A Dream About Lightning Bugs

by Ben Folds

  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.

  I too have a special place in my heart for The Fake Album, but, then, I’m no judge. The entire thing was written, recorded, and mixed in an incredibly fun twenty-four-hour session, while Way to Normal was a long haul, with days spent on each song, and seemed like it took forever. Being time-dumb, maybe that’s why I love The Fake Album.

  MUSIC FOR THE MATING AGE

  “YOUR DAD’S TIRED-ASS ROCK MUSIC fuckin’ sucks!” an overgrown high school bully with a mustache said as he shoved my sixteen-year-old son against a cold locker.

  “You got that lunch money you owe me, li’l bitch? Or has your daddy gotta go play ‘Brick’ at weddings to get paid first? Chump!” he sneered as his minions laughed. My son, who was left to fish his schoolbooks out of the trash, watched as the bully and his two sidekicks did a few chest bumps and headed to the bathroom for some smokes.

  Sorry. This never happened. Obviously even my imagined school-bully scene is dated. Chest bump? I’ll bet nobody even does that anymore.

  It’s a legitimate worry for an aging rocker that your music will become so out of date and toxically uncool, it will get your kids beaten up at school. But, hey, it’s your job. I used to see all those old guys with stringy long hair, pouring their fat asses into leather pants year after year, and think to myself, That’ll never be me! That’ll never be me! But it’s really understandable. How fair is it that, like in dance or sports, a rock-and-roll artist can expect to have to retire in his or her mid-thirties? That’s just the way it is. But there’s another world out there for them, if they’re so lucky. They can become a Heritage Artist™ and keep reliving the magic, make the house payments, and send their kids to private schools with a security guard. This was the thought that began to wake me in a cold sweat each night! (Not really, I just wanted to make the point.)

  It’s important to remember that after an artist has made a few records, the entire music business and its audience must decide whether there’s really any space on the shelf for this artist anymore. Any new record you release after your first few albums can be used as evidence that it’s time for you to go. It’s not evil, or personal. It’s that there’s so much new music and so little time and space. We all have to make room in our lives for new artists and new ideas. But an artist like me, in his second decade of making records, better not get stuck in any ruts.

  * * *

  —

  As satisfying and safe as it can feel to have mastered a craft, it also can be a sign that it’s time to learn a new trick. It’s the known that the artist should fear, not the unknown. All that terrain that’s been well illuminated should scare the piss out of you artistically. Because the known is where boredom takes root. Staying in the well-lit areas is what gets you stuck. I felt a strong urge to lurch into the dark and leave pop music behind, but of course we all resist change, we all want to keep our job.

  So what about the middle-aged making pop music? Sure, it’s allowed. But let’s be honest about what pop, or popular, music is. It’s music for the mating age. It’s a soundtrack for that yearning, that youthful anger, those ideals and inside jokes of the teenagers and young adults as they experience the rough ride together. It fills an important need. It helps get us through to adulthood. Pop music can be a life jacket, a sexy security blanket, a hipster Hallmark card. And it communicates very real things. It also requires serious craft and is a competitive business, worthy of great respect. Pop music saved my ass as a kid, paid the bills in my earlier career. And I love to make fun of it.

  Good pop music, truly of its moment, should throw older adults off its scent. It should clear the room of boring adults and give the kids some space. If you’re post–mating age, you might enjoy new pop music to a degree, but it’s not really for you. Post-mating-age adults have a whole other heap of problems, the likes of which the sickest beat and saddest rhyme are woefully unequipped to solve. You don’t need an earful of sexy when navigating your aging parents into an old folks’ home or when you’re worried your kids might be trying drugs at their delinquent friend’s house. There is music that speaks to grown-ass adults, but it probably ain’t mating beats. And the grown-ass adults, when they’re in heat, usually reach for music of their own era, the stuff they consumed back when they were mating age. They spring for high ticket prices for a magical night with their favorite Heritage Artist™.

  I, for one, don’t feel the need to try and relate to younger music that’s not for me anymore. I appreciate it, but I don’t try to like it or relate to it. Why should I? I view pop music the way I do a children’s television show, with its cartoons and bright colors—it’s for kids. I’m no more riveted by a grumpy puppet who lives in a garbage can than I am by a horny auto-tuned journal entry edited over a lonesome computer loop. I don’t hang around playgrounds, so why, at my age, should I be wandering around Burning Man shirtless, tripping on ecstasy? Or speaking in vocal fry like middle-aged men and women I overhear every day in the coffee shop down the block?

