Ben Folds

his six strings stratocaster for a Baldwin Baby Grant. With the Five and a series of solo albums and EPs like Rocking the Suburbs, Songs for Silverman and Way to Normal, he solidified his reputation as one of the finest songwriters this side of Randy Newman and Harry Nielsen. He's a brilliant melodist and an immensely gifted lyricist, writing insightful character

studies with a novelist sigh for detail. Music just seems to pour out of him, as he demonstrates during almost each of his concerts when he makes up a song on the spot. Now crafting a song with unlimited time and the privacy of your own home is one thing, but doing so before an audience of thousands is quite another. This spontaneous act of artistic bravery made a huge impression on me as a young music lover an amateur player.

To me, it was like watching a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat, only to realize there was no trick. It actually was magic. These impromptu songs were both a display of confident technical mastery and an exuberant expression of joy, all wrapped up with a subversive title,

which was more often than not, Rock This Bitch. I spent a great deal of time as a young amateur musician watching in the crowd during his concerts, wondering how in the hell he was able to tap into this bottomless well of creativity with what appeared to be total fearlessness.

As an older amateur musician and you know, full time human being, I'm still trying to figure it out now he's trying to help us along with this new podcast, Lightning Bugs conversations with Ben Folds Throughout the series, he demystifies the artistic process in a practical, scientific way by exploring creativity and its many forms. The series kicks off with an interview with anthropologist Augustine Fuentes, who argues that

creativity was and is an evolutionary necessity. It's in all of us and has a practical place and everyone's everyday life, regardless of profession. Yeah, it's become a cliche to say that everyone is creative, but the Lightning Bugs podcast proves it with science and compelling discussions. I found the show to be inspiring an essential listening. I recommended it to so many of my friends. Even if you have no

interest in music, it doesn't matter in the slightest. His guests are incredibly varied, ranging from comedian Bob Sagett to spiritual activist Mary Ann Williamson and business titan Jeff Lawson. There are music therapists, actors and TV show runners, and a choreographer end to further melt my brain. Each episode ends with an impromptu song. In case you didn't pick up on it, I'm absolutely thrilled to welcome Mr ben Folds.

I hope you enjoy our discussion as much as I did. Then, thank you so much for taking the time this morning, your time, I really appreciate it. It's such as such an honor. Uh well, first off, even an amazing new podcast called Lightning Bugs Conversations with Ben Folds, which demystifies the creative process and takes the position that regardless of occupation, everyone is creative and to prove it, here's the science. What is the genesis of the show? How did it

first come together? Well? I think it probably probably really the seeds probably were planted in the past decade or so as I've been going about for arts funding, because one of the one of the things when you trace it back and you see the lack of response and the lack of action and investing in essentially creativity, you begin to real is that we undervalue creativity and we misunderstand that it's something that's just for the arts sector, that is just for a little little artist making little

trinkets on the side. And while that makes everyone happy, it doesn't put food on the table. But then when you start to kind of roll that back, what you realize, or you start to look underneath the hoods, what you realize is that the the the arts are a big, big economic driver. And furthermore, any business is successful is a creative business. And then you start to kind of go even further, and you're like, wait a minute, people wouldn't have survived as a species if it weren't for creativity.

So it kind of gets bigger and bigger, and and the appreciation of it, even from my angle, has grown. And so what I've wanted to do is is really kind of reinstate people's self esteem about their own creativity because that is key to our survival and flourishing. So that's really that's a long way of saying it, but it did take a decade and a half to come to that. So so you know, taking seventy seconds to explain it, I guess makes sense. I mean, you're right there.

There's a point. I feel like that every kid, at some point in their life gets told either through words or actions, that yeah, that you're you're you're good, but you're not good enough. That meaning like you're not good enough to actually make it pay, you know, And that's that's such a terrible thing to to do, because I think about it's a very Western way of looking at it. In the West, we we we take musicians, we other them, We put them up on a stage, put them up

on on a literal pedestal. And sit back and kind of watch. And then you look at cultures where music is is a way of life and it's something that that is everybody is involved with every day. I mean, how do you combat that, how do you really sort

of integrate it back into into everyday life. Well, I think you have to just I'd like to think what I'm doing with the podcast is slowly getting to that point, you know, just by showing one after another guests who are creative in different ways, and then uh, you know, having anthropologists on or musicologist or neurologist anyone to kind of then explain a little bit of of the importance of creativity and evolution, uh, in the way our brains

work from day to day. If you just take music for instance, I mean, we are bombarded with music all day long, and so one could argue, well, music is a part of everyone's life, but we're passive in that. You know, like, like the way the human species evolved, it seems to be that we were active in it.

