In anticipation of Ben Folds Five’s first studio album in over thirteen years, Hypable talked at length with Ben Folds about his unique approach to the album release, getting back in the studio with the band, touring, The Sing Off, and more!
Taking a unique approach to the upcoming album release, Ben Folds Five is forgoing a studio release by producing the album through fan donation and funding, called “crowd-funding,” in exchange for unique access to the production and eventual release of this much-anticipated album. Find out more, right here!, and enjoy part one of our exclusive interview with Ben below, along with a brief audio clip for your enjoyment.
Jeremy Baril, Hypable: I guess the first thing I thought of when I read about the new album was that it seems like a logical next step for you given the recent fan interaction via twitter and your website. Would you agree with that?
Ben Folds: Yeah, it does seem very natural. You know, the fan relationship is built up over the years and I think it’s now at a point where we can work that way.
JB: Yeah. How much would you say the crowd-funded approach was about you guys trying to go away from the usual music industry approach versus just trying to find something new and exciting?
BF: Well I mean…I think it’s all the same thing. You know, we have experience doing it the traditional way, um, so we know what that is, and we’re in a time period now where we have other choices, and we’re going to give it a shot. Simply, that’s kind of what’s up. You want the process that happens afterwards not to be damaging to your artistic psyche. It can be abusive sometimes, its pretty rough going…I’ll always feel lucky to do it, I’m not crying on your shoulder about this. It’s just, I’ve done it enough and I can tell you that after – I was 27 years old and still waiting tables when [Ben Folds Five] started, I’ve worked for lawn maintenance crews, I’ve delivered wine, I’ve worked at all manner of restaurants and construction and all kinds of stuff. I mean, by the time you’re 27 years old, you could of done a lot of things, and I did them…I worked very hard. I never saw anything like what hit me the first time I had to promote an album. I never knew that you could go two days and just not get things that you needed, like a little bit of food, or sleep, or time to yourself, and jet-lag, and people kissing your ass, kissing your ass, kissing your ass.
You don’t register it as tough at the time, but later on you start to realize, “Well this shit’s making me crazy!” Like, I’m acting crazy now. And as I look around, I saw other people were doing the same thing, like musicians have a reputation for being crazy, well that’s probably some of it, you know?
So this process, we’re trying it. We don’t know, but it seems that it can be more personal, we can sell fewer records, which we know that that’s the way it’s going to happen. But we won’t be trying to talk people who don’t like it into liking it, so that’s nice. And we won’t be subjecting ourselves to a lot of that stuff that I was just talking about. But at the same time, this has been extremely time consuming so far…It’s like, trying to set up things…It may just be the same things, I don’t know.. We’ll see, but we’re approaching it pretty humbly, we don’t expect to sell shit-loads of records, we’re ready for that. We also don’t think that we know what we’re doing.
Listen to a select portion of this interview below:
JB: Right. You mentioned earlier, having more artistic freedom with this approach. Is that something that you find really refreshing?
BF: Well I don’t think it’s more or less “artistic freedom,” I always did what I wanted to do anyway, it’s not that. It’s – not going to associate – not to take on a process that shit’s on what I just did and then threatens to send me to the next album making process with the kind of psychological baggage that encroaches upon your artistic freedom.
JB: So it’s more freedom in the marketing, rather than in the actual songwriting?
BF: Well, the freedom is about going into my next record, not being damaged by the process that was before, that’s the freedom. I work for a living. I make records, sell them, and then I go out on the road – like a manual laborer would do – and I play my songs and I show up, it’s real basic industry. It takes a lot of time, and I have to do it. Period. And it’s awesome, because I happen to enjoy it. When it comes to artistic freedom – when you’re talking about artistic freedom in terms of promotion, I mean yeah…I guess. It’s all still – the artistic freedom is when you make it in your basement and never show it to anybody. And we won’t do that, because we want people to hear our music, and we want to make a living out of it if we can. And people are competitive to various degrees, but I think that every artist has to find the way to do it that they can live with. Because when you go into the studio to make your next record, you can find yourself very pent up, very concerned with the competition, very concerned with what people said about the last one, concerned about your profile, what you look like, what you sound like, some critic said this, some person said this, your grandmother didn’t like it, whatever. These things come into your head and they do encroach on your artistic freedom.
JB: If all this goes well, do you see yourself doing this in the future, maybe for a solo record? Or is it more helpful to have Robert and Darren, too, and something you wouldn’t want to tackle on your own?
BF: Well, I think this one we had the – there was anticipation. This record was an anticipated record. Because of that it afforded us the opportunity to do it with less promotion because the word-of-mouth would be stronger, there was a story. You know, the labels are always looking for a story, well this is a story. By myself, I might not have had quite the story, you know? And so, our next record…We may not really have a story, maybe we have to do it a different way, I don’t know. The landscape will certainly change, it will change a lot before we make our next record.
Look, last time we were in the studio as a band we didn’t have cell phones. So things have changed a lot, and they probably will continue to change by the week, things are changing pretty quickly.
Part two of our exclusive interview with Ben Folds is now available to read.
Also, be sure to support the upcoming album by pledging towards the production of the album, with exciting returns ranging from copies of the CD to having your name placed in a song! Do so right here!
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