Interview: Ben Folds

Sometimes, dreams really do come true.

Nearly a quarter century after Ben Folds’ first collaboration with a symphony orchestra, during which he’s worked with numerous such ensembles around the world, the North Carolina native combines his brilliant, piano-centric indie rock songs with the Asheville Symphony on Friday, Oct. 10, at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium.

Working his way East while on tour, Folds spoke with Asheville Stages about helping future generations of musicians, not bastardizing the orchestra experience, and nearly moving to Buncombe County circa 1994.

Edwin Arnaudin: We got to meet briefly at the Governor's Western Residence last summer and you mentioned that your dad now lives in Asheville. How did he fare during [Tropical Storm] Helene? 

Ben Folds: It was a few days before we got in touch with him — that in itself was pretty scary. He got some cell coverage standing in line in a parking lot to get some water. He’d just sold his house and moved into a condo and I think the condominiums were a place that was spared but it certainly knocked all the power out. And, you know, being a little worried about not hearing is always pretty traumatic.

EA: Yeah! I'm glad he did OK. 

BF: He did fine. But just to under underscore how serious it was, if you hadn’t gotten in touch with someone in two days, you figured they slid down a hill somewhere. It's pretty bad. But I’m glad he made it and I think everyone he knew was OK.

EA: Excellent. I want to keep it on the Asheville beat just for a second. In your memoir, [A Dream About Lightning Bugs], which I loved reading a few years ago, you mentioned that in the early ’90s you were deciding between Chapel Hill and Asheville as your next home. And that was obviously when downtown Asheville was boarded up, but also there was some spark coming back in. So, I'm curious what about the city at that time really appealed to you?

BF: Well, I guess because I grew up in Winston-Salem, I have my opinions about how different [North Carolina] towns feel, artistically. And Asheville and Chapel Hill, I didn't really even have to think about it. I was living in New York [City] at the time and I thought, “It’s one of those two places. It just depends on where I find the musicians.”

I thought of Asheville as being a little closer to — obviously a mountain feel, a little more connection to bluegrass there, whereas Chapel Hill is a little more indie rock and collegiate. So, I ended up going to Chapel Hill really more or less because that's where the musicians presented themselves most quickly. But it could have been Asheville.

EA: That makes sense. I've been wondering about that since I read it, so thanks for answering that.

BF: When you're starting a rock band, it's not a quality of life you're looking for. You're already broke. So, if there's boarded-up buildings and stuff, like, great! Maybe next door, there's a cheap room that I can live in, you know? If that was a choice I was making now, then you want to go to a nicer place because you've already worked for a whole long time in squalor. It’s time for something nicer.

EA: Moving on to symphony stuff, when the [Ben Folds and WASO] Live in Perth DVD came out [in 2005], that was a very big deal with my friend group. It seemed like you were one of the first modern rock artists to perform with a symphony. Were there others at that time that you were aware of?

BF: Well, I think probably the most popular model up to that point had been Metallica. Symphony orchestra was kind of part of my music education. There was concert band at school, but my favorite thing early on was orchestra. And so I suppose I approached it with some reverence and some skepticism about whether or not that was a thing to even do. When I talked Regina Spektor into working with the National Symphony Orchestra, the reason that I had to talk her into it a little bit was the same reason: she grew up in a classical background and respected it too much to bastardize it.

So, that's where I was coming from. I'd been approached about that then for a couple of years already by the time I did it. And I turned it down because I felt it was bastardizing. I hadn't seen good examples of it done, but working with WASO in Perth, the director there, I just trusted him and he was very creative and was hearing me out. And I guess the conversation made me realize as long as I didn't have a rock band involved, as long as we allowed the orchestra to be the band — because otherwise there's a hat on a hat. You've got a band and then you’ve got another band on top of them. The symphony orchestra's not just “and strings.” It's the whole thing. That's the point. And so it was created that way and it functions that way the best. That's the way it’s just evolved and was created, and it's just what it is.

