Over the last couple of years, J's become a Ben Folds-atic. I debated last year whether or not to get her a fan club membership, and I probably should have. J's always loved piano playing, especially in rock music, and laments that Ben Folds is the only one who seems to really rock out on the piano these days (as opposed to other piano rockers such as Keane, who use the keyboard to layer sounds). I was busy with something the last time Folds was in our area, but she went and saw his performance with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra which she said was enjoyable, but she had gotten tickets on the right side facing the stage and so didn't get to see his hands as he played the piano. Last weekend, we got to talking about concerts we'd like to see, and she pulled up Folds's web site and discovered that he was playing two concerts in the next week in our area: this last Wednesday at American University's Bender Arena and Saturday at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. I was already scheduled to go to see Bob Pollard on Wednesday, and Chestertown was only a couple of hours away, so we bought tickets for that show. (As it turned out, Pollard hurt himself on Tuesday and my Wednesday show was cancelled, but by then other things had come up that made Saturday a better choice in any case.)

We left Silver Spring around 4pm in the afternoon, to not only give ourselves more than enough time to get there, but also to allow for a leisurely dinner before going to the Lifetime Fitness Center on campus. (I assumed correctly that this was their basketball arena--Folds has previously proclaimed his love for bball, most musically on his tribute to Eliott Smith, "Late"--so it wasn't surprising to see him embrace that kind of venue for this tour.) We ran into no traffic at all on the Bay Bridge and made it to Chestertown in an hour-and-a-half. We found a restaurant on the dock, the Old Wharf Inn, for a decent although not great meal, and then had drinks and some wonderful desserts at The Imperial Hotel. J wanted to get over to the arena an hour before the doors opened, but we lingered a bit and got there at 7:15pm, to discover a line about a block long--not really that long. They hadn't opened the will call window yet, so after they opened the doors, the line had to separate into those with tickets and those without. J had paid the Ticketbastard fee, thinking that the tickets (general admission) might have sold out, but there was no fear of that. I doubt the arena was a third full at any time during the night.

While we didn't get right at the front, we were able to be a just a row back and on the left side so we could see Folds hands as he played. While waiting for the show to begin, we joked that we were probably some of the oldest folks in the room, although we're the same age as Folds himself. The kids in front of us turned out to be from high school--born in 1990!--although they pointed out the girl's father and mother who looked to be in their 50s.

The opening act was a fellow from Bowie, MD called Corn Mo. He came out and strapped on an accordion and played what I could only call over-the-top: songs that seemed to have no grounding in sense or good taste. I was convinced that it was Folds himself in a wig and a "big suit" doing a kind of self-opening act spoof similar to how the guys in Spinal Tap used to open for themselves as The Folksmen (of A Mighty Wind), but afterwards was surprised to see the big fellow in the huckster area hawking his CDs and trying to get folks to sign up for his mailing list. The highlight, if you could call it that, of his set was a version of "We Are the Champions" on accordion.

A fifteen-minute break to clear away Corn Mo's keyboard and to do some sound level checking and Folds came out, instantly taking charge of the stage and the audience. It was obvious that the audience, while small, were all fans and knew the songs, and it was also obvious that Folds enjoyed playing live, as evidenced by the occasions when he would look out to the audience and simply grin. I didn't make any set list notes, but he mostly performed songs his solo albums with a few thrown in from his Ben Folds Five days, including "Bastard," "You to Thank," "Jesusland," "Trusted" and "Landed" from Songs for Silverman; "Annie Waits", "Fred Jones Part 2", "Zak and Sara", "Not the Same", "The Luckiest" and the title track from Rockin' the Suburbs; "Kate", "Brick", and "Army" from the group albums. He performed three
covers: a version of Merle Haggard's "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down," which most of the audience didn't know what to make of, but which I enjoyed; "Rock This Bitch," by Dr. Dre, which is about as foul-mouthed a song as you can get; and some modern rock song that it seemed everyone in the audience except me knew. One of the highlights of the night was when he invited a group of audience members up on stage to accompany him on "Underground." Not only did they acquit themselves well, it was obvious that both he and they were enjoying the spontaneity of trying to work together.

Aside from seeming genuinely charming and enjoying what he was doing, the thing that stuck out from the concert was just how spontaneous and improvisational Folds can be. Early in the evening he told a story about how their car had hit a pothole while driving through Delaware that resulted in two flat tires and a couple of hours delay in getting to Chestertown. "Delaware Pothole" thus became a recurring theme in the night, interjected in the lyrics of several songs as well as the subject of a composed on the spot number. Also, during the ending chorus on "Brick," in a quiet moment, someone in the crowd yelled out "Freebird!" and, without dropping a note, Folds merged the first couple of lines from that song before finishing "Brick" and then announcing that it was his latest medley.

For the most part (with the above exception), the crowd was well-behaved, limiting their yells to between the songs rather than during them. They also responded positively to Folds's other trademark in performance, where he gets the entire audience to join him by vocally performing the trumpet and sax parts on "Army" and the background vocals on "Not the Same," which ended the evening by having Folds atop his piano conducting the crowd like an orchestra.

J said it was probably one of her top five concerts ever, and I'd probably give it at least a spot in my top ten. It was a good hour-and-a-half of songs that I mostly knew, performed with the gusto of someone enjoying himself tremendously and with the skills to show the songs off, in a small venue with a responsive crowd. Live music doesn't often get better than that.