[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or on-demand, I am grateful you are here. On today's show, we have the filmmakers behind the new documentary The Melt Goes On Forever: The Art and Times of David Hammons, Harold Crooks, and Judd Tully will join us. We'll discuss the new exhibit celebrating the work of photographer Richard Avedon. An estimated 1,200 people saw it in just the first 24 hours.

On today's Mental Health Monday conversation, we're going to talk about disordered eating with two experts and we'll take your calls. That is the plan so let's get this started with musician, Ben Folds.

[music]

Alison Stewart: Composer-- [chuckles] Hello. There's my microphone. Just about three weeks and counting until pianist, composer, and writer Ben Folds drops a new album. That's worth celebrating for a few reasons. It'd be Ben's first album in a minute following 2015 So There, a collaboration with a contemporary classical group yMusic. It's also his first album since publishing his first book and memoir, A Dream About Lightning Bugs, which he joined us to talk about in 2019 the before times.

If you want to go away back, this year marks three decades since the launch of his now well-known band, Ben Folds Five. Ben Folds' new album, What Matters Most is out June 2nd so mark your calendars. Ben Folds will be playing in New York at the Beacon Theater at the end of June. We are very excited to get to talk to him a little bit early in his tour and get him in our studios at the piano to preview his album with some live songs. It is really nice to see you again.

Ben Folds: Good to see you too.

Alison Stewart: You are going to start us off with a song, yes?

Ben Folds: I'll start with a song. Now?

Alison Stewart: Now.

Ben Folds: Awesome. Well, here's a silly song. There's one silly song on the record, and the rest of them aren't silly. I will start with the silly one.

[Music-Ben Folds-Exhausting Lover]

I woke up in a truck stop parking lot

A girl in a red white and blue halter top was staring

Thick glasses like mine

And a low bored monotone vocal fry

She said, who's the band on the bus?

What bus?

That one, nerd, the one that you got off of

Oh, probably no one you've heard of

Don't know what came over me

As I awkwardly dropped my room key

I said I think that's yours

And three hours later, we were banging this verse out

Oh no, head meet floor

I don't wanna do this no more

Every kiss is a jam band solo

Never gonna say YOLO no mo'

My mind says no

My body says hell no

Let this be over

Exhausting lover

I'm not sure if she couldn't stop

Or if she wouldn't stop

As the motel carpet gave me five more raw spots

What's that stabbing my back?

Ah, that's a wire from her halter top

There was an hour where her head kept banging

Against the bottom of a tabletop

I saw my life in a split screen

But life's just one shot

What the hell would I tell my girlfriend

But the thing is she's not my girlfriend anymore

I traded it all for some third-degree carpet burns

Oh no, head meet floor

I don't wanna do this no more

Every kiss is a jam band solo

Never gonna say YOLO no mo'

My mind says no

My body says hell no

Let this be over

Exhausting lover

Then she handed me a Hot Wheels track

I said, girl that's pretty weird

Where did you get that?

She said never mind that

Here nerd, beat my ass in the bath like my dad did

When I was a bad kid

I said, nah what's this

Let me up out of the Motel Six

And tell me where my pants went

That's when I heard the door knocking

It wasn't housekeeping

It was her boyfriend

Don't know what came over me

Out the door in my boxer briefs

Some dude live-tweeted

As I ran half-naked past a Cracker Barrel

Oh no, head meet floor

I don't wanna do this no more

Every kiss is a jam band solo

Never gonna say YOLO no mo'

My mind says no

My body says hell no

Let this be over

Exhausting lover

Alison Stewart: That was Ben Folds. It's really fun to watch you sing that because when you sing it, you're telling me a story.

Ben Folds: Oh, cool.

Alison Stewart: I think when people get to see you on tour, they'll be able to see that you are telling us a story. Is that the way you write? Do you write a song like that?

Ben Folds: I do. I think I see songs in general, maybe art in general is at least involving a story. We have a sense of beginning-middle-end stuff. Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: In general in life are you a storyteller or just professionally?

Ben Folds: I think that I'd say the human race is probably the storytelling race. That's what we do. We communicate those things, I guess so we can survive if I was going to be a hack anthropologist. I feel like a storyteller.

Alison Stewart: When you listen to that track on the album, which I'm going to play a little bit of it in a minute. It's really fun. You have a really good chewy production on this album. I'm curious what conversations you had with Joe-- I hope I say his last name right.

Ben Folds: Pisapia.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for doing that for me. You're a gentleman.

Ben Folds: You nailed it.

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] Joe Pisapia, your producer who's worked with you. You've worked with him in the past. What conversations did you have about the sound you wanted for this new album?