You know, you sing about this, You sing about that, you sit around at the end of the day after you've done your whether it's hunting and gathering or whatever the human species was doing at any particular time in our evolution. And we are trading ideas through songs, we're actually healing, meaning that that everyone's always kind of understood. They could say a baby to sleep, or they could sing to someone to calm them down. Conflict resolution, empathy, celebration,

all these things. People were doing those and in many, many, many cultures are still doing it. But we've yeah, you said westernized, we've commercialized music in a way. And when you say putting on a pestle, we've given license to a certain section of the population to be unnaturally popular at it while the rest of us sit around and and and watch it. And while I think that that's fun and that's that's that's that's a thing, you know, at the same time, it has sort of led to

a framework. And the framework is that those people are creative and we are not. And those people are frivolous and we are practical. To be practical is to be creative, and to be creative is not frivolous at all. And it's completely unnatural what we're And although you know, maybe in ten thousand years of evolution will catch up to the rock concert, how goddamn weird that is I mean, you're right. Mean. One of my favorite guests that you

had on the show was Augustin Flintes. It was an anthropologist who effectively said what you just said, that the creativity was an evolutionary necessity. And he was talking about how he was talking to somebody who came up to him after a seminar and said, yeah, I don't you know, I'm just not creative. And he said, well, what is it that you do. I'm a scientist. Well you're a scientist. That's you would hope that that that people. I mean,

science is all about creativity. Creativity, like you said, isn't you know, just just fingerpainting or banging a triangle in the back of a choir class or something. I mean, it is all around us. You know, there are practical benefits.

It is. It is and and it's a matter when someone's not happy with what they're doing, Um, it's it's I mean, it's very possible that they just don't have I mean, I say they we I mean anytime I've been in in something that I didn't have some kind of creed of agency or some you know, some sort of collaborative creativity something inside it. God that makes you a lot happier about it. I remember working at a print shop when I was a teenager, and you know, my job is to go in six hours a day

and just look at every single cigarette package. They were yet to be folded. You know, they're coming off of some kind of conveyor belt or something, and we're supposed to look at one after another for six hours to see if there were any smudges or anything on them, you know. And and that's about as uncreative as it gets to squint at thousands and thousands of cigarette rappers to see which has inconsistencies or smudges on it and

put it aside. But I figured out this little way that me and my kind of partner, because they would pair us up, could do it really fast. And it was fun. Like suddenly it's like I'd come up with some thing, he'd come up with something. We figured it out. I do half of it, he'd do the other half. Flew through it in a day, and we got in trouble for breaking the curve because they had a certain

productivity quotation that they needed to hit. And and furthermore, I was not to talk anymore because I was spreading bad ideas throughout the print shop that Luke or something. It was rough, but you know I thought about that. I was like, you know, I was happy for like two days doing this and I was giving them high productivity. But that's not the way we think, you know, we don't think that way. Like instead of instead of like the boss man going, wow, you know, this kid is happier,

he's come up with something and we're more productive. He thought, shit, I'm gonna lose my job because all of a sudden it's shown that we can do three times as much and I'll be expected to continue that rate. And I want this kid to shut up, and we're putting those rappers back in the bin. I mean that that is a a terrifying, very very cool hand luke like illustration of it is really well fine, but wow, I mean, but that's a great illustration of creativity has all sorts

of practical benefits. I mean, well, let me ask you. Your your podcast is called lightning Bugs, and and lightning Bugs is an image that you used in the title of your your memoir a few years back. I want to ask you more about that. Why do you keep coming back to that metaphor why is it a Is

it a touchstone for you? Well, I mean it's stuck because it was in a book and the book was published and in his Littering the Planet now, so uh, it gives it an attachment, as you'd understand, as you promote, you know, the things that you do, it attaches itself to something else and then further's the brand of that. Honestly,

that's probably the main reason. But there is a good conceptual reason as well, which is that it is about creativity, and creativity as far as my metaphor for it comes from a dream when I was a kid that was about lightning bugs and catching them in a jar. And while that's cruel, the the idea that there's a flicker that you see and that you have to chase that flicker. You know, sometimes even after it's not a flicker anymore.