  If I’m being really honest? Really feeling my age and unafraid to admit it? Here we go: I’m actually repulsed by overly computerized music, which dominates pop music now. It makes me feel ill. Canned bass drum that dry-humps my eardrums four-on-the-floor in the back seat of an Uber while an overly gymnastic auto-tuned vocal holds me down…It just isn’t my cup of tea. There’s something sad about a singer pouring his heart out over a quantized machine. That heartless machine would keep playing out for days in an empty room, long after the singer keeled over. Hey, kid! That loop doesn’t love you! I want to tell the singer. I’m reminded of those horse insemination machines where the poor stud is humping away into a horsey robot. It’s just sad. Now, that’s some old-man shit I just laid down, but it’s about being honest, because I know that I cannot grow artistically if I am beholden to the opinions of an industry I’ve o
utgrown. If I require the approval of children.

  * * *

  —

  I have equal respect for and interest in Cardi B and Teletubbies, which is to say I have incredible respect for both, because they’re both brilliant, and little interest in either, because I’ve aged out of that shit. I too made my mark in the business of mating music of a now-bygone era but I wasn’t nearly as good at it as the two examples I just mentioned. Still, my music was peddled by purveyors of fine procreation hullabaloo, and I happily signed on the dotted line. It was a pretty good run.

  Back when we started, there were sometimes a few middle-aged people in attendance for the early Ben Folds Five shows. They came hoping to see some younger musicians doing “real music,” but they often walked away disappointed. They came for those seventies’ chords and mannerisms that warmed their hearts, only to find we used them all wrong. I recall one lone fortysomething man who pulled me aside after some gig in the early days and told me, “I saw Elton back in 1971, and the big difference was that everything wasn’t some kind of inside joke to him. It was real music. He meant it. When he stood on the piano it was a celebration, it was triumphant. You do it and it has to be so ironic and clever. You boys need to tighten up. What was all that distortion? I had high hopes before tonight.” I told him I was sorry he didn’t enjoy it. But, honestly, mission accomplished. We threw him off the scent. It’s what kids do. Ben Folds Five happily made glaring mistakes, approaching great craft with the attitude of the drunkest two-chord punk band. We sounded our mutant mating call. No different from any generation before.

  So as I approached Heritage Artist™ age, I had to decide: Did I want to adopt the affectations of the new generation in hopes of remaining relevant, begging for attention with each new release? Or did I want to get out of that business, head to Vegas, and just keep reliving my old shit? Well, somehow neither of those binary options seemed very attractive. So, then what? What to do with the Script™? The answer was in the dark somewhere, where it always is. After all, the dark is where we mated for the first time.

  AFTER THE FLOOD

  ON APRIL 30, 2010, I had a one-off gig with Weezer at the University of Maryland, which I did solo at the piano in a football stadium. May 1 had been randomly chosen for an early mutual birthday party for the twins and their stepsister, all of whose real birthdays were later in July, when the twins would be with their mother. Somehow, this randomly chosen substitute birthday had become immovable—quite the production with RSVPs, blow-up waterslides, and extra parking. The only way I could do the afternoon Weezer gig and be back in time for the party was to book a private jet.

  * * *

  —

  As large bouncy castles were being delivered and inflated back in Nashville, I was finishing my set in Maryland. Hopping into the car, which was idling just next to the stage, I could hear the opening riff of “Hash Pipe” and I felt my phone vibrating in my pocket. It was my old friend Millard, who told me a close mutual friend of ours had just died—suicide. I don’t remember the fancy plane trip at all.

  I arrived home in Franklin, Tennessee, to a backyard full of colorful inflatable structures, a handful of early arriving children, and a team of adults talking weather and pointing at some threatening skies. I wasn’t sure how I was going to bear a couple hours of small talk with parents or being fun for the kids at that very moment. The news had stricken me near mute. But the skies spoke instead, and the party was over in minutes. A “hundred-year flood,” as it was called, sank much of the neighborhood under water by nightfall and continued all the next day. Our dearly departed friend was always quite the performer, with a penchant for the dramatic. And his storm did not disappoint. It dumped a year’s worth of rain in a weekend. Levees broke, fields became lakes, and sirens blared through the night. That was his style.

