'My Head Is Focused On Trying To Make The Moments Count': Ben Folds Celebrates The Magic And Purity Of Live Performance

For the average Australian music fan, the name Ben Folds likely needs no introduction.

First rising to prominence as the namesake for the oddly monikered trio, the Ben Folds Five, the group managed to find fast fame on local shores.

Breakthrough single Underground, from their self-titled debut, managed to hit No. 3 in triple j's Hottest 100 of 1996, leading to a love affair with the country that resulted in countless shows, top ten positions on the charts, and even an infamous stool-throwing appearance on The Midday Show during their first tour here in 1997.

By 1999, Folds had become an honorary Australian, having embarked on a seven-year marriage with his Adelaidean wife. Even after Ben Folds Five split in 2000, Folds remained prolific, with numerous solo albums following alongside the creation of short-lived supergroup The Bens, formed in Australia with Ben Lee and Ben Kweller.

Throughout it all, though, a major constant in Folds' life was a return to Australia. Live shows – both with and without orchestral backing – took place almost every two years on average, and as COVID took hold in early 2020, Folds found himself based in the country, unable to leave.

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Now, after last visiting local shores in 2021 for a brief run of shows, Folds is once again heading back to Australia in early 2026 for his fittingly-titled Ben Folds And A Piano tour. Doing exactly what it says on the tin, the shows see Folds in solo mode as he digs out cuts from his extensive discography.

As Folds takes time out from eating dinner to chat to The Music about his upcoming visit, he reflects on just what it is that has made his relationship with Australia so strong over these past three decades.

"It's a little bit like the way that you have such great wine over there, but it's not pretentious," he explains, chewing politely. "There's kind of a good mixture there of how Australians disabuse themselves of being upper class and worrying about that too much. It's probably part of the tall poppy thing.

"There's an unassuming side, but also a fairly rigorous intellectual side as well. A little bit of an attachment to an English aesthetic, but there's still a little bit of a cowboy thing hanging off of that. I don't know; the whole thing kind of works for me.

"Everyone in Australia always knew when I was joking," he adds. "When I started off in the US, they didn't necessarily know that; we had to chase that audience. Here, it exists 'cause it's a big country, but there's also a really literal way of looking at things here. In Australia, you understand a lot more nuance, but it's not wrapped in a pretentious exterior."

Right from Folds' earliest musical days, his music has indeed been couched in a fair deal of self-effacement and humour. That's not to say his music is 'funny' per se, but rather that he's never been one to shy away from utilising wit in his lyrics or in his onstage banter. Hell, he even enlisted 'Weird Al' Yankovic to appear in the video for his nu metal takedown Rockin' The Suburbs.

However, part of the beauty of Folds' work is the way in which he's able to go from the thematic extremes. After all, where else could you find a musician who follows up heart-rending cuts like Fred Jones Part 2 and Don't Change Your Plans with more tongue-in-cheek tracks like Rock This Bitch and Army in the same set?

It's those sets which Folds has undeniably become known for as a live performer, with his ability to feel at home on stage meaning that he's never preoccupied about the concept of 'winning over' a crowd when he appears before them.

"I don't worry about the winning part," he admits. "I mean, losing is not fun when you're playing at something called 'Bud Fest' and you hear drum beats come off of three other stages and you know that you're losing.

"But it's pretty much a pass/fail thing. I feel like there are shows every once in a while where, before I start playing, my state of mind is, 'How the hell am I gonna do this? I actually have to sit there for like an hour-and-a-half and be the centre of something. I don't know if I can do that.'

"But then, as soon as I start playing, I realise that that's not the case."

Often, musicians will put forth manifestos or personal rules in which they state that an inability to feel nervous beforehand is an indicator that the artist isn't performing from a state of sincerity.

While one could easily see that Folds' occasional internal dialogue as proof that he's still approaching every single show with the purest artistic intentions, he maintains he's not one to set arbitrary rules for himself.

Rather, he's not focusing on the audience at large, but rather the technical aspects of the performance, ranging from the piano he'll be playing to the state of his voice on any given day.

"Those are the things on my mind," he adds. "And it's not that I don't care about the audience; I get a feel from the audience. The only important thing to me is the feeling that the songs mean more than I know. That's it.

"Sitting in front of a large audience, you understand that there are people who have context around things that you've written throughout your long career that may have nothing to do with what the lyrics are about. But you can feel that. It's the difference between playing the soundcheck and playing the show."

Indeed, while Folds could easily perform tracks like Brick and impart his own inspirations, emotions, and personal history into the song, it's the connection that he feels from the audience that matters the most – with their own myriad connections and relationships to the song creating the vital second half to the live experience.

Elsewhere in the set, however, it's Folds' desire to toy with the dynamics of the song that helps keep it interesting for both him and the audience.

"If I don't toy with dynamics, I'm doing a rote 'business as usual' sort of gig," he explains. "Which I think is honestly okay too, because there are reasonable executions of well-written songs, and I'm okay with it being that.

"But I kind of prefer 'the every other night,' where something dynamically happens that surprises me, and it could be a result of what I'm feeling from the audience."

Since the start of 2025, Folds has sporadically been bringing his aptly-named Ben Folds And A Piano tour around the US, UK, and Europe, allowing fans the chance to catch him in his element.

Over the years, Folds has found himself performing in myriad formats in Australia, including both solo and with backing musicians and orchestras. In 2018, he brought his Paper Airplane Request Tour to Australia, giving his legions of followers the chance to pick his solo setlist with the aid of paper planes being aimed toward the man himself as he stood alone on stage.

But for a seasoned performer such as Folds, which format is more of a challenge? It's one thing to be front and centre while surrounded by a full orchestra responding to your cues, but it's another to be the lone figure on stage, tasked with not just entertaining, but focusing on the technical aspects and everything else associated with it.

