When seconds pass slowly, and years go flying by
That sentiment feels a little less revelatory to me now, but it’s still true. It ain’t a bad line. I wrote it on a napkin while doing my “side work” waiting tables at the Dogwood Room Restaurant at UNC–G in 1988. A decade later, audiences were singing along with it in places I never dreamed I’d travel. And then a decade after that, Robert, Darren, and I found ourselves together sound-checking that same song for our reunion concert in Chapel Hill in 2008. 2008! Boom, just like that! It had been years since we’d seen one another. But as soon as we hit the first note together, it felt like no time had passed at all. We broke for lunch and the present elastically snapped back into place.
While not in our time machine, playing music as we had done so many times before, it was obvious we were all changed and older. Time had passed after all. And it was striking that we all stepped away to check our cellphones, something that had never been part of our band back in the day. The broadcast of the Ben Folds Five reunion concert that night was for Myspace, which was king of the internet in 2008, (though its days were numbered). I remember it all even more clearly because it was September, right in the middle of the massive bank crisis, and the world was shifting. An historic week.
After our rehearsal, I downloaded the artwork proposals for my soon-to-be-released third studio album, Way to Normal. I was considering using my brain scans for the cover. They had been taken the night I fell offstage and suffered a concussion in Hiroshima a couple years before, the story of which starts the album. (I don’t recall much of the Hiroshima concert, other than bleeding on the piano a lot and joking to the audience that I’d cut myself shaving.)
In the end I decided against the brain scan. Instead, I thought the art should reflect a sense of loneliness and feeling lost. After the reunion show, I went back to Nashville and we shot a series of photos of me wandering what was supposed to be my lonely mansion (I actually lived in a 1,600-square-foot house), pondering my sad life. The cover shows me in silk pajamas, with two butlers (played by my band, Jared Reynolds and Sam Smith) protecting me from the rain with an umbrella as I meditate at my pool. It seemed to capture the time better. At least it made me laugh, which is important to me.
From series of me wandering my imaginary sad mansion with butlers (my bandmates)
Finalizing my third divorce during Way to Normal, I should have taken an opportunity to rethink my life. To slow the tempo down and take a pause. But, instead, I immediately launched into a new relationship, soon to be married once again, soon to become what I now consider the worst version of myself. Of course, everyone around me could see that it was all a fast track to yet another divorce. How many times would I set the needle back to the top or count my life’s repetitive song over again? I was beginning to resemble the character in my decade-old song:
I have made the same mistakes over and over again
—From “Mess,” The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, 1999
I think Way to Normal is a fine record. I can’t imagine not having songs like “You Don’t Know Me,” “Cologne,” or “Kylie From Connecticut” in my catalog. And it came in at number 13 on the Billboard album chart, my highest chart position to date. Not bad at all. But something was starting to feel wrong. Something about making Way to Normal seemed overly heavy and effortful. It was like straining to squeeze the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube, as Bill Bryson likes to say. But I think it’s a good thing to get that last bit out. I needed to make that record, and then I needed to move on. After we mixed Way to Normal, it was time to finally toss the old worn-out empty toothpaste tube.
Honesty, humor, and vulnerability are all important to my songwriting. But equally as important is an element of discovery, a sense that time has passed. If the third chorus of a song hasn’t time-traveled and unveiled a subtly changed perspective, or a third album hasn’t evolved from the first, it’s not going to be very damn convincing. In fact, it gets a little boring when a songwriter keeps messing up the same things and tries to sell essentially the same thing over and over again, honest and vulnerable as it all may be. The same goes for the human being behind the song. If he can’t learn from a cheap lesson, or two or three, then what? I was starting to suspect that:
What was bad for the life might actually be bad for the music as well.
At the time, I thought that Way to Normal was a random title with a random album cover. The phrase “way to normal” was snatched from one of the album tracks, “Effington,” which I had freestyled at a show in Normal, Illinois. I just thought it sounded good. But in retrospect I see it as representing my desire to find my way to “normal.” I was trying to find the answers in well-lit and well-traveled corners, when what I really needed to do was muster the courage to head into the unknown. The same mistakes, lived the same way, sung the same way, weren’t going to keep making good songs.
THE FAKE ALBUM
DESPITE MY ENNUI, I WAS still finding ways to make music that did make me happy. Music that was off the beaten path and interesting. Such was the case with the making of The Fake Album, which is something I file under “wicked awesome times.” What is The Fake Album, you ask?
Well, dear reader, The Fake Album is a lesser-known joke version of Way to Normal, recorded and self-leaked just before Way to Normal. Back in the era when labels were grappling with methods to combat music piracy, I had an idea: Why not make a version of Way to Normal where the song titles are all the same but the music and words are completely different? Then leak that out to the internet to muddy the waters and confuse bootleggers. While on tour in Europe, we got word that our master had been leaked and would soon be available for download ahead of the release, and so this is exactly what we did.
I hit my bandmates up to write the most numbskulled lyrics they could manage, based on the original titles. Sam Smith, my drummer, turned out to be a genius at this. His spoofs on tired social and political commentary were particularly amazing. In his version of “The Frown Song” from Way to Normal, he lays down shit like:
A piano’s all I got
And I know that ain’t a lot
But music has the power
To change the future
I’d never be caught dead putting something like that on a real album, but it was perfect for confusing downloaders.
It took us a few attempts to properly leak The Fake Album, which is interesting. Some of the folks who regularly facilitated the leaking of music onto various sites were reluctant to leak mine, because they were concerned fans. (I have the most considerate fans, I have to say.) But we eventually got the tracks leaked. We, of course, just called it Way to Normal (it was only called The Fake Album later), and it was spread widely enough that some outlets even reviewed it as if it were the real Way to Normal. Sadly, upon hearing the real album, they said they actually preferred The Fake Album. Ouch! I recently did a Way to Normal tenth-anniversary interview for Paste magazine, and the writer only wanted to talk about The Fake Album.