If you watch a firefly, it lights up and you see it then and then it sort of disappears for a while and you're not sure where he went, and then lights up again. And I think that's the way chasing creativity is. I think that metaphor works for continues to work for me for like loads of reasons that that I think of only after like later like, oh wow, you know, in the daylight you can't see the flickers at all. So I think of the daylight as being

when you're overly aware of technique and process. So when you turn the lights on in your head and you really become a lucid thinker, suddenly all those creative ideas or are harder to chase because it's harder to see.

It's harder to see the flicker. Reminds me of the discussion you're having with the with Sarah Barelli's where she was talking about how when she she first started writing songs that just sort of came from her, and then when she started learning theory and technique, it kind of spoiled the allore a little bit initially, and it kind

of it was she felt almost stifled by it. And it's I know, that's got to be kind of a tricky thing too, because you you know, you have someone like Picasso who you think of as being this rule breaker, but then you look at his early work and it looks very classical. It looks like so I guess you kind of need to learn the rules in order to break them. But then's it's a fascinating dichotomy. No, but you're exactly like. What you're hitting on is it is

the the great challenge of of art and creativity. You know, it's it's if you're if you're diving into the unknown and into creative ideas, things that you haven't seen before. Just because of the way we're built, you're heading into a sea of contradictions. And the contradiction is, you know, you need to learn technique in order to make something, but learned the learning of the technique can be very distracting, can turn that light on and can make it difficult

to see. So both those things exist that time. I think any of our artists worth their salt will at least admit that that technique is very important, and we'll also acknowledge that it can be extremely distracting and it can throw you completely off the horse. I would point out with someone like Sarah Barelli's that she has, for whatever reason, impeccable singing technique, and she also has a no because we've worked together enough for me to know that she is. She's got one of the best ears.

She's just absolutely insightful. Her talent and her technique is formidable. She just doesn't like the technique of placing the labels and the words and certain concepts to it. She would prefer someone else to it. And I would add to that that, as Augustine Flints pointed out Primatologist who was on My show, creativity has has evolved as a collaborate

ative process. So you have one person who is able to pull off the technique, and you have another person you're collaborating with who might not have the technique but has a couple of ideas. That's a collaboration. You were saying earlier about how it was integrated into a community

at one point, music in art in general. And uh, and as opposed to now when it's just the one person who gets exponentially more famous for you know, the one thing that they're able to do, Yeah, which is you know, that's part of the reason why with with with my recent records, people have considered those because I've given credit on the front of the record to my collaborators rather than just hiring them and putting them on the back of the record. Uh, it appears that I

haven't made a solo record years. They're just as much solo as anything I ever did before. Just the way you put your name on it's kind of like Ben Folds five had my name on. It made it look more like like a solo thing, that it was a collaborative thing, but was actually the opposite. So I suppose I've felt like I needed to rectify that that over

the years. The ethos of your show Everyone Is Creative is really potent for me, because you are a major reason I learned how to play piano, and I wanted to play your songs, and I love music and I love playing. I have never in my entire life I'm three, three years old, I have never been able to write a song. I can't do it. I desperately want to. Instead, I speak to people who can and hope that some of their magic rubs off on me, and of course it never does. What would you say to someone like

me who really just struggles. I don't know if it's self censorship. I don't know if it's fear of failure, I don't know what it is. What would you say to someone like me to try to help break through that? Well, my hard asked Russian teacher part which I don't know why that exists, but there is one voice like that in the back of my head. You know, the the violin teacher that wraps you on the knuckles with the ruler when you play a scale wrong, I would say,

you're not trying hard enough. That's one. That would be one side, because there are two forces that play. There is how your willpower and then the uh you know, the inertia of ideas and the fear you have to break through and all the all the self censorship. You have to try harder than UH than your opponent. You have to get past that opponent and into the end zone. And it never ever was easy for anyone. I fucking hate it. I hate writing songs. I do. I've always

