In an era dominated by grudge and hard rock, Ben Folds made the piano cool again. Sidled by drummer Darren Jessee and bassist Robert Sledge, Ben Folds Five emerged out of the Chapel Hill, N.C., scene in the early 90s. The trio's infectious three-part harmonies and piano-driven style of pop/rock music has yet to be matched or imitated today. Five earned a steady following with its amazingly energetic live shows. Classically trained pianists would have gasped in horror at the sight of Folds stomping madly on the top of his Baldwin Baby Grand; nor would they find amusing the times he would scratch his microphone against the piano strings on "Song for the Dumped," a tune Folds often ended by mashing his stool against the ivories. As a solo artist, Folds continues to please crowds with antics you won't see at an Elton John or Billy Joel concert. Last spring, Ben toured the country armed with only a piano, taking requests and improving songs for sell-out crowds. Some of the tour's best moments can be heard on Ben Folds Live, a collection of 17 songs, including a cover of Elton John's "Tiny Dancer."   chatted by phone with Folds, who was at home enjoying a rare day off from his current tour.

Recoil: How hard was it to choose the songs for the live album? How many hours of tape did you have?
Ben Folds: That was the hardest part of making a live album. There were probably one hundred and eighty hours of music, and we had to choose down to that. The process is kind of boring in a way. [We] just had to listen to a lot of music.

R: What's the big difference in going on the road with just a piano than with a band?
BF: It's a lot simpler to go out with a piano. I'm real happy to do things real simply right now and not have to worry about a massive crew and band and tour bus and all that shit. Musically, I think it all depends from person to person. Everybody has a different way of making music. I seem to be geared for just playing solo, at least in this point of my life. A few years ago when I was doing the band maybe that was the best way for me to do it. It's hard for me to remember because it's hard to relate to that. But right now to just play piano by myself seems real natural.

R: What makes you so appealing to people? Technically Ben Folds Five had only one real commercial success ("Brick"), yet you sell-out your shows. Everyone really seems to enjoy your music. What do you think is the reason for that?
BF: God, I wouldn't know. I'm happy about that. I think it probably, um….

R: Because it's very unusual. Most people who have one hit you never hear from again. Yet you've been able to continue your career just as strong as ever.
BF: Well, I've always toured a lot and that's probably been a big help. Probably the reason I tour a lot is because it's something I enjoy and I'm good at. It all kind of works out. The popularity probably comes from just having a niche and being genuine about it. I know there's a lot of bands that are much better at making records than they are at performing live. I don't really like to play insincere or shitty shows. I'm always giving it one hundred and twenty percent, and that probably has something to do with it, too. Then there's the niche that I'm doing something that's not all that common. It should be but it's not. It's pretty simple; it's just pop music.

R: How do you go about writing your songs?
BF: It's different every time. Generally, I'll have a lot of music that I've been thinking about and I'll starting working from that. And I don't even know where those pieces come from, they just pop into my head at some point or I find them on the piano. Then I just began to stockpile off the melodies and ideas. Just have to start writing and sort through them, see what I got, see what it means, and try to finish the stuff that's sincere. That's usually the way I do it.

R: What's the difference musically between Ben Folds Five and Ben Folds?
BF: If you look at it literally, you have the Ben Folds Five albums, and then you've got the Ben Folds album and the Fear Of Pop record. All of them are really different from each other. What made Rockin' The Suburbs so different is something that people probably wouldn't realize is the way it was produced.

R: How was it produced?
BF: It was produced very, very slick and the method of recording was very precise. It was mainly because it was the first time I needed a producer outside Caleb Southern (producer of all the BFF albums). If you listen to the music on Rockin' The Suburbs and you listen to the music on the Ben Folds Five records, the Rockin' The Suburbs album sounds tighter and slicker, and that's not really the way I play. All the demos for that album sound a lot like Ben Folds Five albums because we used to arrange the records to my demos. I used to play all the instruments on a four-track and then everyone would have a tape and we would work on the stuff from there. So a lot of things that sounded sometimes like looseness or goofy things were actually things that happened on the demo that we would do. On Rockin' The Suburbs, the guy who produced it (Ben Grosse) made sure all that stuff got smoothed out.

R: How did you feel about that?
BF: It was a give or take kind of thing. I wanted to make a record that was very true to the times. And that's why I got him to produce the record because he makes modern rock records and I thought it would probably be interesting to hear my stuff sound big and massive and slick. It's something else to do and I was interested in hearing what that sounded like. It's not a comfortable way for me to record and I don't think I'll ever do it again. I almost consider that my experimental record because I was experimenting with slickness.