"The piano is certainly more naked, and anything that goes wrong is immediately noticed and appropriately credited," he begins. "But there's another way to look at it, which is because of that, it's more important to own every note and every dynamic and everything that happens – so that I can fuck up all night long and it won't matter.

"When you're by yourself, you either need to get every single note right – like, you're a professional, get your fucking music right – or you can make a condition; a blanket feel of the night, a vibe where it doesn't matter.

"It just doesn't matter that you're making mistakes, because it's about something else," he adds. "So that's kind of what I shoot for, and I give myself more leeway. I mean, I make more mistakes than anyone I know, and I don't think it's because I'm a worse musician. I think it's because my head is focused on trying to make the moments count."

As Folds explains, that's "the beauty of playing piano" in the solo format, pointing out that performing with an orchestra – by definition – is far more mechanical than his solo gigs could ever be.

"If I speed up, they have to speed up; if I decide I wanna play another song in the middle, I have to explain to 70 musicians on stage with a massive violin section who have the sheet music that I stopped," he explains.

"If I speed up, maybe the conductor will eventually catch that and he'll start speeding the band up. But when you're by yourself, I can rewrite the song. I certainly rewrite the set list all the time, so you can do anything with it. But I like the songs to be the songs – I don't like fucking with my songs.

"I'm very specific about the melody and the words and stuff," he continues. "You listen to a band from my era like Counting Crows or something, where Adam [Duritz, vocalist] used to go on stage all the time and sing different melodies. That's great for him, but I hate that for me. I like the melodies, I don't want to mess with them."

With the freedom to alter his setlists (but not the songs themselves), the current tour obviously gives Folds the rare opportunity to delve deep into his back catalogue to pluck out some of the more obscure gems.

While there's probably no chance that he'll be revisiting his Majosha or Fear Of Pop days (which is a shame, as many fans would attest), it does make for a setlist which is responsive, constantly evolving, and showcasing Folds at his very best.

"I'll play whatever I think is good and I've got plenty to choose from after a long career," Folds says. "I don't really worry about it too much; it just needs to be good. Some songs you can relate to more one year and then the next year it's like, 'Oh, I thought I related to that song. Well, not this year.' So you take it out of the set.

"Also, if I can remember it, I can throw in a song I didn't plan to do. Lately, my setlists have been the same every single night, but I haven't played them. I mean, the setlist sitting on my piano, but you wouldn't recognise it. I play the first two songs, then everything just goes somewhere else."

That also aligns with Folds' comments about wanting to ensure the nightly experience is genuine, more responsive, and one not focused on avoiding mistakes at every opportunity.

"If you're really creating an event, then the mistakes become part of the event and it's respected as such – especially if you recover from it," he explains. "It's like the joke about the guy who falls down and wants to get all the compliments about the great recovery.

"And in music, that actually works because things that are unexpected, mistakes, or lower dynamics generally have to be struggled to recover from, and then that's its own story. If I really fucked up the beginning of something, I will almost guarantee you that by the end, something really great will happen. I dread the mistake, but it's there, then everyone acknowledges it, and so we can climb out of that hole.

"If you're a performer that's ashamed of that and you act like it didn't happen, then everyone is robbed of the miracle of the recovery," he continues. "And these things happen in small ways that no one detects. It could be a tempo thing for a second. It could just be just a moment that's just not terribly strong.

"But it can recover, and the recovery is dynamic. If you're really not in your head and you're really in the moment, great things happen with the solo performer that are unique to a solo performance."

One of the greatest examples of this comes from Folds' own history. Back in 1998, the Ben Folds Five were performing at New York City's Hammerstein Ballroom for the One Amazing Night tribute show. Performing on a bill which included Elvis Costello, Chrissie Hynde, and more, the event honoured the music of Burt Bacharach, with Bacharach himself conducting the event.

During a rendition of Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head, Folds remembers how a cameraman for the event had left the lyrics to the song on his piano, albeit set to the fourth verse.

"If you know Burt's music, every verse has different lengths," he remembers. "He's got an orchestra he's conducting, and I can see his shoulders go down.

"He realised I fucked his song up and I just had to – in the moment – go, 'I gotta get the fourth verse. Now I gotta make it the first verse. But I have to make it past tense and I've gotta take a couple syllables outta the first one to get to the end.'

"And something about that made it really great," he adds. "By the time it got to the end, that performance was really good."

Of course, while a televised mistake (and subsequent recovery) might be somewhat representative of what Folds considers integral to the live music experience, it's not what he'll be remembered for the most.

As we chat over Zoom, it's just weeks past the 30th anniversary of Ben Folds Five's self-titled debut album being released. As a result, it's an opportunity to reflect on life and legacy, with Folds taking a moment to think about what it is that he'd like to be remembered for the most.

"If I had to be proud of one thing, I think what I'm proud of is that I started off as a fucking idiot and I was able to write songs that implied something else," Folds laughs. "Something like that, I wasn't as ridiculous as I was. I think a lot of songwriters and musicians do that; we write beyond our years.

"I feel like I've become the person who intended all those songs. That's what it feels like at this point; I don't feel like it's a mystery to me anymore.

"And the people I work with are the most honest, best… I've curated this really great group of people that I work with, and that is a testament to it," he adds. "If you are a little broken, you're going to attract a lot of other broken people, and that might make some great rock and roll.

"So if I was proud of one thing, the thing I'd be proud of is that my evolution has skewed toward the condition of the songs that I was writing that was beyond my years."

Tickets to Ben Folds' upcoming Ben Folds And A Piano tour are on sale now.

Presented by Frontier Touring and Chugg Entertainment