hated writing songs. I think it's hard to do. Every time I do it. In the middle of it, I'm convinced it's not original, it's terrible, it's awful, it should be thrown away. I'm horrified if I've shown it to anyone. I wanted to be gone, and and it just kind of have to keep doing it now. That said, the other side is my kindness side, which is like, how can we soften that opponent up? How can you get past that opponent? If you're self centering, you have to

find a way not to do that so much. And some of it is going to be confident someone telling you, like, you know, one of my guests, Caleb Tisher, is very young. He's a tap dancer. He said something really cool, which is he he shows some of his stuff that he's working on to his closest. Yes, people like the equivalent to like showing it to your mom and having to tell you it's great. He needs that. And you know what, that's not a bad idea as long as you don't

take that completely at the heart. If you need some fuel to get through to be like, man, it's really good, there's nothing wrong with that. At some point, your editor is going to come in. Your editor will come in and cut this ship the size you're gonna be, You're gonna be okay. So I think getting that self censoring out of the way is key for some people. That is a for some people that that could be alcohol or drugs, and I wouldn't recommend that, but you can't.

You can't ignore that. That has been a big part of people creating and it's the easy way out. But but there are many other ways that are probably better because you can probably do a better job is something if you're not fucked up. I mean, I think, like, there's no reason why chilling out meditation in your life somehow, a little bit of work on yourself so that you

don't have such low self esteem. To have people like myself who do make things telling you you can do it is not bad, you know, because that's what we should be doing. Like what else? I mean? Basically, you have to be able to spit out your ideas with no judgment. You have them there there, you just don't like them. You've got an idea right now, you could grab one of the guitars behind you and you could make something right now, or the piano next to you.

You could do this immediately. You play the first chord you have under your hand or in your head. Just play it and then sit and wait. Well, what's the next thing? You might say? Nothing, awesome, that's arrest. What's the next thing? Oh God, I don't know. I guess I'll repeat the A minor. Hit the A minor again. What's next? Nothing? Space? Okay, we have a chord space chord space. Why did you do that? Well, I don't know, because he told me to. What's the name of your song?

Because he told me too. There's always something there. You can follow what happens naturally through that process, and you you will make something. Now you're gonna tell me you don't like it, or it's not good enough, for it's not original. What's your problem? I mean, the truth is it is real and you've been making it up. I say, keep building on it. There's a really fascinating clip of Paul Simon on Dick Cavit in the mid seventies where

he's midway. I think he's working on Still Crazy after all these years and he hasn't finished it, and and he goes through all the different harmonic possibilities that he could that are available to him, and it's it becomes like a puzzle. And I wanted to ask you, how much of songwriting is is problem solving? Oh beautiful question. Creativity is so much more fun when we're solving a problem. And problem solving is also a really good distraction. It's

like math. It's like we're not we're not interested in math until we have to know how far away we should park our car from the corner, or we have to know how much money is left at the end of the month. You know, like suddenly math becomes interesting because you're using it to solve a problem. And creativity has that kind of relationship with problem solving too, where it's a little bit the other way around. When we're solving a problem, we've become more interested in what we're doing.

You know, you've got a problem to solve and you have to come up with a creative way to do it. So creativity becomes necessity and it feels welcome. And so I think that that that problem solving and creativity of

any kind just go hand in hand. And Paul Simon is a very lucid, obsessive songwriter, very thorough and also very poetic, so he's he's probably had a very hard road, like a lot of work has gone into his songs, the one you're talking about still Crazy after all these years, you know, it occurred to him that maybe what he needed to do for the bridge was leap to a harmonic environment which he hadn't explored yet, which was roughly in the key or enough related to the melody, because

he wanted to interrupt just a new world suddenly. I don't think he would apply that rule to everything, but it occurred to him how how can I get somewhere? And his you know, his intuitive mind told him, you need to go somewhere a new space, like I need to walk into a new space. And so he looked at his choices as he's problem solving and it's not like, oh, inspiration is stricken, I hear far in the morning. It's

