High Five

Unless you've been living under a rock this year, you'd notice on many a gig guide band names that you haven't seen in over a decade which probably thought you'd never see again. On one hand, there are some absolutely cringeworthy mentions – Vengaboys, Aqua, Eiffel 65, S Club, N-Trance and so on – that are quite clearly a money grab, but also on the opposite end of the spectrum are older names that are a welcome “comeback” – Prince, Radiohead, Nada Surf, Cake, Beck and, of course, a name that evokes something beyond joy itself; Ben Folds Five.

Aside from a brief encounter here and there, it's been a good 12 years or so since the three – Ben Folds, bassist Robert Sledge and drummer Darren Jessee – last made proper music together, breaking up amicably after the tour in support of their third (excepting 1998's outtake compilation Naked Baby Photos) album, The Unauthorized Biography Of Reinhold Messner. We all know that Folds went onto a fruitful solo career, but the other two lived life a little more lower-key. Jessee formed the much-lauded folk band Hotel Lights while Sledge settled for a life a little more simple.

“I immediately wanted to take a big break from touring and, well, from the music industry in general and specifically,” Sledge confesses. “I was just really burnt out. Before I joined Ben Folds Five, I'd been slogging it out with this old band I had called Toxic Popsicle kind of regionally for a few years, and going to college. And then I joined Ben Folds Five and we started touring. So really when we split up, I didn't want to do anything but have a recording studio and record some local bands and just kind of be laid back. I produced some local records for about five years, then I raised a family and I became a teacher and didn't really have my eye on touring very much, I just played with a lot of local artists and stuff. So yeah, a reunion was good timing because I was getting a little restless.”

First there was a show, a one-off appearance in 2008 at the Memorial Hall in North Carolina, then again in 2011 to record three songs for a Folds' retrospective – The Best Imitation Of Myself. It was then that fans began to speculate of a reunion proper, one that would see perhaps a full-length record emerge and, if we were lucky, some shows. Well, dreams do come true, and the band entered the studio at the end of 2011 and emerged with their fourth proper album, The Sound Of The Life Of The Mind.

“We all got to concept what we wanted to do and yearned to play with each other again privately,” Sledge explains. “It took a while for the timing to work out after we did the Memorial Hall show in 2008, it really took four years for it all to come together as everyone just had so much scheduling. The playing is falling back into place too,” he laughs. “I haven't stopped playing; I play all the time. The attitude is certainly different and my body is totally different. My attitude is coming into place and my hands are coming into place, but my body needs a little bit more public exposure before it fully cooperates.”

As Sledge explains, once the fingers loosened up and the comfort eventually set in, playing together as the trio of old became second nature once again. “It was very much like putting on an old jacket that still fits, perfectly. It really was kind of great because I think everyone felt it too. It was interesting how quickly we fell into the interplay, us kind of going around and around – who's going to show off next. Because we did a couple of tracks for the retrospective, we were fairly confident that we could get in a room and just play together. All of us were really craving a good chunk of time to do something substantial – it was kind of hard for us to get in and just do a couple of songs, that didn't feel like enough. It was kind of the same as it ever was; Ben might come in with an idea that feels kind of fragile at first, it's just a small idea that he really wants to develop really fast. Ben works really fast. So we might go over 10 songs in the space of an hour and then 10 more songs in the next 30 minutes after that. I was really unaccustomed to that, and so when we started doing this, it felt like a big abrupt start for not a whole lot of finish. But it was just really getting back into our process. I think once we got used to each other and our playing again, it just kind of clicked and things fell into place really well. You could actually begin to see what the end result would look like. The main thing with us sitting in a room and playing and feeling free in a way jazz musicians or jam bands might – you know, people who are very musical at their core and not very production-orientated – is the energy that comes from inside the group and our inner player, and that just takes a little bit of time to re-establish.”

Sledge agrees, it really does feel like the '90s again. Not only because he and his BFF cohorts are back making music together, but also because he will be running into some of his old friends come Harvest Festival time. “We stayed in touch and it's funny how the old stories come up and all have different perspectives now. But we're just as silly as we ever were and have our own inside jokes, like most bands do. We get in a room and just start giggling,” he says. “But there are reunions and resurgences of '90s outfits all over the place currently. You know, I'm not sure if Cake are back out on the scene or stayed out. I haven't kept up with them but it would sure be good to see them again – we were always kindred spirits with them and played a lot of festivals and shows with them. Beck, he's another. We played tonnes of shows with people like Beck, we played with him a lot. Not because we were buddies or anything, but because we were cracking the same thing at the same time. Seeing that lineup [for Harvest] felt like Livid Festival all over again, Beck, Cake and us – it's going to be quite the party!”

Ben Folds Five will be playing the following shows:

Saturday 10 November - Werribee Park, Melbourne VIC
Sunday 11 November - Werribee Park, Melbourne VIC
Wednesday 14 November - Fremantle Arts Centre, Perth WA
Friday 16 November - Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide SA
Saturday 17 November - Parramatta Park, Sydney NSW
Sunday 18 November - City Botanic Gardens, Brisbane QLD