\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div> \t\t\t\t\tFolds and Kraft onstage during a performance of We\u2019ve Been Here Before<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMIchaelah Reynolds*<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tYou resigned<\/a> as artistic adviser to the National Symphony Orchestra last year. How do you feel about everything that went down with the Kennedy Center<\/a> a year later?<\/strong> \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n \n\tI don\u2019t regret my decision at all. It went exactly like I thought it would. There was nothing surprising about it. There were those who said, \u201cYou should stay, and that way you can be there to help.\u201d You can\u2019t help someone if everyone\u2019s dying on a ship. It\u2019s just going down. It would\u2019ve been like, \u201cBen Folds loves Trump.\u201d\u00a0 I was going to be used as a pawn.<\/p>\n \n\tYou\u2019re releasing the previously unreleased shelved first attempt\u00a0of Ben Folds Five\u2019s debut.\u00a0Was there any thought in your head while doing that first attempt with Stiff Johnson that the album wasn\u2019t right?<\/strong> \n\tI explained to the guys, she didn\u2019t like the record. Then we went back home and I remember sitting at my house, we had a floor full of board cassettes from all the shows we played. Shit was everywhere and Darren was like, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you put in the show we just did in Kansas?\u201d We put it in. He\u2019s like, \u201cThat\u2019s pretty great,\u201d and we agreed. Then I put the record in and it wasn\u2019t. We\u2019re like, \u201cHow do you get that in the studio?\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tOur friend Caleb [Southern], who\u2019d been making lots of indie punk-rock records, thought he had an idea of how to make that work called parallel compression. And in an era where you couldn\u2019t get your hands on that kind of equipment all that easily, especially in North Carolina. So he drove around in the car, borrowed, begged, stole, rented all the compressors he could get to do this. That allowed us to play bombastically. Before that, if we played bombastically while Stiff Johnson was recording, he was like, \u201cGuys, guys, guys. Eh.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tDid you feel like he was suppressing your sound?<\/strong> \n\tDo you have any plans set for a tour around this anniversary?<\/strong> \n\tLast time the band toured it was in support of an album. Is there any new Ben Folds Five music coming?<\/strong> \n\tIt\u2019s also the 25th anniversary of Rockin\u2019 the Suburbs<\/em>, your first solo record, which was released on Sept. 11, 2001. What was that like?<\/strong> \n\tYou were also one of the only artists touring at the time, right after those events.<\/strong> \n\tIn a way, 9\/11 allowed me a new start. It killed the record, and then it allowed the record to build on its own momentum.\u00a0All that in the shadow of the biggest tragedy that we\u2019ll live through. Well, fucking, who knows now? You couldn\u2019t even say at the time, and you wouldn\u2019t have wanted to. Any comment about what the thing did or didn\u2019t do for your fucking career. We were watching pictures of people falling out of the building. It\u2019s in the rearview now, so I can kind of say it, but I feel funny commenting on it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m proud of and stand by my decision, but it was a fucking bummer. They came in first to the Kennedy Center before they tried to roll over all the rest of the agencies and monuments. I was watching how it was being done, watching the ignorance and the arrogance of the whole thing. It dawned on me that everything that I worried about, about all the other parts of government that they were going to do that to\u2026 that they didn\u2019t know what they were doing and they were incredibly mean and greedy, just arrogant.<\/p>\n\n
I think so. You\u2019re trying to love something, you know you love things about it, you put your heart into it, you\u2019re down the hole. And you just keep talking yourself into that it\u2019s good. But the indicator is always in the body. Something in your nervous system doesn\u2019t feel right. I recall that feeling a lot of the time. I guess I chalked it up to, \u201cWell, this is a big important thing. We\u2019re spending our entire budget on the only album we\u2019ll probably ever get to do for the first time.\u201d My friend Kerry [McCarthy] came in and she listened to maybe two songs. When I found her, she was crying. I was like, \u201cAre you OK? What\u2019s happening?\u201d She\u2019s like, \u201cWho is that I\u2019m listening to? It\u2019s not you guys.\u00a0 Are you OK with this?\u201d And we\u2019re like, \u201cYeah, we\u2019re fine.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was doing the responsible thing. He was like, \u201cThis doesn\u2019t sound good. When you guys play like that, you might think you\u2019re doing something, but it sounds like mud and you\u2019re rushing.\u201d And it did. So we didn\u2019t rush and brought the tempo back, but then his job became more difficult because he had to get the intensity back in.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m seeing vague windows pop up for next year. Robert and Darren and I signed 1,000 of those records one afternoon, and it\u2019s as close to a group talk as I can ever imagine having between us. If you\u2019d been listening in the room, you might not have known, but we agreed to tour. It has gone from doing three or four shows, maybe seven at the most, to now doing multiple weeks. That\u2019s what I know right now. And it\u2019ll probably be in a couple of chunks,\u00a0 still a lot of planning to do. But we\u2019ll be out.<\/p>\n
No.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s nothing that overshadows imminent record failure more than a catastrophic terrorist event. I didn\u2019t start to think about what that had done to the album until months later. Bob Dylan was on the same label. [Ed. Note: Dylan\u2019s \u201cLove and Theft\u201d was also released that day.] <\/em>He got a re-release, and then I was like, \u201cOh, I didn\u2019t get one of those.\u201d There\u2019s no press. There\u2019s nothing happening. I\u2019m riding around in a van with a sound man by myself touring that record.<\/p>\n
Immediately after, the next day. I had this highly produced record on the biggest record label in the world with all the help that I could possibly get, and suddenly a lot of that was yanked from underneath. So I just toured solo with the piano. The band had been playing for thousands. I was back to playing for 100 people \u2014 but about 18 months later, I was exceeding the band\u2019s numbers, just playing solo piano. We\u2019d usually rent a Cadillac or a van, just me and one other guy. Play Beacon Theatre twice in a row, then play Letterman, get back in my own van that I parked next to 30 Rock somewhere with quarters in the fucking machine, come out, sign stuff, and then get in a van and drive off. It\u2019s very un-rock-star. I just didn\u2019t know where the whole thing was headed, and we scaled everything down because I was told that I wasn\u2019t going to have a career probably. So I was just doing things really small and things were building up again.<\/p>\n