not the way it happened for him. It was actually fairly intellectual as he realized he needed to go somewhere new. This is what happens when you're writing a song, is that a lot of stuff becomes suddenly intellectual, and then the intellectual pops it over to your inspirational and you chuck it back and forth. And what do you do when you're you're kind of up against it and trying to push through it. I think I saw something on Instagram or you were saying you were going out for

a lyric walk too. Is that something that's helpful for you to kind of step away from it literally and metaphorically and and kind of clear your head? Or yeah, I do, And that's like, you know, that's that's me at the point where, um, you know, you've probably found yourself walking up to a massive skyscraper of resistance as you decide you might want to write something. And that's me looking at the skyscraper and going, okay, well, which door can I walk in? I don't think I can

climb the steps. I don't know, but I'm gonna walk in the door. So like kind of moving, you know, entering another place, just doing something to move forward. As someone recently told me that his father said to him, enough shavings makes a pile, and I like at So it's like if I will, if I take a walk and I end up with just one tiny concept or three syllables, or even something that I've cut from a song,

I've made progress. I'm closer to finishing the song. He's writing something that you do every day, like some people do, like a yoga practice or jogging, or is it something that you have something that you want to say you sit down and begin begin working on it. No, the crafting of writing is something I don't do that often. More. What I do is go off in my brain playing with a song that I haven't heard before, or maybe even something that I have. I mean, there's no rules

to it. Maybe I can change around something someone else wrote for a second, or imagine a piano solo, or just kind of almost compulsively run four bars of strings around in my head. I'm not gonna do anything with that stuff. That's what I do most of the time. It just it just runs in my head in some sort of way. It doesn't seem like anything. I don't feel like messing with it. My willpower, uh to make something. It's not great enough because no one's given me a deadline.

It's gonna asking me, do you get more inspiration looking outward or looking inward? That's a good question. I think when you look outward, you're still looking inward because you're gonna look at the landscape and see the shapes that look most like you or what you're interested in. You know.

So if I'm writing about somebody, you know, later on I'll look back on and go, oh, I was writing about them because something about them was either reminding me of me, something I wanted to be, something that I was horrified if I was something I was interested in about that character of that person. And it's easy to write in characters. I don't know if it's easy, but it's I I like to write in characters sometimes because you know, it allows you that freedom to like asking

for a friend kind of stuff. I mean, I've always been so fascinated by your characters because I mean they're so varied. I mean, there's there's a Japanese businessman in the midst of the midlife crisis. There's there's an archie bunker ish Uncle Walter, there's an Alecturius mall Cop, there's Muhammad Ali. I mean, and you always portray them, even when you're critical of them, if you portray them with with empathy and respect. And it's so fascinating to me.

What draws you to a certain character? I mean, does it allow you, like you said, to express a certain side of yourself or is it just a character that interests you and you kind of want to get inside their head just just per fun Well. I think that's where it goes back to my metaphor about the lightning bugs.

It's like something illuminates, like some something something flickers, and it could be like you know, like I think one great example of a song like that is John McCrae of Cake his song opera Singer you know that song I Am an opera singer. It's awesome because he's sort of like something like what does John know about about opera singers? You know, but he saw something or I've never asked him, like, but something was luminous about that character.

And then John is in it too, you know, when there's he sings about meeting heads of state and he stands on painted tape. He's told where to go and where to sing. And this shows how wrote singing someone else's songs could be and how he doesn't understand why people want to shake his hand all the time and tell him he's great. But he loves it. And it's, you know, like something lit up in the sky. And I think that's where the mystery is. It's like why,

I don't know. Let's not ask why right now, let's just do it. I mean I remember one day going, oh, I want to write Charlie she and the Musical, Like just one day I was like, man, this would be great because think about how many people hate him and what he stands for and also are jealous that he can say anything he wants to. And probably a lot of sort of slightly more darker closeted people about things wish that they were able to do all those things

and live that lifestyle. And they're even more judgmental of him, and I thought, wouldn't that'd be a great song by the end of the day, or our musical or song. And by the end of the day, I'm like, no, I don't think I'll mess with that. I mean, yeah, I mean what your opper singer. I mean, it makes me think of your song on being Frank. You know I said I had it all? Or should I said