Ben Folds: Yes. In general, what we discussed was along the lines of me telling Joe that I wanted to make a generous album. If we're going to put something out in the world, with all the albums in that interview, just one more of them, then I really feel like it needs to be generous. In terms of production, what that means is that it's something a joy to listen to.

That you would be entertained by the sounds that you heard and that the frequencies would be pleasing Because that's not always the case.

Sometimes you want to create a little distance a little pain, but I felt like this one, "You know what? Let's do a generous album," which meant doing anything it took whether or not that was Satanic in some way in terms of production, just to make it sound good.

Alison Stewart: I want to play a little bit of a clip of-- This is the album version of the song you just sang. You can listen if you want to or you already know what it sounds like.

Ben Folds: I'll avoid it.

Alison Stewart: You'll avoid it. Let's take a listen.

[Music-Ben Folds-Album Version Exhausting Lover]

I woke up in a truck stop parking lot

A girl in a red white and blue halter top was staring

Thick glasses like mine

And a low bored monotone vocal fry (I like that)

She said, who's the band on the bus?

What bus?

That one, nerd, the one that you got off of

Oh, probably no one you've heard of

Don't know what came over me

As I awkwardly dropped my room key

I said I think that's yours

And three hours later, I was banging this verse out

Oh no, head meet floor

I don't wanna do this no more

Every kiss is a jam band solo

Never gonna say YOLO no mo'

My mind says no

My body says hell no

Alison Stewart: I just had to wait for the big. The big drop. I want people to hear just how big and full.

Ben Folds: I wanted a picture of you with the thumb down.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Oh, no.

Ben Folds: Alison Stewart gives it one thumb down.

Alison Stewart: Alison Stewart just want to be able to ask you a question. It was just so big. That's why I did-- The thumb down was, "Turn down the volume." That's all. It's just got a great big sound. To your point now that you said generous, it felt like, "Let me give this to you."

Ben Folds: That's what I want. I know I let the witness so you're agreeing with my generosity, but that really was the idea. It's like, let's make it fun to listen to. The fact even for me is to come to the headphones. As much as I dreaded here and I was like, "Yes. That is pretty good."

Alison Stewart: What does Joe do for you, as a producer? How does he help you get to where you want to go?

Ben Folds: He and I have a real good collaboration. He's an excellent musician. He knows that I'm a control freak. He'll back off when it's time for me to pretend that I'm the producer for a while, which he knows I just need. Then there's times where he's like, he'll say, "Uncle Joe's going to have to put his sandal down now." Because there were times when I was like, "Okay, we're doing this." He's like, "No, you're not doing that." It's just good to have someone to bounce off of. I actually got to tour with Neil Young really early on.

I remember him saying at a launch back stage that all we needed a producer for was to tell us when it was time to go home. I think that I've always applied that, and Joe did that as well. He's a brilliant musician, so he understands what I'm trying to achieve here.

Alison Stewart: I was interviewing Rick Rubin about his book about creativity, and I was saying, "So what do you do when you're in a situation when it's Jay Z or something, and you don't like it?" He said, "You know, it's never personal. It's about getting the best sound. It's about getting the best art, about helping my artist be the best they can be."

Ben Folds: Yes. That's true, and I think a good producer recognizes when it's the real artist speaking, and when it's the child ego speaking. You just got to do whatever you have to do as a producer to get them through it, or knock them loose out of it, or something. We all have a thing that we would like to be. While there's nothing wrong with aspiring to that, if that's not something that you are, then you're a little bit in crazy place. You need to accept. For most artists, I think it's what it feel like. You can't observe it, and say, "Hey, I'm observing it as a critic and saying this--"

You just have to go, "That felt right, get me away from it now."

Alison Stewart: My guest is Ben Folds, the new album is called What Matters Most. It'll be out June 2nd. He'll be at the Beacon Theater on June 22nd. The video for that song, Exhausting Lover, you say in the beginning of it, "Oh, I turned this song into a musical." It's a great video, it's directed by one of the guys from Drunk History, but I read somewhere that you were actually working on a musical. Is that a real deal?

Ben Folds: Well, I've been rumored to have been working on a musical for 25 years, one after another. I'll start, and then I don't do it, so who knows? Part of me thinks that I like writing little songs that have little stories and musicals inside them, and maybe that's enough for me. The other side just probably recognizes that I'm afraid to jump in. I think it's scary, people do this all the time, and they're good at it, and I've never done it. So.

Alison Stewart: You could try it.

Ben Folds: I could try it, thank you. I may try it. I'll take your advice. If you see I've done one, you can know that I took your advice.

