I was the one who often wanted to push the concept of Piano-Band-That-Rocks™ to the point of breaking the songs. It’s ironic because these were my songs I was willing to trod on, and I was probably the most old-fashioned in the band. My songs bordered on Broadway style when arranged and performed “normally.” Maybe I was compensating for that by asking for distortion and bashing cymbals. Darren was always reminding me about lyrics and dynamics, by playing, not explaining. Robert worked to animate and energize the arrangements.
Fortunately, the two had very different vocal qualities and ranges, which is actually ideal for group vocals. Darren’s voice was deeper and more resonant, Robert’s more cutting and higher. Mine was right in the middle, and our blend was immediate. I soon found that we could get a few distinct alternate vocal timbres by trading positions and placing Darren’s falsetto above Robert’s chest voice. My lead vocal could segue into a backing vocal between lyrics, making it sound like we had more singers that we actually did.
Everything seemed to be falling into place. I’d call it 25 percent idiocy, 25 percent intuition, and 50 percent luck. I felt the window of opportunity might be short and so I was going for it at a cavalier, breakneck pace.
* * *
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So let’s wheel out that line from “Phone in a Pool” once more:
What’s been good for the music hasn’t always been so good for the life.
* * *
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These hasty decisions were obviously very good for the music, and that was invigorating and inspiring musically. But when the dust settled at night, I found myself personally overwhelmed, a bit confused and blue, thinking of that little fellow frozen on the suitcase. This was not at all what I would’ve envisioned just a month before. What was ahead? What had I left behind? One of my first nights in our rental/rehearsal home, I sat for a while at the piano in the kind of silence I’ve always been so uncomfortable with. Then I filled that silence by softly repeating a middle C and the F above, in a perfect fourth, simultaneously and hypnotically, perhaps to soothe myself. It might have been for an hour, I’m not sure. I don’t normally write songs in one sitting, but this one was finished before I went to bed. It was called “Sad and Free,” but when the sun came up I decided I’d instead call it “Evaporated.”
Woke up way too late feeling hungover and old
And the sun was shining bright and I walked barefoot down the road
Started thinking about my old man
It seems that all men wanna get into a car and go—anywhere
Here I stand, sad and free
I can’t cry and I can’t see
What I’ve done
God, what have I done?
THE FIRST ALBUM—BOTH OF THEM
FROM JANUARY TO MARCH 1994, Robert, Darren, and I rehearsed like the wind. The songs I’d been bumbling around with for years were coming to life, one at a time, with each session. On one breakthrough rehearsal we looped the chorus of one of my older songs, “Eddie Walker, This Is Your Life,” playing it over and over. We’d discovered the power of pretty three-part harmony over a distorted rhythm section, which became a sort of trademark. The song had never sounded like that before. It was set free!
I likened our method of brutish musical arrangement to an American Tourister suitcase commercial I’d seen when I was a kid. It featured a gorilla jumping up and down on the luggage to show how tough the product was. I theorized, my songs would have to prove they could survive in this jungle of sound. The lyrics and the vocal would have to compete in the noise, rather than being coddled. If they were still intact, like the luggage, they were ready for consumption. This rough treatment of my old tunes created an interesting effect. Built on satisfying chords, well-thought-out arrangements, and centered at the piano, my songs could have easily been mistaken as undiscovered seventies’ pop songs. But we buried that gooey center inside a fashionable grungy structure. I exaggerated my wilder style of piano-playing, and it all became one big ball of sound. I found this exciting and liberating and I looked forward to writing new songs for this beast. But for now we were creating a set for our first gig in March, so we concentrated on putting our stamp on my existing catalog.
We didn’t yet have a band name, and Alan was calling every day to push that decision along because we would need to be called something for our first gig. We went through many cringeworthy ideas, as bands do. I think one of mine tops the list of god-awful band names: Dear Rosetta Stone. What? I also recall suggesting Uncle Plastic Bitch. A little better, but still. I still don’t know if inserting my name into the band name was the right thing to do, but at the last minute I told Alan, “Let’s go with Ben Folds Five,” at least to get through the gig. I had built momentum as a solo artist in Nashville and New York, where we would be doing many of the first gigs, and the band was an extension of my four-year story from Nashville to New York and now Chapel Hill. So it made a degree of sense.
Predictably, Alan asked, “Why five? There are three of you.” That became the leading interview question we would have to answer for the next five years.
“I don’t know. I think it’s funny,” I answered, which became the answer I would always give.
“Well, I’ve got a great sense of humor,” Alan said (and I will never let him forget this), “and there’s nothing funny about that name!”
That settled it. Ben Folds Five it would be. I’m not sure Robert and Darren were quite convinced. Until now I had sold this whole venture to them as a band—all-for-one-and-one-for-all style. And here I was advocating for my name to be front and center. The tension that built between us over our time probably had some roots in this.
* * *
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We would need to have some music to sell at gigs, so we soon made a two-sided single on 45-rpm vinyl. We recorded “Jackson Cannery” and “Eddie Walker, This Is Your Life” on sixteen-track analog and mixed it all the same night with Caleb Southern, who had a little nighttime share with a studio that made advertisement music. Caleb, a soundman at the Chapel Hill (technically Carborro) rock club Cat’s Cradle, was becoming locally famous for his work with bands like Archers of Loaf, Metal Flake Mother, and Zen Frisbee. Great, simple production. We drove our two mixes to United Record Pressing in Nashville to have a few hundred seven-inch 45s pressed, creating the sleeve at Kinko’s from an old picture of my mother playing bongos when she was fifteen.
“Jackson Cannery” single cover art, self-released, 1994
By the summer of 1994 we had some gigs in New York that Alan had set up. Some interested label people from Caroline Records attended one at the Lion’s Den and asked for a copy of our demo. “We don’t have a demo,” I explained. “A demo is like a business card or a shameful eight-by-ten Hollywood headshot. We make records.” I told them we had a vinyl 45 (even though not many people in the nineties had a record player—it was all CDs) and he could pay two dollars for the record just like everyone else. I wasn’t kidding. I added that we would never record a song more than once because “it stole the soul of the song.” Alan ended up giving Caroline some of our rehearsal tapes, so they could actually hear our songs.