R: Yeah, the Counting Crows said their newest album (Hard Candy) is also different than their other albums because it's more produced than they're used to.
BF: Yeah. It's a really difficult time in the music business, and the record companies aren't doing very well. You have two choices you can make, and I've done both of them at this point. You can either say, 'Fuck it,' and just go completely spartan about it, like don't put money into it at all, don't try for radio. Or you can try to make it easier on them to do their job by doing stuff that's produced up more that might work better on the radio. There's no formula to it. Some people it works better for, some people it doesn't. Really the truth is when you go into a studio you have to depend on other people no matter who you are, to a certain extent. And you don't exactly know what you're getting. For Rockin' The Suburbs, I didn't know what it was going to sound like to put it through the big, slick machine. At the end of the day the songs held up just fine. The songs aren't any worse for it. It just doesn't sound like me when I to listen to it because I know what the demos sound like, and they are very loose. I intend to do the next record loose like that. I don't regret doing [Rockin' The Suburbs]. I think it's kind of like you have to do those things to know what it means.

R: What is up currently with (former BFF members) Robert Sledge and Darren Jessee?
BF: I don't know. They're living in Chapel Hill, both of them. I think Darren's got a band together and Robert's recording in his studio.

R: Robert's just producing now?
BF: I think so, yeah. In any place, he's always writing things. He's just a musical person. He's always writing something, doing something, starting something. And he's not necessarily going to take it all to the commercial side of things. I think sometimes when someone "disappears" you get the feeling they don't like what they do anymore. Robert does what he does, and I don't think necessarily he feels the need to put it out there in the commercial world. Darren's more likely to do that. Darren's more likely to get a band together and go to a record label.

R: Over the years, you've toured with some high quality acts such as The Divine Comedy, Clem Snide, Superdrag, and now Duncan Sheik. Do you determine who to tour with?
BF: It's a combination of things. It has to be someone who's available for touring at that moment. There's a list of names of people who are kind of wanting to go out on tour, and to a certain extent you have to pick from that. Sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you don't. The Divine Comedy, you can't get a better opener than that. I just think Neal Hannon's a fucking genius and I'm honored to be on the same stage with the guy. To have him opening for me is almost bizarre. Clem Snide, Travis, Train, they all were great. Komeda from Sweden was one of my favorites.

R: You tend to work with your friends a lot, like Millard Powers, Snuzz, and Fleming and John. It seems like you really prefer to collaborate with your friends than other musical talent.
BF: There's so many talented people. It just happens to be that my friends are as talented as anybody. You might as well use what you know and what's around you. There's always been the argument for me to work with 'the best,' to make an album and go out and get 'the best producer.' I can always work with Caleb, who's my friend, to produce a record. He's really never produced anything else. He's done a couple small things but he's kind of in it because he's our friend, and I have to say that I prefer that. Why not? You're just making music.

R: Recently you did the music for the intro of the MTV Movie Awards. How did you get involved in doing that?
BF: The guy who put that together was someone who I'd worked with before on a couple of little movie projects and things. He produces most of the award shows, so he got me to do that little piece on the top for Jack Black and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

R: Have you ever done anything like that before or plan to do something else similar?
BF: Yeah, that's something I can do for sure. That's a little more like contract work for me. It's kind of a weird, made-to-order kind of thing. Someone says, 'I need something that does this and this and this,' and I went in and did it. And I did it really fast. Most of the time you spend on conference calls. The amount of time that I actually took to make the music wasn't that much. Then you get into where people want to change things and make it like they want it. But then at the end they come around to kind of what you wanted to do to begin with. I don't know how much of that I could do.

R: A few years ago I read that you were working with Hanson on an album.
BF: We talked about it, but we didn't do anything. I was working on the Rockin' The Suburbs at the time. They had a gig with me in L.A. and we had dinner one night and were talking about songs and shit in general. Then I got busy and they got busy and it never happened.

R: It seems like one tool your fans really like to use is the Armchair mailing list, which goes back all the way to the early days. How essential has that been with your popularity?
BF: Ben Folds Five definitely was a product of the Internet era. People who are really into any particular thing can find it on the Internet. I don't want to downplay it but I tend to think that back in the day before there was the Internet, people who were obsessive about any particular thing could find a way to get to it but just not as efficiently. I'm really thankful for anyone that's doing something like that. Frank Maynard (operator of the Armchair) and all the Internet people have definitely helped especially when there's not a lot of press and I'm selling out shows. I have to attribute that to the Internet.

R: Are you working on a new album?
BF: I'm going to start working in December.

R: Do you have plans on who you will be working with?
BF: I think I'll produce it myself. I have some ideas for musicians to bring in, possibly an upright bassist and a drummer. The couple names of people I'm thinking about are semi-famous, not like me just playing with my friends. I'd like to get like a really amazing jazz upright bass player and a very impressive drummer.

December 2002