Alison Stewart: Well, you wrote a whole book, which makes me think you could probably fashion a--

Ben Folds: The book didn't encroach on my songwriting to me.

Alison Stewart: Oh, interesting.

Ben Folds: I feel like when it comes to musicals, my argument against it is something like this, is I feel like there were great actors and actresses in the time of silent movies that didn't cross over to the talkies. I feel like this is the talkies for me. I imagine the story when I make it. I imagine the story around the song, even if I'm not explaining the story. I'm having a hard time jumping into that. That said, I've had a little experience in the last few years. I wrote for Peanuts, I wrote a song for Charlie Brown. I've done some stuff for Mo Willems for Goldilocks, kid stuff, you know.

Alison Stewart: Sure.

Ben Folds: I'm jumping in.

Alison Stewart: Mo Willems-- his kid stuff though is fairly sophisticated.

Ben Folds: It is because he recognizes that kids are sophisticated as beings, so he gets it.

Alison Stewart: When you were writing your memoir, did you have to concentrate just on writing a book, or are you able to do two things at once?

Ben Folds: I pretty much concentrated on the book. I did what Stephen King said to do in his book about writing. I got up and I wrote, and then I put it away. I've never done that with songwriting. It was an amazing experience, because I was humble enough to take someone's advice on how to do it, and achieved a lot, quickly.

Alison Stewart: Have you ever been able to, since then, just get up and write songs, or is that just too much of your creative spirit that you can't harness it?

Ben Folds: I did a little bit of that recently, because I have a Patreon group that really got cranked up around the pandejo. We got together once a week, and I have them give me headlines of news events. What I was trying to show them, as a little bit of a masterclass, if I can call it that, was, "Look, your song doesn't have to be about the headline, or it could be about the headline, but it doesn't have to be the headline." You know what I mean? It's what's the story inside this story? In doing that, I set myself up for having to write on Saturday morning at 11 o'clock.

We had our meeting then, and then I would just start writing.

Alison Stewart: What's an example of a headline that they would give you?

Ben Folds: One was a song called Kristine From The 7th Grade. That was a story in the Wallstreet Journal, that someone suggested, "Why don't you do this one." The story was; Why I'm not going to be taking my shoes off in your shoeless home. It's one of those culture wedge kind of things, and this definitely doesn't mean well. This is not a, "Everyone get together and agree with each other on something." It's quite the opposite. I was like, "I don't want to write about this piece, but I would like to write about the writer."

The writer was a woman named Kris, with a K, and I said, "What if I knew Kris, and she was from seventh grade, and now she writes for The Wallstreet Journal? Plus she sends me conspiracy theories in e-mail all the time?" I just thought about the sadness of that. She was happy in seventh grade, and now she's all contorted and upset online, and upset about taking shoes off, when she ought to be happy again.

Alison Stewart: Could we hear that song?

Ben Folds: Yes, absolutely.

Alison Stewart: This is Ben Folds.

[music]

[Music-Ben Folds-Kristine From The 7th Grade]

Are you the same Kristine

I knew from seventh grade?

Yeah it’s definitely you

Just with a new last name

Someone who laughed a lot

Is what I remember the most

But the face in your profile

Suggests maybe not so much anymore

'Cause I got the emails

These last two years every day

And I just don’t reply because

I don’t really know what to say

Kristine from the seventh gradе

The anger, the all caps

And all thе pseudoscience

The misspellings, the must be on purpose

We went to a good school, Kristine

So what would you imagine I might

Take from this deluge of memes

The cryptic, dark Bible quotes

Guns and dead fetuses

Seriously, Kristine, are you okay?

'Cause this world can be

Wonderful too

Do you ever see it that way?

Kristine from the seventh grade

There’s a break in the rain

A perfect time for a walk

The smell of wet leaves

And warm smiles and hellos

These things exist in the real world, you know

Oh what a shame, Kristine

This disease that makes strangers of friends

But if these days it’s really “us’s” and “them’s”

I want to you to take me off of both of those lists

Cause this world can be

So wonderful too

Do you ever see it that way?

Alison Stewart: That was Ben Folds from the new album, What Matters Most, Kristine from the Seventh Grade. Ben Folds, who can definitely write a musical. We'll have more after a quick break. Yes, you can. I love it.

Ben Folds: [unintelligible 00:20:11].

[music]

You're on WNYC, I'm Alison Stewart. My guest this hour is Ben Folds. The new album is called What Matters Most. It is out June 2nd and the tour comes to New York City, to the Beacon Theater around June 22nd. Ben is back. Should we say what happened?

Ben Folds: What's that?

Alison Stewart: Should we say what happened?

