Catching up with Ben Folds

---

Your music in the ’90s and early ’00s became anthemic for a lot of Gen Xers and millennials, even all these years later. What do you think it is about your music that engaged and continues to engage those people?

I put myself in every tune I write, and I try to build them in the way that my father built houses, which is to just make them sturdy and a safe place. That’s all I really know about it.

I have always felt that people from 15 to 25 are at the peak of their listening ability for music. … And that’s because you have the time for it and it means more to you and you put it in social context. So [they engage with] the stuff that is the most laced with thought and layers—which doesn’t necessarily make for the better song always, mind you—but mine is on the more thought-out side. To that extent, I think that kids are always going to attach themselves to something they can dig more out of.

You have a big sound, but this tour is just you and a piano. Does that change how you perform your songs? How do you bring the same energy with just you and a piano?

Well, I actually think it’s easier for me to make a song energetic that way. I can dictate all kinds of spontaneous dynamics and unpredictable kinds of stuff. It’s sometimes harder to make that much energy with a band or an orchestra. … I might play a song one night and start hacking a karate chop at middle C for the chorus, and that’s all I do. It’s totally allowed.

Favorite song from your catalog that you’ll perform on this tour?

I’ve always been happy about how my newer songs work solo in context of the others. That really tells you where they are completely. First of all, they’re not welcome. Not like the other songs that are staking their territory out, not like the other songs that I could do with one hand tied behind my back, or the audience’s favorite old song. New songs walk into the room, and they’re just about to get their ass kicked. … But the way that they fit in it, if they’re good, they really fit in the context of the rest of them. … So I guess that’s what makes my favorite thing of the night, is probably something like that: playing a new song and feeling like it has its own legs.

Going back to some of your older songs, have any evolved or transformed over the years with all your performances?

They all do. … I like them to evolve because I’m getting them across, not because I get bored with it or because I wanted to turn it on its side. I really think if I make a song and want to stick to the arrangement, that’s to me part of the song. I don’t really think I need to go out and make my music unrecognizable in order to assert my artistry. I think I asserted my artistry when I made it right the first time.

---

“Ben Folds and a Piano”

March 3, 7 p.m., at L’Auberge Casino & Hotel. For more information, visit lbatonrouge.com.

---

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of 225 Magazine.