Music Scene - Ben Folds to Rock at Sunset with His Piano
By: The Providence Journal
July 6th 2002 2:36am
Ben Folds, the enigmatic pop pianist who plays the Sunset Music
Festival in Newport on Saturday, says the Rhode Island music scene
welcomed his pop diarist style before the rest of the pop world
caught on. Folds, 35, a native of Winston-Salem, N.C., said in a recent
phone interview from his home state of North Carolina, "I'm not
really fond of playing here, to tell you the truth. "We were from this area, but coincidentally the first place we
ever drew more than five people was Rhode Island. Providence,
Philly, Chicago, then England then we came home and our shows were
well-attended." He credited WBRU with playing his music and helping to spread his
name in Rhode Island. "The scene up here is pretty receptive to new music," he said.
"We started off doing really well in the places that were most
renowned for being music places, which is kind of nice." Folds is known for the thoughtful, essayist-style songs of his
pop rock trio, the Ben Folds Five. The band's lineup didn't include
a guitarist, and instead highlighted Folds's storytelling songs and
melodic arrangements, a sturdy, reflective alternative to post-
grunge and guitar rock. Folds says that stirring a buzz as a rock band without a guitar
clashed with club owners' expectations. "At the time, it seemed like a great idea," he says. But club
owners were suspicious. "They didn't know what [style] the music was," he says. "You'd
get booked on folk night." Then there was the piano that the band lugged to gigs. "People working in the club didn't want to have anything to do
with it. We got all the jokes" Folds breaks into a mock-
disparaging voice " 'Have you ever heard of an electric piano.' " Folds says frustrations ranged from getting the piano in the back
of a touring van to finding a parking spot for the van. "Put the piano on its side, take the legs off, get the right
parking space, watch your [expletive] van get towed because you put
it in the wrong space." NONETHELESS, THE ROCK STAR with a piano triumphed. The Five
arrived with a 1995 self-titled debut on the indie label Caroline
Records. The band's parody of the punk industry, Underground, gained spins
on late-night MTV. Still, Folds says, the band didn't record a demo tape for major
labels. "It just goes to show you almost the child psychology of how
playing hard to get works," he says. "We were really sincere and said that signing for a label wasn't
important. But after a while it makes sense: When they are signing a
musician, there is nothing more powerful than the moment when a band
is rising. Everyone is hanging on to a rising star. That's the time
when you get to stick to your guns." Folds is referring to playing the style of music that fits the
band's model of itself, and also tending to the industry's business
side from not signing away your songs' rights to asserting your own
vision for music videos. "Any bands coming up, especially in this day and age, really have
to be super stubborn," he says. "That's how they'll survive
creatively and in the business too." For example, he says, "I showed a willingness to let them meddle
in my videos. Ever since then, I can't get what I want in a video." But "when mixing a record," he says, "they don't meddle." Meanwhile, Folds says, "we weren't interested in being an indie
band, but we weren't interested in doing it any other way than we
could do it." THE BEN FOLDS FIVE released its second disk - Whatever And Ever
Amen under an arm of major label Epic. The disk went platinum,
success that allowed the band to continue to mold its own no-guitar
piano pop style. The next disk, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner in
1999, was a critical high point. But Folds says the band "was just kind of burned out." "We had kind of did our thing, and that was it. If it's not
inspiring and not what you want to be doing, it's hard to sell other
people on it. ". . . We felt like the last record sounded like a last record.
That was the rest of the ideas for us." So Folds broke up the band. "We were all burnt out, and I just wanted to play my songs at the
piano because that's the way I write them," he says. "Playing solo
is the most musically natural thing I've done." His next project was the solo Ben Folds disk, Rockin' The Suburbs
last fall. The title single, a sardonic parody of suburban angst,
was a repeat hit on MTV. Next up, around October, Folds will release
a live album featuring the solo ballad format he'll bring to
Newport. Meanwhile, Folds says, "I don't bear grudges" against the people
who doubted he could make it as a piano rocker. "But I will say a
good hearty '[expletive] you' to those guys who gave me [expletive]
moving the piano in." Ben Folds and Sam Bisbee play the Sunset Music Festival, Newport
Yachting Center, 4 Commercial Wharf, at 6 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are
$27 advance; $32 at the door. The rest of the festival's lineup: * Today, Taylor Dayne, pop, 5:30 p.m. $25 advance, $30 door. * Tomorrow, Nanci Grifith and The Blue Moon Orchestra and Lori
McKenna, folk and blues, 6 p.m. $27 advance; $32 door. * Saturday, Livingston Taylor and Bill Petterson, blues, 6 p.m.
$20 advance; $25 door. Call 846-1600, ext. 2. Jazz in theDr. Seuss style Brock Mumford's songs unfold with the perky, make-you-giddy smile
that Harry Connick Jr. bought to children's fables on Connick's
recent Songs I Heard. As does Connick, this New York quintet rustles jazz alive in
vivid, nimble Dr. Suess style, stitching together a collage of music
with the limber rhythm of ragtime piano, slow-coiling trumpet
playing that signals the carnival is coming, and even a syrupy touch
of Cajun accordion. The songs on the band's delightful debut, Love Story, are also
more than jazz. They incorporate the stylish theatrical storytelling
of cabaret and playful folksy lyricism that Randy Newman's film
soundtracks keep alive. It's children's fairy tale music for
grownups too. It's the perfect silent-film soundtrack accompaniment to your
Fourth of July festivities. Check out the band, led by Matt Munisteri's singing, and playing
guitar, banjo and mandolin, tonight, 7 to 10 p.m. at The Towers, 35
Ocean Rd., Narragansett. Tickets are $10; call 782-2597 for more
information. * * * BEN FOLDS and a piano play rock on Saturday at the Sunset Music
Festival, at the Newport Yachting Center. * * * The band Brock Mumford plays Thursday night at the Towers in
Narragansett.
 (C) 2002 The Providence Journal. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved
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