Ben Folds: I had to pee.

Alison Stewart: This is the first for the show, Ben. You just like, you were good then, you just cut it right out. Soon as you, that song, bam boom out, and then.

Ben Folds: I might have rushed it a little bit, as a result, that was so funny. I had this bad cold last week.

Alison Stewart: Oh, I'm sorry.

Ben Folds: Just like, just ugh, I'm getting over that now, but my way of dealing with it is to just drink loads of water. It's not like I didn't go right before I came in, but we can change the subject.

Alison Stewart: Rookie Move from Lab Radio. [crosstalk]

Ben Folds: Rookie Move, it's not your first radio, but it's my first bathroom in the middle of a show.

Alison Stewart: We're going to switch topics. You launched a charity project called Keys for Kids. Is that-- Yes. Tell me more about that.

Ben Folds: We wanted to do something in North Carolina where I come from, I grew up with access to all kinds of art, all kinds of music, adults that cared about it, little signage everywhere, Winston-Salem loves art and all kinds of stuff. I just thought I need to make sure that I'm one of the people who helps keep that going because it was a relatively-- There's never a true "no child gets left behind" world, but it was pretty good when I was growing up, as good as I've seen it and I thought I wanted to help improve that.

What we've done is recognized through the Arts Foundation in the Arts Council of North Carolina. We have recognized the nonprofit groups that are doing great work that needed help to begin with, because they're already doing it. This way we're not in the driver's seat about it. I'm sure that's been done before, but I felt like for us that was pretty innovative. That was like, these people do it all the time. They're full-time in this. Basically, we're giving them keyboards where we can get them, donating money, getting other donors, and it's fun to see so far, it's already working.

Alison Stewart: Where does the motivation to give back come from for you?

Ben Folds: Increasingly, my resolve has strengthened-- It's something I've always wanted to do, but as the world gets a little nuttier, my feeling is let's plant seeds because we're suffering from the effects of not being as well educated as we should be and everything. Art is a big part of not just happiness in childhood, but it's a big part of your education and in so many ways it's important. That's my motivation is to go, I can get on Twitter and argue with a bunch of people about stuff that's just never going to be heard, or I can just go out there and just start planting seeds, and that's the way we've been doing it.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Ben Folds, his new album, What Matters Most comes out June 2nd. For people who don't know, you're Artistic Advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at Kennedy Center. That's very exciting and sounds fancy, Ben.

Ben Folds: It's fancy pants.

Alison Stewart: Why were you interested in taking that role?

Ben Folds: When I was a kid, I was in a great youth orchestra, very early, always have loved the orchestra. I've spent my last 15 years touring with orchestras. I have a perspective on something very specific, which is taking what we call popular music, maybe and Chopin would've called it folk music as he incorporated in or bar talk. Taking folk music and absorbing pop music into the orchestra. This is not a new thing but because we live in the era of electronics and music has changed quite a bit.

The way that we disseminate and understand it, I feel like I can help with my perspective of putting my music together with an orchestra, what does, what doesn't work because it's a real cultural schism between even a jazz artist who's probably the most literate of the pops music in an orchestra. You have to get all that out of the way, and it's very time-consuming. What I wanted to do at the NSL was create a program in almost a manifesto. Here's how it can be done, because I've seen it done so poorly so many times.

If you want to bring kids in, you want to bring a new audience in, and that's the way you want to do it, allow the orchestra to be great, don't muzzle the orchestra, don't turn them into set pieces, fancy set pieces, playing the violins for you and collaborating with them. It's not really a collaboration, but, but working with them in that way is hard, hard work. You have to come to them, you have to meet them. That's what I preach to the artists that come in. Some of them know it more than others anyway.

Regina Spektor grew up in classical music. It wasn't a great stretch for Reggie and the orchestra to get together on that. Some others like Sara Bareilles, more about musicals and things but we fit those two things together. Jon Batiste, he's a jazz player, but he's a Julliard-trained smarty pants, so that worked well, but we're giving them charts and working on things that don't require a band. The orchestra is their band. I could talk about it longer than you want to hear, but I'm definitely have been on fire about it for a long time. I want it to be done if it's going to be done at all.

Alison Stewart: You sound very passionate about it. Is it a cultural issue that would keep something like that from happening? Or is it a fear of failure on somebody's part?

Ben Folds: There are a lot of misunderstandings about what the orchestra is. First of all, the orchestra I see as a symbol of civilization. It's a symbol of it. It's an artistic symbol of it because it's a lot of people working together for something greater than themselves. When you see lots of people together, they're usually fighting, but even if there's dissonance in the orchestra, it's controlled dissonance and there's an agreement, it's civilization as far as I'm concerned. I think it's very important to have this symbol.

