Folds, Ben

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BEN FOLDS

Born: Winston-Salem, North Carolina; 12 September 1966

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Whatever and Ever Amen (1997)

Hit songs since 1990: "Underground," "Brick," "Army"

Piano player Ben Folds surfaced in the mid-1990s with his trio, the curiously named Ben Folds Five. Folds, the group's singer and primary songwriter, backed by Darren Jesse on drums and Robert Sledge on bass, took the idea of a traditional trio and turned it on its head—a pop band with no guitar—with the group's energetic, humorous, self-titled debut on Caroline Records (1995). Their debut album found a home with college-aged Generation Xers, thanks largely to the song "Underground," a tongue-in-cheek skewering of youth culture, specifically nose rings and mosh pits.

Folds, whose initial dabbling with music came through drums and not piano, draws comparisons to Billy Joel, Elton John, and Todd Rundgren. Folds writes pop songs about being a geek, getting picked on growing up, and the pains of adolescence and relationships. Folds and his band were expert live entertainers who thrilled the audience with their dazzling improvisational skills and smart-aleck commentary. Folds often plunked away on the piano with his feet, his head, and other extremities.

Their self-titled debut was a welcome antidote to the guitar-oriented, grunge rock bands popular at the time. The follow-up, Whatever and Ever Amen (1997), was no sophomore slump; it went platinum just over a year after its release. A piano/pop masterpiece from start to finish, it runs the gamut sonically and thematically, including three-part vocal harmonies that recall both the British band Queen and the Doobie Brothers. Emotionally, it ranges from a raucous piano on the humorous but angry "Song for the Dumped" to the solemn, poignant "Brick," the unexpected successful single about a lover's abortion. Whatever and Ever Amen sets itself up immediately, with the thunderous playing of Folds on the leadoff track, "One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces," a sarcasm-fueled, revenge fantasy on being the short guy in gym class who gets picked on. Folds sings, "Now I'm big and important / One angry dwarf and 200 solemn faces are you."

After the disappointing sales of their third release, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (1999), the group split up. Folds went solo, and his debut, Rockin' the Suburbs (2001), focused on the humility of growing older, perhaps as a result of remarrying for the third time and moving to Australia with his wife Frally Hynes and their twins. Replete with his signature piano bravado and song titles such as "Zak and Sara" and "Annie Waits," Rockin' the Suburbs is consistently upbeat. In the fall of 2002, after a year and a half long solo piano tour, Folds released a live album, Ben Folds Live.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Rockin' the Suburb s (Epic, 2001); Ben Folds Live (Epic, 2002). With Ben Folds Five: Ben Folds Five (Caroline Records, 1995); Whatever and Ever Amen (550 Music/Sony, 1997); The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (550 Music/Sony 1999).