We have been playing songs from the new album by Ben Folds that features lyrics by Nick Hornby, now hear what Folds has to say about it.
Ben Folds
says that an "instinct to collaborate and make music with people who
aren't necessarily musicians" led to "Lonely Avenue," an teaming with
Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and author Nick Hornby that's due
out Sept. 28 on Nonesuch.
"There's such a wide world of things
you can do with music," Folds tells Billboard.com. "I feel like I can
get a football player and have him tell his life story and turn it into
music and I think it would be unique. With Nick, my biggest fear was he
would send me great lyrics and I wouldn't be able to do anything good
with them. I had complete confidence in him."
Folds, in fact,
already had songwriting experience with Hornby, who's used music as a
basis for novels such as "High Fidelity," "About A Boy" and "Juliet,
Naked." He had recruited Hornby to write lyrics for "That's Me Trying,"
a song that appeared on William Shatner's 2004 album "Has Been," which
Folds produced.
Over dinner last year the two men
hatched the plan for "Lonely Avenue," wherein Hornby would write sets
of lyrics and send them to Folds to put to music. The singer would
susbsequently record the songs onto two-inch tape for better vinyl
audio quality, and with string arrangements on several tracks by Paul
Buckmaster.
Folds says Hornby sent him about 30 sets of
lyrics, from which "Lonely Avenue"'s 11 tracks were chosen -- including
fictional stories and songs about or inspired by Doc Pomus and Levi
Johnston, the father of Sarah Palin's grandson. Folds chose the analog
recording process, meanwhile, simply due to digital burnout.
"It's precisely nine years since I started working on ProTools," he
notes, "but after the experience of the last record (2008's 'Way to
Normal'), I just asked myself, 'Digital recording, is that helping my
records?', because it was not fun. If it's not fun and it's making them
better, great. But it's not that fun, and I don't think it's improved
(the records). So I'm coming back to analog simply because I really
gave digital a full go and I appreciate it, but I like rewind time and
I like making choices on the fly...and that's what you do when you're
working with tape."
Folds plans to integrate the "Lonely
Avenue" songs into his concerts but doesn't foresee any kind of
performance concept with Hornby, who wrote four short stories to
accompany a deluxe edition of "Lonely Avenue." Meanwhile, Folds has a
number of other projects he's working on, including another season of
judging NBC's "The Sing Off," putting together a coffee table book of
photos he and his wife have taken, and a musical theater piece that he
isn't speaking specifically about yet.
Folds also
says he'll record "a conventional album at some point," though he'd
also like to do something with "a big band, Capitol Records-style
orchestra," as well as another project with four acoustic guitarists.
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