I saw it all? I mean, being this adjacent figured to Frank Sinatra, it said, it's another Yeah, just it reminds me of looking at the world through somebody else's eyes. I suppose I ended up meeting the the X tour manager of Frank Sinatra, just by chance, and I played him the song on my phone in his ear at a dinner because he was interested. And he goes, um, no,

that doesn't selling me. Nah. Now, I've been looking after Don Ripples now for years, not you know, my my my friends started a restaurant, and I've been interested in that, and I'm on it like not wasn't him at all? But the point wasn't that it was about him. The point was I think I was interested in a character such as that because I was interested in anyone, which is almost anyone who has been in a relay and ship for so long that they forget who. There was

an episode of you. I think it was the episode with Bob Sagett when you were talking with him about how hard it was to get back to the raw joy of writing music when you were thirteen, like it had become to a certain degree work. How do you, and really just anyone stave that off and preserve as much joy in the creative process as they can. Well, I think there's a certain kind of artist that high fives himself in the studio up and down and and just like that is the ship to listen to that,

that's that's me, Scrow. That's the best thing I've ever heard in my life. And I really, uh kind of admire and I'm jealous of that. I think the problem is with many of us is that we get to critical and jaded really early. And I say, I think I was probably guilty that I don't know how you stave that off. I mean, I'm not that damn impressed with what I do, and I think that that is

you know, I think that that makes it harder. Maybe it makes my quality control a little more rigorous, you know, like, I don't think anyone needs another one in my fucking songs or or or hear my voice coming out of a speaker. That's really how I feel in the depths

of my soul. But then, you know, like I'm here on earth, I don't think anyone needs me to drink the water or to be a hole in the air, to to to to you know, stuff a shirt like I, I don't know why we're here, so I just am compelled to do it, you know, So I don't know. I think that's that's a little bleaker than maybe some artists who were inspired by what they do. At the end of the day, I like I I come out of the funk and I think, hey, that's okay, that

song is okay. And I'll talk to someone like you and you like you know the names of the songs and have heard them and makes you happy, and I'm like good they were used to incredibly useful. That was such a great episode with with Bob's hacket because it was funny because you both almost started out in each

other's places. Bob was talking about writing serious songs as a teen and and and filing up with the library of Congress or something, and then you were talking about how some of your early songs were these beautiful melodies with really raunchy lyrics played at you know, a J. C. Penny's or department store, and it got me thinking about the funny similarities in a way between comedy and music.

How they I heard somebody say once that all comedians want to be musicians, and all musicians want to be comedians, and I was wondering. I mean, I think of people like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, who it's like jazz, I mean the rhythm of the words, and and then people like the Beatles, following in with the Monty Python crowd and early SML performers, with a lot of blues musicians stuff. What is the relationship, if any, between between

music and comedy. Well, I think there are a lot of songwriters or musicians who see the world for its absurdity. I think the best comedians do. I think the best songwriters are painfully honest. Now that doesn't mean that they're that that it's a reflect action, specifically honestly of their lives. So, like you know, Bruce Springsteen says he went to the Badlands that maybe he's never been there. We don't have to, you know, I'm I don't mean literal I mean emotional honesty,

that that's in common. But I don't think all comedians at all musicians necessarily have that have that that that that tie. Yeah, I mean, for me, it's just it's just the absurdity. I've I've always been blown away that how little tolerance people have in songs for some humor, because I've always felt like, uh, like humor isn't humor, isn't um just purely funny. Humor is sad and angry and you know, confused. And that's what a good song should be. Bob and I have, uh, I mean, we

we've we've got a load in common. We we were we were great budds from the moment we met back in and I don't know if we go a couple of weeks without communicating, no matter where where we are, we we see things very very similarly. And like you say, it's funny because I started off writing like all these dick sucking songs and and and now that that's Bob's that's Bob's thing, and he started off writing serious songs,

and now that's my thing. I think, I think, I think, uh, I guess I got the better end of that deal. The humor, I mean, it's it's to laugh to keep from crying. I mean, I think of your your song from last year twenty just I mean it was a funny song in a lot of ways about just this absolutely horrific time in our world and our on our planet. And I'm sure that was in some way. Was that cathartic for you to write something like that? Yeah, I mean,