I'm sure it must have grown pretty much exactly in tandem with civilization itself, that's what it is. I think the people then can easily view that as being elitist. Here's an elite organization. People always ask me, "What do I wear at the orchestra?" Shirt and shoes, whatever you wear at Denny's, get in there because it is people's music. The people on stage making the music for people. You don't have to know anything. You just have to have ears and a heart. It's not like that. That's the first misunderstanding.

That misunderstanding is also absorbed by the orchestra themselves, who then need to be scolded. You're not better than this musician over here or this person over here, but everyone likes a club, like Indie Rockers. It's like, "Don't like my music, then there'd be too many people liking my music." They do have that a little bit, but your average person also has a misunderstanding of what it is. It starts there. Then some of it really is about electronics. The orchestra wasn't invented, made, developed. It didn't happen with the PA system.

It is the PA system. It's the original producer. Everything in the orchestra is the original mixing board. It's amazing. Why would you want to throw an inferior mixing board on top of it and ruin it? That's a big problem. As soon as you have a singer, they're at the electric singer, they're singing through a microphone. Now you've got electronics involved. How do you do that? For me, getting through that is the first thing. Second thing is scores. You have to score as well as Stravinsky. Sorry, you have to. Why would you want to hear Rite of Spring and right after hear something that's supposed to rock?

You want to hear it rock too. I know that's shooting high, but a lot of times people feel like something was done by dead people a long time ago and we can't do it again. Sure, we can. Why not? Why couldn't it be Kendrick Lamar and the National Symphony Orchestra expressing something that Stravinsky only wishes he could express? Of course, we can do that. You have to then score within an inch of your life to make it good because you got to keep up with the best of all time. I could go on.

Alison Stewart: You have a nonprofit, National Symphony Orchestra, which you're clearly passionate about, new album. What is something that you'd like to get to, but you don't have time right now, but you're going to find time to do?

Ben Folds: I never had a buckety list. I've always stumbled into things. I think by stumbling into things I don't cut off possibilities. It's great to aspire to something, but I think that just needs to be a little serving suggestion and then you forget about it because you have to be able to recognize a great opportunity. Sometimes, they don't look like great opportunities if they don't fit the bill. If you're looking for a type of person, maybe your soulmate does not look like that. You need to open your mind. To me, I'm totally happy doing what I'm doing.

I got 80 things I'd like to do, and whichever one knocks on the door and drags me out of bed first and feeds me, I'll do it.

Alison Stewart: You are kind enough to play one more song for us. It's going to be the title track, What Matters Most.

Ben Folds: That's correct.

Alison Stewart: This is a very personal song.

Ben Folds: It is. I think almost all songs are in a way. This one is-- I was in the storage space clearing out all the post-pandemic stuff and felt like, I think everyone, "What matters most. I need to get rid of some stuff. I don't need to take up so much space. I need to be more efficient. I didn't have time for this, why should I have time for that now?" I'm going through my little storage space. We had so much stuff, it was so embarrassing, and so I felt like I had to throw away a lot of stuff and say goodbye to it.

I started thinking of a song like, "What matters most. That could be the song, it could be What Matters Most." Then, while I was in there clearing out for a couple of weeks, I got a terrible, terrible text that one of my best friends ever-ever died. That added a little weight to What Matters Most. Luckily, I was in the middle of the song and he gets to be in the song a little bit.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen. Thanks, Ben.

[Music-Ben Folds-What Matters Most]

I could not see the haze back in the day

Where we live inside of it.

Now, I'm floating away

And honing the halls night and day

Out in some storage space out on the highway.

15 years tossed in boxes

Chopped with the bills and funds, pictures and trash

With the traumas and memories attached.

Now I'm wondering what matters most.

A true friend is someone who when you are with them

You know what matters most.

How about that door slams so tight

With you and our time trapped behind it.

Now you are floating away.

But in these days of overwhelming change

I just want to know what I want

Because I only seem to know what I don't.

With so little time, what matters most?

Tell me what, what matters most.

I keep going for the fav

To send you a note with the news

I'm thinking, "Man you won't believe this."

You're gone.

I'm sorting through photos of fake smiles

And photos of real ones

But I've thrown the whole lot in the bin.

I've just got a glimpse of what matters most.

Tell me what, what matters most.

Alison Stewart: That's the title track from What Matters Most, out June 22nd. Ben Folds will be at the Beacon Theater on June 22nd. Album's out June 2nd. Concert is June 22nd. Ben, thank you.

Ben Folds: Thank you. Good to see you again too.

 

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