A conversation with Ben Folds is a mini masterclass in music education. His role as music scholar and teacher is now part of his legacy, but his contribution to music is easily underestimated. He returns with a new album with classical influences but songwriting craft firmly intact. Who will inherit the great tradition of piano-led rock though?

For Ben Folds, coming back on the scene with a new studio album feels like a breeze, literally:

“I Feel like the expectations are lowered but I have the wind on my back”.

Ben releases What Matters Most, his fifth studio album and his first in almost eight years, almost an ice age in today’s breathless music biz. But part of the reason and the joy it has taken him so damn long, is a focus on the craft that is Folds’ raison d'être as a musician some three decades into his professional career.

“I have carried a tradition of craft, that is not easily come by, in an era when it was always going away, until now.” It might sound cocky to say that this is a lesson in songwriting but I dunno, it is.”

This is genuine coming from someone who in the past decade has committed part of his career to promoting and campaigning for better music education. Come to think of it, a conversation with Ben Folds is a music education in itself. His role as music scholar and teacher is now part of his legacy but his contribution to music is easily underestimated. 

For starters he sandblasted a music scene that in the mid-90s was dominated by grunge, Britpop and pretty soulless boy & girl band pop. And he did it with a fucking piano. Aided and abetted of course by a belting bass (Robert Sledge) and drums (Darren Jessee) combo that made up Ben Folds Five - a refreshingly guitar-free rock band. 

After the trio disbanded following the usual music industry roller coaster ride (a familiar story beautifully told in Fold’s 2019 book A Dream About Lightning Bugs) Folds went solo - sometimes quite literally. He made sustainable touring a thing, by going on the road with himself and a piano. That’s something essential these days, for bands in the mid-tier - the so called “working class musician” - to tour with a minimalist set up. Folds truly took to it - improvising and bantering with the audience and often working them into his performances as a choir. He even created a song on the fly (Bitches Ain’t Shit) that became a sort of regrettable classic. He found the experience scary but took his inspiration from James Booker. “I was playing standing places - rock venues. I was shaking in my boots the first time I went out on tour like that, but I felt the need to do it”.

Folds is a pioneering independent artist. He called the creative shots even when first signed to a major label imprint with Ben Folds Five. He paid for vinyl masters to some of his albums knowing full well it would come out of his royalty account. He was an early adopter of the direct to fan model with his Patreon site, recently expanded to include a private Discord channel. It’s very much a modern fan-centred business model for up & coming independent artists - in other words all artists.

Through it all, Folds is one of those artists that can always rely on the inate ability to write a song. It’s something that has seen him through thick & thin as he transitioned from a band to a solo career and then later as he expanded into soundtracks and orchestral works. Sometimes musicians find it hard to know when they are on a roll when it comes to their songwriting but Ben Folds seems to have been blessed with an awareness that has kept his solo album releases always interesting and sometimes downright sublime. As an example, check out the three songs that close out his 2005 solo work Songs For Silverman. As well as his (very) occasional hits, Brick (with Ben Folds Five) and The Luckiest. 

That songcraft is firmly intact on What Matters Most on songs such as Back To Anonymous, Winslow Gardens and Kristine From the 7th Grade. But Folds can strategize the biz side too these days, and his plan is to make this new album an event. 

“I know we’re making movies in a way when we make records but I wanted to make a record that you could date on all counts. The event is powerful, because you are either expressing an ideal, a design - or you are expressing an event”. 

Speaking of craft and tradition, we talk more about Folds’ notorious live shows which are really something to witness. The total commitment to performance, the spontaneity and interaction with his audiences - a style of performing I worry is dying out in the live music tradition. Where are today’s raconteurs, storytellers and artists who can play songs on request in the thrill of the moment?

“Frank Sinatra at Live at The Sands. He’s there - there are people clinking their drinks while he’s telling stories. It’s so raw. Billy Joel’s era didn’t do it as well as he did and then my era didn’t do it as well as Billy Joel’s - it’s probably gone”. 

I thank Ben for introducing me to Elton John’s 1971 live album 17-11-70 because it is incredible - a clear early influence on Folds who obsessed over the record in his formative years. Billy Joel, of course, is another grandmaster. But, if Elton and Joel are past masters about to give up the game for good, and the likes of Ben Folds and John Grant took the piano troubadour into the modern era, then who is taking up that mantle now, I wonder?

It makes me truly grateful they are still making records and hitting the road, even if less frequently than they used to. 

A real delight in this conversation is Folds’ reflections on the height of fame, something he essentially did not enjoy. The song Back To Anonymous is sung with an air of gratitude that those days are long gone. But what does Ben pass on to rising artists now as they strive for a breakthrough, for recognition - for something that demonstrates a modicum of that fame he once had. 

“At the heart of it [young musicians] don’t want to have to load carpet or wait tables but they are also chasing something of a dream that you abandoned when you’re 15. So much of my career was like something I wanted when I was 15 and it’s the equivalent of being drunk and ordering something online that you just didn't need”. 

And so here we are in 2023 and it’s good to have Ben Folds back, anonymous or otherwise.