I still kick myself over not seeing The Goo Good Dolls back when I first moved to Florida.
I did try to get some photos and videos, but unfortunately, I was at an angle (orchestra right, middle of the row, a few rows from the stage), behind a man with a buzz cut and smallishly large ears, and the stage lights were doing a number on the ability to properly focus on Ben and the piano, who were dead center on the stage.
I will post what I can, but I am not making promises. I'm not proud of this set of visuals because I feel the lights were really what I was fighting. Even trying to use both auto focus and manual focus, my poor little iPhone couldn't keep up with the changing scenery.
Plus, I was trying not to be rude since I was sitting smack in the middle of people and no one else had their phones out for the duration of the show.
Ben is such a wild performer on the piano, that whoever was playing with the lighting board, went to town based on the level of Mr. Folds' smashing on the keys. The communication / lighting person in me wanted to run back there and control the board myself, because I was getting squirrely from it. I was having trouble focusing myself. However, adding the "it's not my job" voice, and my liking the row I was sitting in, I didn't move. Solely because it wasn't my job to run the lights and also because I was super close to the stage and got to see all the facial expressions Ben did.
Every bit of that is something to discuss later.
The opening act was Lindsey Kraft, a woman better known for her acting roles over the last two decades and more recently, her singing roles (the last 4 years). She stuck by the piano and played well, but I think she was using this to workshop her music. She mentioned she was working on a musical and is in the "write and rewrite stage". Which is why I think touring with Ben is giving her better ideas on how to improve her sound and what to add to whatever her finished product will be.
I honestly have to say, based on not being a real fan of her acting work, she did not win me over to become a fan of her music. She seemed to be trying too hard, for as much as she also seemed to be not trying. She slipped in a few local things and tried to interact with the audience, but it seemed off putting. There was just something weird about her.
I do have to admit, to her credit though, at one point during Ben's performance, he stopped to speak positively about her. He stated that (I'm paraphrasing here) "she's only been working on music and singing for four and a half years. She came from a place where she knew absolutely nothing. She had ideas in her mind of what she wanted to accomplish in the music world, and took the time to learn the piano; she could have picked up anything and tried it. In this digital age where you can do most of the things on the computer and it spits something back out to you, she has taken it upon herself to hone her craft and know the difference between each and every note".
Good for her, especially being in her late 30s when she wanted to do this.
Seriously. It takes gumption to shift course like that, if only for a part time side hustle. I just wasn't impressed by her overall performance. She was okay, but I wouldn't run out and find her music and tell my friends they've got to get her albums as well. If anything, should her music end up on shuffle somehow and somewhere, I don't think I would know it from a hole in the wall. I probably would find myself cycling through it - fast forward until the next song popped up. I was that neutral about it.
If this offends anyone, sorry. We all have our opinions and we can disagree or agree on stuff. I'm sure what I write about in this blog, people disagree with, all the time. What I'm going to say about Ben Folds, there's bound to be someone who has some hate to say. If you take the time to consider what he's recently done in his life, those who have certain political beliefs may not like him, or even me for that matter.
As I've stated a lot, I try not to get political in my blog and I know Mr. Folds recently left a well to do position in a big named arts center (*cough* Kennedy Arts Center in Washington DC *cough*) due to the current political climate, and he has every right to have done that. However, that's a different day and a different story. I'd like to talk about his tour here in Florida.
I know there are people who aren't totally familiar with his work and there are people who are whole heartedly familiar with what he has done for the last thirty plus years. I fall in the middle of that.
The music I know is from the 1990s and very early 2000s. I've heard bits and pieces of the later years, having picked up an album or two over the decades. He was a judge on NBC's short lived (4 seasons) show "The Sing-Off" and co-founded a charity called "Keys For Kids" (which is amazing. I suggest looking into it, if only to see what he's trying to do). Again, in his humanitarian work, he recently left an eight year stint with a specific arts center due to current politics. It's unfortunate because he embodies such positivity for the arts, it's a shame he had to walk away. I totally respect his reasoning and feel like he did the right thing. I'm going to leave it at that.
He's also got some symphony / orchestra level albums out, as he had taken advantage of his residency at the arts center. He said in his performance tonight, that when and where he grew up, musicals weren't a thing, but he got to take advantage of the sounds when he could. He didn't become a practicing "musicals" type person until later, which is why he sounds like he has done more of them then he should. I think playing with the orchestras has helped that, just a little bit.
Tonight, he showed grace and funk and fun on the piano. He really is a showman and a whiz. Which feels like it's the reason why he brought up musicals. He said there was one time, early on in his career, where he and his band were in London, playing at the BBC and he had seen The Music Man on television and had his own vision of how a specific song would come out that he wrote. As the band sang it, this tall man crosses the stage and stops right at Ben at the piano. He had to keep going but he was frozen at the same time. It turned out to be Pete Townshend leaning over him and says "you ever write musicals?" and Ben said "No". Pete goes "You should" and walks away. He sent Ben tickets for Rent and Ben said he still hasn't wrote any musicals, but he will, eventually. There were just so many instances where he just free flowed after explaining something, and people were going wild.
For a partially filled theater with the average age being in their late 40s and early 50s, as well as people in the upper years of their lives, they were super chill about everything. From what I could see, no phones unless it was a quick photo. Like, a real quick photo. No one stared at their screens. Their full attention was the man on the stage, banging away on the ivories.
That's how it should be, and why my photos came out bad. I didn't want to keep my phone out. This was an experience like "the old days" before smart devices. Sure, we didn't have to use Yondr bags for this performance (like a few celebrities have requested over the years. Here's looking at you, Robert Zimmerman), but everyone stayed cool and had fun. The phones weren't the priority.
