For a man so accustomed to having his fingers on the keys, pianist Ben Folds didn’t quite have control of the ignition as frontman for North Carolina pop trio, Ben Folds Five. Now, with the group disbanded and his debut solo album, Rockin’ the Suburbs, on the way next month, Folds is fully in the driver’s seat.
So what’s the first stop on his new agenda? A hit record, of course. Hence the first single, the surprisingly intense, non-piano-driven title track.
“It’s not a departure or statement or anything,” Folds says. “What it is is a very calculated attempt to get a song on the radio. The formats of radio are so fucking narrow and stupid. So I just thought, well, I need to do something ... so I could have a hit, sell my other songs on the record and keep doing my thing. But I couldn’t do it with a straight face, so the only way I could do it convincingly was to make fun of it.”
Indeed, this isn’t typical radio fare. It’s not even very similar to Folds’ previous fluke hit, the melancholic ballad “Brick.” A five-minute-plus romp through tempo changes, expletives and props to everyone from Quiet Riot to Michael Jackson, “Rockin’ the Suburbs” may not be all that radio-friendly after all.
“But it’s just as close as I can come,” says Folds, sighing. “And it’s not me being so much a slut about it, it’s just like Burt Bacharach or anyone who has ever written pop music. You try to make your music as popular as you can and keep your integrity.”
If his stab at radio stardom doesn’t pan out, Folds is excited to get his music on stage, where he now fronts a four-piece band.
“As we’ve been playing gigs, the feeling has resembled the first album a little bit more,” says Folds of his recent series of unpublicized warm-ups. “Except I think it’s more articulate and engaging in terms of the songs. It’s not like a wash of energy and then I smash a piano stool, although I’m happy to smash a piano stool.”
Alternating between solo songs, where he says he’s “beating the shit out of the piano,” and full-band songs where the playing is more concise, Folds is having fun exploring the possibilities and instrumentations of performing outside a set format.
“I think the strap-on synth is cracking people up,” says Folds of a stage prop. “That’s what I play ‘Rockin’ the Suburbs’ on. I’ve been wanting to do that for so long. And now I get a chance to put the strap-on on. I can see the headline: ‘Ben Folds straps it on, a big red one.’”
Despite the aggressive grab at radio and rad new gear, in fact Rockin’ the Suburbs’ sound is not all that different from the last Ben Folds Five album, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. Songs alternate between bouncy, occasionally Moog-bubbled slice-of-life sketches and plaintive, intimate character studies. Over the years, Folds’ sense of humor has matured from smart-ass to witty, as his playing became increasing subtle, with class replacing crass. Rockin’ the Suburbs continues along this path while managing to recapture some of the punky energy of BF5’s early work.
Even Folds’ jump from band leader to solo act hasn’t changed the process of making music, at least not up to this point. “I’ve always made [demos] of me playing everything — piano, bass and drums — so recording’s not really new,” Folds says.
In other words, if we’re all in the mood for a melody, and Folds will still have us feeling all right.
Ben Folds plays the final free On The Bricks show in Centennial Park Fri., Aug. 10.??