It's like if you take a Greyhound bus out to do a road race — it's just not built for certain things. And people do it, but they do it at the expense — I don’t want to shit on it too much, but a lot of pop artists really naively go into playing with orchestras and the orchestra does it to sell some tickets, which they should do because we need to keep the orchestras alive. But the only way to do that is a kind of one-size-fits-all sort of orchestration to it that oversimplifies music in many cases. There's so much to it. The point is, I always wanted to make it the band. And as soon that happened, then I was on the journey to figuring out how to do that because it's taken a while. [laughs]

Photo by Joe Vaughn

EA: How is the planning and implementation of these symphony shows in 2025 different from when you first started? How have you honed that approach?

BF: Well, you want the symphony orchestra to be able to exist in its healthiest environment. And so to me, everything comes down to how to get there — how to get to the condition of, you know, it doesn't have to be Beethoven; it can be Shostakovich or something 20th century. But something where the orchestra is effective and also somewhat challenged, at least a little bit, to make music. And so the time I’ve spent the last 25 years has all been incremental getting to that condition. And sometimes you can't get there. 

I'll give you two specific, boring-ass examples. One is that there aren't many situations in which the percussion is the motor for an orchestral piece. It does happen. But having the music motor coming from the percussion section for some reason is very rarely that effective. 

So when you're asking a pop artist to come in, they're used to everything being that motor. Everything's motored by the drums. It doesn't stop. [lays down a quick verbal beat] Doesn't quit — can't stop, won't stop. But with the orchestra, that just wears thin really quickly, and they're not particularly good at that because they're staged, blocked 40 feet from each other. Some of these musicians are 40-50 feet away from each other, so that creates latency. So, getting the band into the condition that they are accustomed to, but also honoring the song that you're bringing, that's the thing. You get there by increments, by realizing, “Oh, I can motor this from the strings. Now I can give that to the winds. Now the percussion can take it for a moment.” But you just can't have it cruise along. It doesn't work — I wish it did work. I can't seem to make it work. No one made it work for 300 years. I don’t know why I think I could. [laughs]

The other issue is that the orchestra is its own production center. It's its own mixing console. You want more winds? Have them play louder or double up on things. You need more of a certain line that's coming out of the strings? Add a trumpet to it. You need a synth? Put some french horns in it. You need more bass? Put in the lower brass with the double basses.

All these things are ways that you’d mix the orchestra. When you bring a PA system in — because, out of necessity, the pop singer sings through a PA system. It's not Pavarotti and the music is a little louder, too. The pop singer coming in introduces the electric voice, which is smearing around the room. And then you have to balance that with the orchestra. So, the second thing is making that work. 

Both of the problems that I've just stated are mostly solvable with orchestration. When someone's making a movie and they’re like, “Oh, something wrong with the movie,” it usually comes down to the script. At some point when you can't solve it, it comes down to the script. The same thing exists in the score. How do you know if the score's gonna work? Well, you get 70 people together on stage and play it. Well, how much does that cost? And what if it's not good? What do you do then? Get 70 people on stage again to make it work. So, you're talking about quite a commitment. And I knew this going into, a little bit. I thought, “I’m only gonna do this if I'm not using the orchestra as a band, and if I give myself the time not to part-time this and actually get somewhere with it, long term.”

That's a real long answer to your question, but for someone like me who lives and breathes inside it, it's everything.

EA: I’ve been looking forward to you swinging through. We’ve gotten some fun guests recently, like Chris Thile, and I'm always impressed to hear that the pop artists, when they come through, they typically don't rehearse until the day of the performance. Is that also the case with you and the Asheville Symphony? 

BF: Every time. And that's another thing: that's in the score. You bring your scores, they've got to be imminently playable. And thinking about how many mistakes there could be in printed music across an entire stage of music — like, the trombones are off by one measure, you have to stop. But orchestral musicians are built for sight reading and making it happen really quickly. As long as you've written something that manipulates them into being musical, then you’re good. Someone like Thile, he can play anything on notice at any moment in any key. He's a freak. [laughs] He’s not well. [laughs]

EA: [laughs] And we love him for it.