  The next morning, people were paddling around the streets in boats, roofs were poking out of new lakes, but there was no national coverage yet. I assumed there would at least be some information online about this flood, but I saw nearly nothing, aside from a few local forums posting information and pictures. But these photographs that were posted just didn’t tell the story, so I rolled my pants up and waded into the mess to take some photos to post online. I used my old Nokia phone instead of my fancy vintage cameras—that’s all that was needed to tell this story. I accompanied my images with warnings like “Folks! There’s poo in this water!” For a few hours they were some of the only decent pictures that could be seen of this flood, so they were getting tens of thousands of views a minute. National Geographic got wind of my posts and created a quick online story using my photos. By the next day, the professional reporters and photographers kicked in and we had a better view of the situation. I was invited a few months later to National Geographic to give a talk about my photography.

  When there’s a disaster, big or small, we all have to pick up a shovel and chip in. It’s best to reach for the biggest one you have at your disposal. In my case, I decided to raise money for Nashville’s beautiful symphony hall, the Schermerhorn, which was under water and had sustained incredible damage and lost many instruments. Conductor Francisco Noya was kind enough to fly from Providence, Rhode Island, on his own dime to conduct an orchestra fundraiser we put together. It was the first event of this kind I had ever initiated and we raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars, which was a small—very small—contribution. But it was the biggest shovel I had in the shed. I soon accepted a seat on the board at the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, where I served on the education committee.

  Franklin, TN, after the 2010 flood. Photos taken with old Nokia phone, used for National Geographic piece online.

  My main recording/touring piano was destroyed in the flooding, so I decided to strip all eighty-eight keys off the ruined piano, autograph them, and sell them for eighty-eight dollars apiece to raise money for musical instruments in local schools. Nashville Symphony Orchestra had a program that located broken instruments and hired volunteers to repair them, so that is where the money went. We called the program “Keys to Music City.” All eighty-eight keys sold in a few days and so Steinway began to chip in piano keys too, and we kept going. We found other artists to do some signing and at the end of the program we had raised eighty thousand dollars for countless instruments, which were distributed to kids who would otherwise never have had access to them.

  This was quite a development for me. It was a long time coming. I was emotionally charged by the death of my friend and the incredible perspective that such a tragedy can give. I think I felt the need to start turning the negatives into positives rather than trying to outrun it all. I was ready to face the music, and the life.

  THE EVER-POPULAR VH1 BEHIND THE MUSIC ARTIST-HITS-BOTTOM ACT

  I KNEW I HAD TO see someone. It was becoming obvious that I needed help.

  My first session with Dr. McLeod was the most painful, but I learned a lot. It required me to open up. Immediately. And to trust. That’s the hard part.

  In a glance, Dr. McLeod was able to identify the contours of my anxiety, like an archaeologist or a psychic might. How I’d neglected myself, even down to my diet and my sleep. He laid it all out for me. And I didn’t have to say a word. It’s rare that I’m required to just shut up and listen, but in this kind of session you have no choice.

  “Open widey!” he said cheerfully as he put gloves and mask on.

  Dr. McLeod is, of course, my dentist. A poetic and wise one. Stuffing my mouth full of gauze and medieval equipment, he began his examination. It all seemed pretty routine for a dental appointment until he said, “Everyone has a black box, Ben.”

  I nodded with a light grunt and a slight shift of an eyebrow.

  “It’s where we lock up our secrets. The little black box. It’s ours and ours alone, to the grave. Whatever is in yours, Ben, it’s okay.”

  He reached for a pointy metal thing. “My good man, you’v
e been quite the grinder and gnasher, haven’t you? Your diet, the pattern of this wear right here, no sleep, lots of fretting…Look at this, Sandy.” His eyes showed some concern as he peered over his mask. Sandy shook her head and lined up some more tools for what was going to be a long night. I hadn’t been to the dentist in a decade and I was paying the price. I had a series of teeth I needed to lose, replace, crown, and cap, due to an old, failed root canal. It had all exploded in incredible pain and fever as I’d landed from a Japanese concert tour. My tooth emergency ended up being a two-year process all in all.

  My dental situation was just one of the many signs of how I’d neglected myself over the years. I’d also been denying the incredible pain my left hand was in—I didn’t want to know, and I didn’t want to stop touring for a moment. But, yes, the cartilage in my left thumb turned out to be trashed from beating the crap out of pianos, and although I can play piano just fine (for now), there are days when getting my hand into my pocket or turning a key is a nearly insurmountable challenge. In fact, I had a laundry list of injuries that suddenly made themselves known—mostly occupational from my style of piano-playing. All ignored as they developed. It turns out pianos hit back.