Background and career
Benjamin Scott Folds (born September 12, 1966) is an American singer-songwriter. After playing in several small independent bands from the late 1980s through the early '90s, Folds came to prominence as the frontman and pianist of the alternative rock trio Ben Folds Five from 1993 to 2000, their first reunion from 2011 to 2013, and since 2026. He has also collaborated with musicians such as Regina Spektor, "Weird Al" Yankovic and yMusic, and undertaken experimental songwriting projects with actor William Shatner and authors such as Nick Hornby and Neil Gaiman. Folds was the artistic advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. from 2017 until 2025. Folds has frequently performed arrangements of his music with uncommon instrumentation for rock and pop music, including symphony orchestras and a cappella groups. In addition to contributing music to the soundtracks of the animated films Hoodwinked! (2005) and Over the Hedge (2006), Folds has produced several albums, including Amanda Palmer's debut solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer (2008). Folds was also a judge on the NBC a cappella singing contest The Sing-Off from 2009 to 2013. In July 2019, he published his first book, a memoir titled A Dream About Lightning Bugs.
Folds was born in 1966 to Dean and Scotty Folds (née Kellam; born 1945) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His paternal grandmother was from West Virginia. He became interested in piano at age nine. His father, a carpenter, brought one home through a barter trade with a customer who was unable to pay. During this time, Folds listened to songs by Elton John and Billy Joel on AM radio, and learned them by ear. As a child, child psychologists told his mother he was considered to be “slow”, which he and his mother acknowledged as meaning he was creative. He stated he started listening to “7 hours of records” when he was 2 years old, including “Hold On, I'm Comin'” by Sam & Dave. During his years at Richard J. Reynolds High School in Winston-Salem, Folds played in several bands as the pianist, bassist, or drummer. Folds attended the University of Miami's Frost School of Music on a full percussion scholarship, but dropped out after having failed "the jury" and lost his scholarship. He devoted a lot of time to working on piano technique. "I spent maybe six months just running scales with a metronome like a freak", Folds said. "I suppose that did something." After leaving Miami, he returned to North Carolina and enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for the fall semester of 1985. It was while studying at UNCG that he met his "accidental mentor", Robert Darnell. Folds would acknowledge the impact of Darnell on his appreciation of music in his 2019 memoir A Dream About Lightning Bugs.
In the late 1980s, Folds (as a bassist) formed the band Majosha with longtime friends Evan Olson, Millard Powers, and Eddie Walker. The group released several locally produced records. They played their first gig at Duke University's Battle of the Bands in 1988, and won. They played at bars and fraternity parties, and self-produced an EP called Party Night: Five Songs About Jesus (1988), which they sold locally. The EP has four songs, none of which are about Jesus. They recorded Shut Up and Listen to Majosha in 1989. It contains, among other tracks, the four songs from Party Night (remixed and/or re-recorded) and "Emaline" and "Video", which Folds would later record with Ben Folds Five. The song "Get That Bug" from Party Night was released as a dance mix in Japan. After Majosha broke up, Folds played drums in a band called Pots and Pans with Evan Olson on bass and Britt "Snüzz" Uzzell on guitar and vocals, but the newly formed band lasted only about a month. Olson and Uzzell formed Bus Stop with Folds's younger brother, Chuck Folds, on bass, and Eddie Walker on drums. Folds eventually got a music publishing deal with Nashville music executive Scott Siman who saw Folds open for musician Marc Silvey, as well as playing bass for Silvey's band Mass Confusion, and moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue it in 1990. He played drums for a short stint in Power Bill, headed by Jody Spence, Millard Powers, and Will Owsley. Power Bill were later renamed the Semantics. Folds did not take a creative role in the band. He attracted interest from major labels. He ended up playing drums in Nashville as a session musician:
In Nashville, I was running eight miles a day, hanging out with my friends, walking around eating chocolate-chip cookies and playing a lot of drums, which I enjoyed. Life was easy. I was never frustrated—even though I wasn't fulfilling my contract obligations. If you are failing in Nashville, at least your standard of living is nice. Nashville is a nice way to fail.
Folds moved to Montclair, New Jersey, and began to act in theater troupes in New York City. Around 1993, he was enjoying this to the point where he did not want to keep pursuing a musical career. He also played weekly gigs at Sin-é, famous for being the café which had helped start Jeff Buckley's career.
Folds moved back to North Carolina and formed Ben Folds Five in 1994, with bassist Robert Sledge and drummer Darren Jessee, in Chapel Hill. As Folds put it, "Jeff Buckley was being signed at that time by Columbia and I was talking to Steve, his A&R guy, and somehow we knew the same people or something." In 1995, Ben Folds Five released their self-titled debut album. The debut was followed by Whatever and Ever Amen in 1997, and the odds-and-ends compilation Naked Baby Photos was released in early 1998. Whatever and Ever Amen included many singles such as "Song for the Dumped", "Battle of Who Could Care Less", and the band's most successful song, "Brick". In 1999, the band released what was to be their final album for over a decade, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, which included the hit "Army". Folds has described Ben Folds Five as "punk rock for sissies", and his lyrics often contain nuances of melancholy, self-conflict, and humorous sarcasm, often punctuated by profanity. Early in their career, Ben Folds Five gained a strong following in the United Kingdom and Australia. As with many other "alternative" American acts, this was largely due to consistent support from national broadcasters in those countries: in Britain the BBC and in Australia the ABC's Triple J youth radio network and ABC-TV's music video show Rage. The group's first chart breakthrough came in the UK, when "Underground" made the lower reaches of the Top 40, peaking at no. 37. Britain was the band's strongest territory in terms of chart success, with five singles making the national Top 40 there—"Underground", "Battle of Who Could Care Less", "Kate", "Brick" and "Army"—although none managed to crack the UK Top 20. In Australia, "Underground" likewise broke the band locally and while it did not make the ARIA chart, it came in at no. 3 on the 1996 Triple J Hottest 100 poll (broadcast on January 26, 1997). The 1998 single "Brick" became the group's only major chart placing in Australia, reaching no. 13; it also came in at no. 53 in the ARIA Australian Top 100 for that year and earned a Gold Record award while its parent album Whatever and Ever Amen peaked at no. 9 and charted for 32 weeks. Following their tour in support for The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, the band decided to amicably break up, with each of the band members pursuing different projects.