BF: Oh yeah.

EA: And being back in North Carolina, that also means that you're being close to communities that are benefiting from your Keys for Kids initiative. Has that program taken shape pretty much as you envisioned or is it far exceeding your expectations?

BF: Well, my partner in this is my manager, Mike Kopp. I'm involved — don’t take me out of the equation, exactly. But the vision of what it could be certainly was Mike’s. I can pinpoint and recognize what might be helpful or needed or what I went through as a kid. I always wanted to make something — multiple things, hopefully — that give back. 

When I was a kid, I would be taken to an art gallery or a concert or given an instrument. How did that happen? It didn’t just fall out of the sky. I just wanted to do it and did it. So, I took that spirit and I thought — I just want to make sure that I keep personally focused. My life was the most important life in the world to me. And I'm sure that everyone is exactly like that, right? Growing up, you get one childhood. If you can just affect one, wouldn’t that be great? Someone’s heading in one direction and it’s like, “Here’s an instrument,” and suddenly they're inspired and disciplined. And that's what happened to me. So, maybe it could happen once. 

That's the other thing we've been looking at, from Mike’s and my perspective there’s a handful of nonprofits that we are cheering on, supporting, connecting, using my platform and using Mike's knowhow. But I think it's going as well as Mike and I could have imagined, and I think we're gonna add some more. We started with seven and we're gonna keep adding them as we can. We support them with getting instruments through the corporate world. Casio has been amazing. And then a certain of money that they can have each year, maybe $10,000 or something like that to help with the operations, and then they do what they do. So, I think it’s been wildly successful.

But, you know — shit, when I moved back to Chapel Hill, like we were talking about, and I met the Archers of Loaf, who were a local indie band, and found out that they had sold a total of 40,000 records, I couldn't believe it. Like, “40,000 records? That's amazing.” We were selling 40,000 records a week a year later. But you just think, “Wow, if I can just do it for one kid, that's great.” Then after a while, you're like, “That's not enough.” So, I think we feel good about what it is, but I keep focused on the idea of the one person. That's what inspires me to do it, because there are hundreds now. If they can go after school and have some respite and some inspiration, something a little different and have the means to do that — and they’ve got adults already on the ground supporting them. 

All over the state, there are all kinds of people trying to get instruments or even writing plays or doing art after school — not to make it kind of a daycare center, but to actually give them some inspiration, and they have trouble because they can't get the money. They know what they're doing and they're doing the work and we're just cheering them on and giving support. And the way we’re doing it, I think, is particularly classy. And that's to do with Mike who realized that they're already doing it. We don't need to be the king of this. We need to come in and support and let them do what they do anyway. So, the money goes directly to them. We're not a bank or anything like that. We’re raising, sending it directly to them, and they do with it what they know how to do, and we trust that.

EA: Well that's a kind of a perfect segue to the last thing I wanted to mention, which was a personal anecdote about a music situation that changed my life. This would've been about 25 years ago, but has anyone ever mentioned the name David Scharff from Brevard, North Carolina to you? 

BF: No.

EA: He was two years older than me in high school band. And he convinced me to switch from trumpet to baritone, which actually kept me in band. I was thinking of quitting and it really enhanced my life in high school and college. And one thing that we bonded over between practice was your music — we felt like we were ones of the only kids in Brevard who were big fans of yours.

He went to college two years later and tragically died of cancer. And at his funeral, they played “Smoke,” which was a very sad but lovely moment that helped a lot of us process that loss. And so now, whenever I hear that song, I think of him and the good times we had in band. And I just wanted to — I've been holding that for a long time and just wanted to thank you for making music that brings people together and truly does change lives.

BF: Aw, thanks for saying that. Thanks for sharing that story. 

IF YOU GO

Who: Ben Folds with the Asheville Symphony
When: Friday, Oct. 10, 8 p.m.
Where: Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, 87 Haywood St., AshevilleSymphony.org
Tickets: $56.50-$106.90

(Photo by Shervin Lainez)