you know, like like waltz has great for spective. A waltz is something that you you know, you eve were waltz, and waltz is like this old person who has kind of put it in perspective like Vienna the Billy Joel's song. Yeah, it's just old. That's totally a waltz. Yeah, there's something slightly distancing about a waltz. I mean, the waltz doesn't sit down and just cry on your sofa. You can't think of a waltz it does that. It has a voice of of a solid this is bad inging thing thing,

but it will pass ding thinking. And so I kind of wanted to, like, you know, uh, diminish it a little bit and then the absurdity of how many years it felt like we were living. I Mean, the funny thing is it's like, you know, last year really was and we may not now remember that. It may it may take a while before this is kind of sinks in again. But at the time you really didn't know what year it was. From day to day, it's like, is this nine this is okay? These these protests okay?

Now is this nineteen thirty eight? Are we Is this Nazi time? Is that what this is? Oh? No, guess what is the Civil War? Just just saw that on Twitter. Civil War? Definitely, definitely definitely eighteen sixties. So that was so scary not knowing what year we were going to relive. That was the worst year in in uh in history. Um And now it's like we're just stuck and in

the slowest year ever. Rather than reliving them all over and over again, we are now just in one long year sow one, maybe even two will feel like one year. Kind of the way we look back at Pontiacts and it's like, you can't tell the difference between three years of pontiac They all had the same headlights on you. Unlike many musicians, I've talked to recently have actually started playing shows again in in Australia. How's how's that been like for you? You know? I did, Yeah, I finished

off tour. It was good. It It was a different sort of reality than the one that I think will ever be in the US, because they were they had to adopt zero kind of a zero zero talance policy

on the virus in order to survive. So um, right now there are I think ten, maybe ten new cases of COVID in the entire country and and we are flipping out because ten is ten too many, and so they're shutting down a second week of lockdown in uh Melbourne, which is gonna cost Untold millions and millions and hundreds of millions of dollars for their economy to keep the rest of the country safe. And so with that kind

of pedantic care, touring was really kind of tough. I mean, I felt like I didn't go five seconds without getting jabbed up the nose and sent back into quarantine and wondering if the show was going to go on that night, you know, And sometimes the rules would be different. If I'm walking through an orchestra for rehearsal, it's like a couple of masks on me to get to the seat. Then I got the seat. No one's within two ms to me, I can look both ways, take the mask off,

you know, little things like that. I mean, you've been living with it in the in America, but it hasn't been like one person is going to tip the country into into into COVID, you know. So so there was a different vibe. Now it's pretty relaxed most places, and I feel like when I get to the States, it's probably a little more relaxed. But every country, you know, the world is is raging with this virus much more than it was, and in America seems like things are

getting better. So I find, you know, living outside of America just highlights to me all the more how different of an experience it is everywhere in the world. Um, it's very different everywhere else. I should have asked this compassionate question earlier. How have you been? Have you been dealing with all of this? Have you been? Have you been okay? Oh? Thanks man, Well I should it asked the same of you. You look, I mean, you look like you're doing well. I probably sound just fine. I

think we're doing good. Man. Thank you for asking you know, it's been you know, it's just everyone's been improvising through it. Hopefully we end up it ends up being a good thing for everyone, you know, because I remember that, Uh, I mta say a good thing for everyone? I mean that's so, that's such a mine field of people have lost their jobs, their family, uh, their their their lives, their help. I mean, look, you can't take you can't

flippantly talk through that, can you. But on the broader scale of humanity, hopefully we can find the silver lining. I I remember reading an economist over a year ago as we were slipping into the pandemic, saying, I believe that this may put the economy in the twenty one century uh and and was outlining some things that maybe it was time that these things happened for the betterment of people's lives in general. Who knows. I feel like I've been trying to do that for me, Like what

matters most? Has there been a silver lining for you this last year? Stopping having to stop touring? That that's been one. And while that's a huge financial issue and a scary career thing, it's also from just a mental health point of view, it's amazing not to be living in different time zones every day, and not living in hotels and buses, and actually having some time when I

