Marcus Hughes speaks with Ben Folds about his last album So There, collaborating with New York based chamber ensemble yMusic, and performing in Wales.
So how has the tour been going?
Really well. It’s exceptional. It’s been one of my favourites. I’ll be really sad to wrap it all up, which we do in August in Sydney. It’s been going really well live. Never, ever, do you make a record, go out with new material and not have to repeat it a little bit, to let it sink in. This one really didn’t have much of a break in time. And I think the reason is because the ensemble is so unique and the presentation is so different, and my audience is really pretty smart.
How was it collaborating with yMusic on the album?
It was a real collaboration in the studio. And there’s one song that actually is a collaboration in that it was written by me and the violinist. They are so good, and we seemed to see eye to eye on so much. I just trusted them immediately so we were all able to make contributions to make it work really fast. It’s funny, because I don’t know whilst listening to the album if it’s obvious how quickly that stuff went down.
You’ve said before that you’ve felt you have a lot of freedom as a musician, is that something you that lead you to compose the concerto and work with yMusic?
Some of that is just the freedom that you allow yourself. If you say I want to put a physics book to music and that’s going to be your project, everyone will be looking at you like “you’re out of your mind, this is going to ruin you”. The freedom comes from doing it. Then everyone has to shut up, you did it. It might not work out but you have to do it. My feeling is, if it interests me, I’m going to do it. That’s that. Life is short. I have a limited number of years to litter the planet with my ideas. I think if you have that kind of attitude it generally works out.
One of my favourite tracks on the album is Phone in a Pool, can you tell me a bit about that? I heard Kesha was the one who fished your phone out of the pool?
Yeah! Although she doesn’t remember it! Well, I know Kesha anyway, but I didn’t know she was at the hotel. I didn’t know anyone was there. I threw my Blackberry in the deep end of this pool in Hollywood at about midnight. I had a couple too many and thought “might as well throw my phone in the pool”. And Kesha pops out of the dark with a hoodie on and she’s like “Ben is that you?” Then she jumps straight into the pool with all her clothes on, got my phone out and told me to put it in rice. I was meant to see her the next day but she had a cold or something. Probably from jumping in the pool!
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And Not A Fan? I can hear a lot of the battle between high and low culture in that track. Is that something you were thinking about whilst making the record?
When couples don’t work out, you look at the fault line and often times it’s just about class. We think we’re above it but we’re not. “She likes all this fancy music and I don’t know how to dress, she makes me feel stupid”. That does happen, and I grew up on the lower side of that.
But I think it’s well suited for the album because it’s a rock artist delving into the pallet of the upper class. I’m seated at the table, and I’m maybe a little self conscious about it but the best thing is to just be honest about it. And I think that’s what this album does. I just say, “Ok, here’s my truth.”
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Ben Folds, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, Sun 12 June. Tickets: £19-£35 Info: 029 2063 6464 / www.wmc.org.uk