I think some people had a little too much fun in some instances. For example, there was a couple sitting somewhere behind me. If not immediately behind me, they were the next row behind me. They had to be immediately behind me as I could hear closely them in my left ear. They sounded like they were "right there" - close enough that through their heckling and chattiness, I could tell they had been drinking before the show and during the show. There were some very inappropriate things to come out of their mouths, including the moment they tried to take a photo of Ben and their flash went off. The woman next to me looked back a little to see what that was, as it surprised both of us. I saw her give a "what the hell" look and she shook her head. The couple who took the photo laughed it off, said something and the last thing I heard was "okay, boomer!". They also had very bad timing when it came to agreeing with Ben when he made some comments before the playing another song. There was a moment when he was talking about an experience in his past with a friend who was alone and unwell. The couple gave him the wrong type of affirmations - something like "you get it!" which wasn't the best thing to do. The whole time they whooped and clapped at him like he was some sort of big comedian telling "fall on your face funny" jokes. He was funny with some of his witty comments, but some of the things he said were not funny. It was all to explain his thoughts and what was going through his mind or life at the time. This couple did the same for Lindsey when she started too. They were making me uncomfortable and I was already a little anxious being in the middle of the row as it was. The pair truly needed to shut the hell up and calm the hell down quite a few times during the entire 100 minutes we all sat there.
In all reality, it only takes one (or two) assholes to ruin a good time.
I mean, the night wasn't ruined all the way. It was really great to be there and watch Ben play. I wish this couple wasn't directly behind me, becoming another distraction.
I squirreled my post. I totally went around the topic I was on.
Ben showed his musical talents on the piano, for sure. He's still got some of that 1990s rage in him and it showed. It was slight circus whirl, jazz, funk and jam band, all mixed with his own type of crazy. He pounded on the piano, stomped his feet, made a full scene out of the song without needing a backing band. If the lighting was better suited for this show, I definitely would have videos to post with this massive amount of text.
I do have some photos, and again, I'm not happy with them. But it's become one of those "prove it or it didn't happen" things.
The first photo is when I got there, the second is Lindsey giving a chat and the rest is Ben.
As you can see, I struggled to get clear shots. I'm not proud of them but feel something needed to be shared.
Due to being "close but far enough", I spent part of the time watching Ben and part of the time watching the lights. Ben started off sounding like he's either starting a cold or on the tail end of a cold because he was wiping his nose a lot and sniffling. It's not old age kicking in; "he's not yet 60". It must be Florida; there are too many people who are allergic to it. As he played on, the cold issues seemed to go away and he lit up as he played. Not because there was a white spot light on him the entire time, but because you can tell he truly enjoys playing in front of people.
He's a showman and it's evident.
Once he started in with a few songs, he obviously got in the jam band head space and started free playing. He was doing such an array of various ups and downs, it felt like a carnival or circus ride. It was fun because you expected this weird, goofy looking nerdy guy to just play the straight card. But there he goes, doing what he wants with no questions asked. He killed it.
I recognized one or two songs, but couldn't tell you what the rest were. Probably because it's been so long since I've listened to his music. I try my best to know as much as I can, but again, I'm not up on the mid 2000 stuff, probably when some of this came out. There were no super early 90s songs, but I'm okay with that. I liked what I heard and he kept the crowd energized. He even had a sort of sing a long with a couple songs, and the audience did some snap and response thing for one song. It was cool.
Ben Folds did do some chatting in between songs and he did speak about what's been going on over the last 5 years. He had some commentary to go with one of the songs, which he wrote during the beginning of everyone being in lock down and how he came up with those lyrics, as well as why he wrote some earlier songs. For example, "Fred Jones, Part 2", which is actually off the 2001 "Rockin' The Suburbs" is something he talked about before playing. I had forgotten about that one as it was the first album Ben did without the "Five". The song is about Ben's hometown hero, a 25 year newspaper veteran who was let go from his post and had to choose other methods of keeping himself busy in his forced retirement. Ben said he "remembered when this happened" and the "man was already an old man when" Ben was younger, which means Jones was super old by the time he got canned.
It's the little things you don't realize that are about the big things you sing along to.
I think I've gone in an absolute circle with this one. Thank you for sticking with me through this. I actually started writing it when I got home at 10:45 and now it's almost two hours later. I am definitely over tired at this point and I do hope everything makes sense. If you have the chance to see Ben Folds, please do so. You won't be disappointed because you don't need to know all of his songs to enjoy his show. He's informative, he's funny and he's a great watch.
Plus, if you purchase his $45 "Folds" shirt, you actually support his Keys For Kids charity. The great marketing scheme in the shirt is that there's an NFC tag sewn right into it. If you put your phone on the token under the patch, a popup appears and wants to take to "the experience", which is an explanation of what ten dollars of your 45 goes to. Your purchase now is helping raise awareness for Ben's work, which is to "provide young people in North Carolina who express an interest in learning to play piano the access to appropriate lessons and instruments at little or no cost" (per North Carolina Arts Foundation).
Go forth and try something new. Support the arts and support change.
I need to support a better sleeping habit, so I need to start having a conversation with by bed.
Until next time..
Cheers;
See Also:
* Amazon doesn't have much on Lindsey Kraft, as she's probably more known for her Netflix role in Grace & Frankie. It irks me to say this, but "according to Wikipedia", Lindsey has also been in a lot of other TV shows, if only for an episode.
