The inventive pianist and singer un-Fold-ed an evening of career-spanning songs — including some Ben Folds Five tunes — with help from New York’s yMusic ensemble for a sold-out amphitheater.
Meijer Gardens Debut: Ben Folds brought along his daughter and the yMusic ensemble for his first-ever show at Meijer Gardens. (Photo/Anna Sink)
There are a lot of reasons why my favorite Ben Folds song is “Still Fighting It,” the emotional centerpiece on his debut solo album, “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” which was released (incidentally) on Sept. 11, 2001.
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Written as an ode to Folds’ then-newborn son, Louis, the song pours a stiff cocktail of regret and hopefulness that the years have only deepened. It has a heartbreaking chorus like great songs always do: “Everybody knows it sucks to grow up.” And it ends with a knife twist: “You’re so much like me, and I’m sorry.”
New York Ensemble: yMusic performed with Folds on Sunday. (Photo/Anna Sink)
But something has always troubled me about “Still Fighting It” beyond its surface sadness. In the first verse, Folds sings, “You want a Coke? Maybe some fries? The roast-beef combo’s only $9.95.” Huh? “Only” $9.95? In the very early 2000s, the idea of blowing $10-$15 on a stupid artisanal sandwich was years from being normalized. So in what corner of Ben Folds’ universe did spending $9.95 for a roast-beef combo constitute a bargain?
Apparently familiar with this question, Folds provided, early into his sold-out show Sunday night at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, a sexy explanation: currency exchange rates. He told the audience he wrote the song in Australia, whose dollar in the late ‘90s and early 2000s had plummeted to historically low values against the U.S. dollar. So, according to data from U.S. Foreign Exchange Services, a $9.95 sandwich combo in Australia from 1998 to 2001 would have run between $5.15 and $6.42 in American money. Pretty reasonable, actually!
More endearingly, Folds went on to explain that it had taken him longer to write a song for his daughter, Gracie.
GRACIE FOLDS OPENS SHOW THAT, OF COURSE, ALSO FEATURES ‘ROCK THIS BITCH’
He didn’t perform that track — “Gracie” from 2004’s “Songs for Silverman” — on Sunday, but compensated by offering Gracie Folds, now an impressive singer-songwriter, opening duties on his tour. Her half-hour solo set, which found her alternating between a keyboard and acoustic guitar, won over the crowd of 1,900 with crafty wordplay and charming banter. (“I’m gonna play another banger,” she said, launching into a tender piano ballad.)
Sun-Splashed Amphitheater: Meijer Gardens recorded another sellout on Sunday. (Photo/Anna Sink)
After Folds had taken the stage around 8 p.m. and played a couple of songs, he jokingly announced this was his last show with his touring band, who “told me they were leaving me for my daughter.”
That band, a New York string/horn/woodwind sextet called yMusic, collaborated with Folds on his latest release, 2015’s “So There.” The songs performed from that record — “Capable of Anything,” “Not a Fan” and “Phone In a Pool” — mingled appealingly with the rest of Folds’ 17-song, career-spanning set.
There was no by-numbers run-through of the trademark ‘’90s hit “Brick,” but Folds — sitting behind a piano facing the audience while flanked by yMusic, plus a drummer — hit “Whatever and Ever Amen” highlights such as “Song for the Dumped” and “Steven’s Last Night In Town.” Other standouts included cuts from the overlooked Ben Folds Five masterpiece “The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner” (“Mess,” encore closer “Army”).
Grand Rapids on Sunday also joined a noble Folds tradition. For years, his audiences have disrupted shows by yelling “Rock this bitch!” Folds has used this interruption at performances to improvise a song with his fellow onstage musicians.
There is a magnificent Youtube clip of Folds doing this at his show with the Grand Rapids Symphony in 2014. And the capable young yMusic performers followed merrily along.
As if to underscore the many layers of irony that unfolded Sunday, Folds followed the quasi-improvised Grand Rapids performance of “Rock This Bitch” with a solo cut called “Jesusland.”
UP NEXT AT MEIJER GARDENS: The Decemberists perform at 7 p.m. Monday. (A few tickets are still available; details online here.)
PHOTO GALLERY: Ben Folds at Meijer Gardens
Photos by Anna Sink