wasn't meeting seventy five new people a day. I saw on on Instagram, probably around last summer, you said something about how the new album is coming together in this apartment. Is that something that that you're working on or is that just a tease? My new album is like your new song. It is. It's just it's the same thing. It doesn't exist until I do it. You know. It's like I can say it all I want to put it out there to the world, and they're like, yeah,

he's working on an album, where is it? I? You know, I I it's some of that puts pressure on me. Like if I make an announcement and than uh, than, then it increases the pressure to do it. You should announce on this show that your new song is coming next week. I'll do it. If I can announce that your new album's coming at the end of the year. Wow, you drive a hard brinkmanship. I've got a lot of it, I do. And I bet you've got a lot more of a batch of songs than than you think. I

think you probably to uh. You know, being intelligent, thoughtful, and compassionate is really another one of those contradictions to creativity. It's difficult because you think of all the reasons why what you what you might want to do is not necessary, not good enough, all these things. But you know, I go with the old Nike just do it things and see what happen. Well, I'm none of those things. So I still don't know what my excuse is. But thank you.

You just proved that you are everyone that's not. It has been such a pleasure talking. Might my last question before I let you go on Lightning Bugs, there's a really great segment called New Week Resolution, where your guests share a kind of awareness exercise that would help listeners creatively. I wanted to ask you the same question. Do you have a New Week resolution for us this week? Not to put you totally on the spot. Oh that is

the whole wow. I always give my you know, we always give the guest to heads up on that, But I guess I've had mine, haven't I do? The show? Isn't that funny that I haven't even thought about it for myself. I've just been listening to everyone else's. Well, let me think really quickly off the bat, what would I say, the most useful thing that I can think of for someone to do well, This would be specifically for for you as a songwriter. Then let's let's go

with the morning thing. I mean, I don't think it needs to be morning, but let's just go with the morning thing. And um, you just need to um, basically shift out the first couple of chords, any configuration of notes, any words that come to mind faster than they I mean, if you judge them in halls and don't write them down, then you get electric shock. You can't do that, So we have to hook you up to a wall socket

and just give yourself fifteen mins a day. And these are the shavings of your pile for the end of the week. And at the end of the week you have an unedited bunch of stuff. And that is just step one. And uh, but but it is a step. And if you don't make that step, you won't get to the next one. And I think you probably need to have a promise that you're going to do that again the next week. And I think that's a kind way of doing it, because the other way is you

have to create something and finish at this moment. And that's the more Russian violinist teacher way of doing it, and it's probably pretty effective. But I think for you and those like you, let's let's see what kind of pile of shavings you can have at the week, and don't judge the pile at the end of the week. Even if their cords that aren't related to each other. There there aren't notes that are related to each other,

words that are really aided. They are. They came out of this time period, and when you look at them in two or three years, you'll know that you won't come up with those that year. You came up with them now the way things feel now. So just appreciate them for what they are, consider them a first step, you know, and then continue to go. I think that

that kind of forward motion. I don't know if that's a proper exercise, but um, but I think, uh uh, you know, making a pile of shavings for the end of the week two and you're gonna look at them at the end of the week, take a drink, look at them, appreciate them, think that they're kind of funny, don't judge them at all. It's not tough. That's that's not a good that's not a good New Week's resolution.

I wasn't organized, but uh, there's something to it. Ben Foles, thank you so much for your music and your time today and all of your your your expertise and words of wisdom. And it has been such a pleasure talking you. Thank you. Oh thanks man. Really good to meet you, good to talk to you. Absolutely like, no, I I have seen you. I'm about to turn into Chris Farley talking to Paul McCartney for a minute, So I'm sorry.

I have seen you probably Jesus fifteen times. I was showing Mike and I was too nervous to show you, but he told me I should above my piano. Is this this is your piano key from the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. Oh that's awesome. No, thank you, that's that's great. I mean we that that all went to some good stuff, that bought some kids, some some uh some musical instruments. And now yeah, I mean I I thought it was

such an amazing thing you did. And now it has proud of place my inspiration above my piano when I'm trying and failing to play philosophy or something I keeps me going. So no, thank you so much for all the joy you've you've given me over the years. It's it's so wonderful talking to you. Thank you, oh man, Thanks, thanks very much, it's pleasure. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio, a production of I Heart Radio.

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