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I went to see Ben Folds at the Paramount Theater last Sunday night. I last saw him a year or so ago at the Edmonds Center for the Performing Arts. In that show Ben played solo with just a piano. This time he had a full backing band. The Paramount holds probably three times the number of people as the Edmonds venue and was pretty much sold out.
Opening for Ben was a band called “Tall Heights”. They are two guys, one playing an acoustic guitar and the other a standup bass. On several songs they were joined by a drummer but for the most part it was just them. I suppose their music could be classified as folk and if you think of Simon and Garfunkel you’ll probably be on the right track. Really tight harmonies. They were quite good and I overheard the lady behind me tell her friend after their set that they were one of the best opening bands she had ever heard. I’m not sure about that, maybe she doesn’t go to many concerts, but they were good.
This is important because as it turns out they had played with Ben on his new record and came back onstage with Ben as part of his backing band, although with an electric bass player and a gentleman who played keyboard/woodwinds (is a harmonica considered a woodwind instrument?).
Ben is a masterful storyteller and introduced many of the songs with how the song came to be or what he was thinking when he wrote the song. To me this adds a completely different aspect to listening to the songs.
For example, in “Kristine From the Seventh Grade” Ben told the story of how he had been teaching a songwriting class and the assignment for his students was that they find a local news article that they thought might make a good song. The class would then discuss the article and what they found interesting about it and discuss how the story could be crafted into a song. One of the students brought an article about something but Ben was more interested in the tone of the article. It was written from a very inflammatory perspective and spewed controversy and conspiracy. Rather than focusing on the article itself Ben thought about the author and how they might have become the person they are today. He imagined that he might have known this person younger in life and that, when he knew them, they were happy and content but somehow had changed over the years. With that in mind he wrote the song. If you want to hear the whole story you can also see the song here, although not in as high of quality.
Another story was more personal. He talked about how he watched his son being born and was struck with the realization that this was the worst day of his son’s young life. After being safe and warm all this time he was suddenly being thrust into a cold and harsh environment without warning. Although this was the worst day of the young boy’s life, there would inevitably be other “worst days”, and those days usually would follow the same pattern of experiencing some event that he would be not expecting and was unprepared for happening. The resulting song is “Still Fighting It“.
I could go on but you get the idea. Ben is an incredibly entertaining and engaging performer and it was a great show.
