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It seems a bit bizarre that it took Ben Folds so long to do a project where he wrote the music to another person’s lyrics.  After all . . .Folds’ entire career is heavily indebted to Elton John, who made his own career out of writing songs to Bernie Taupin’s lyrics.  Perhaps Folds was just waiting for the right writing partner.  He found that partner in British novelist, Nick Hornby (High Fidelity; About A Boy; Juliet, Naked).  The two men began collaborating more than two years ago, and eventually produced the album, Lonely Avenue, in 2010.  Folds spoke to Thriller just before the album’s release about working with Hornby and writing music to another man’s words.

How did you approach recording the album?

I was the producer, and we kept an uncomfortable amount of space in the recordings as we tracked them.  We would track very live, but then we would leave assloads of space, and the reason I did that is because I love Paul Buckmaster’s arrangements, but he’s very busy.  He normally gets tossed onto a very full track, and I just thought this could be really powerful if we left an uncomfortable amount of space.

So you wrote sparse arrangements on purpose?

Yeah, just bars of not much going on – but keeping the energy, you know?  Make sure it’s not dying.  But then, people would hear it as it was being worked on and always weren’t so sure why it was so minimal.  Now, I think it’s just right.  Paul just went Hiawatha on that shit [laughs].

It reminds me of John Lennon’s goal while making Plastic Ono Band, to just strip everything down to its rawest state.  He talked about how even just a piano has so many overtones in it that you could leave it by itself and it’s like a whole orchestra.

Yeah, that seems to have been almost his lifelong artistic goal – to just sometimes painfully simplify and simplify.  I can understand that.  What becomes the challenge then is keeping it standing upright with energy, because obviously you can go, “Hey, I need some energy,” and just go nuts.  In fact, I would say the production of some of these songs is kind of similar to some of those John Lennon songs.  As a kid, sometimes I didn’t like that.  You know, there are songs on some of his studio albums that are just like, [sings a few notes] – just nothing going on, and you kind of want some candy [laughs].  That’s what we did when we practiced.  The other thing I think that does is it forces the singer to carry it.  It’s got to be carried that way.  At the end of the day, though, since I had an extremely involved string arranger on this record, then at that point it doesn’t have that kind of minimalist thing.  But, as far as the rhythm section goes, yeah, that was some discipline.

Your songs usually have such complex, pretty chords in them.  Was it hard to simplify that, especially writing on piano where you can just add notes to chords almost endlessly?

*CLICK TO LISTEN* Well, when you play a pretty chord, if you know anything at all about piano, you know you can play all of the notes in the chord, or you can drop most of them except for the one note, like a seventh or something, that made it pretty.  And you can voice then the third into some other voice somewhere – even the top of a bass guitar or a cello.  This one was a little more minimalist literally in that there’s more single line stuff going on musically.  The reason for that was that I was working with Nick Hornby’s lyrics, and I just had to – sort of on an intuitive level – I had to find a way to make his words speak without distraction.  Because, you could read them and they were great.  So, the last thing the fuck I wanted to do was to put on the record, and to realize that I would rather read them, you know?  He probably sells more books than I do records, so we don’t want to take the thing that’s great about him and not enhance it.

So, you saw yourself as a sort of mouthpiece for his words.

*CLICK TO LISTEN* Yeah, kind of like with a P.A. system, a public address system – if the drums are loud enough without the system, then you only use the system to turn the singer up.  That’s kind of the way I was doing it with his lyrics.  If the lyric was loud enough by itself, then it just didn’t need help, so it doesn’t get help.  Then, I had to be real selfless about it and go, “Well, I could look at this as Ben Folds and Nick Hornby, and I could make sure that my music is going to get some attention,” or I could just go, “This really needs to tell a story.”  And, if someone wants to say, “God, that song made me cry, but man the music was stupid.  It was so simple, it was just boring.”  Great.  That’s awesome.  If they cried, or they laughed or they were moved by the lyrics, even if it’s thankless sometimes, I did what I thought it took.  Other times, it required a lot of music, so sometimes I found myself going back to music school and doing things that I haven’t felt the need to do in a long time, which were very intense musically, contrapuntally, voice leading bunch of shit [laughs].  And sometimes that was because the lyrics, you know, “OK, this is the moment where the lyrics need to be matched.”  So, I kind of ran the gamut between being as simple as I’ve ever been, and sometimes having to go [Russian composer, Dmitri] Shostakovich on some of them.

Did he just send you lyrics and let you make up the music?

In essence, that’s what it was.  But, I welcomed Nick’s perspective and argued against it.  He sent the lyrics, and the idea was I would just write to it, but there were definitely times when he might think he heard it a little differently, I might think I needed more lyrics out of him, or wanted to cut something, and then we’d have a very friendly tug of war to try to figure it out and try to make sure it worked for both of us.

How did you communicate?

Phone, email.  We never got a chance to be in the same place except for the first night we decided to do it, and I was over at his house for dinner.  We played around on his piano a little bit.  Often, I was writing on a bass guitar – a short-scale children’s bass guitar – at my computer.  That way, it was kind of like, “Here’s the lyrics.  Here’s the melody that’s coming to mind.  Let me just find the bass line.”  And keep things literally minimalist, meaning one line per voice.

Did you record most of it yourself?

Sometimes I did.  And, often times, the band [would record].  The band got really good touring Way to Normal, and it never got a chance to shine.  We went in the studio, and it was just so easy.  We really had a great thing.  The band’s tracks are very slick – like, slick in a good way.  Then, I take a week and I just pound everything out myself.  Those are a little more raw.  It was a combination of both.  When I would get sick of one, I would bounce back to the other.

I spoke to you after your last solo album, Way To Normal, and you said then that it was important for you to get the sense of a live band on the record.  Did you feel the same way about this project?

No, because it wasn’t important to insist the feeling of a live show.  It just kind of is.  You know, if you were to buy – not that this sounds at all like a late-50s, early-60s recording – but if you were to buy, I don’t know, say something completely different from what I do, a Buddy Holly record.  That’s what it sounded like live, and that’s what it sounds like on the record, because it’s the same arrangement and the same way of looking at it, emphasizing certain parts of it.  That’s the way the live band worked for the Nick Hornby record, in that it wasn’t sort of like, “We’re a live band.  Woo hoo!”  For instance, the drummer was playing with one stick and no cymbals sometimes.  And then the percussionist was playing two bass drums and all kinds of shit.  We did what it took to turn the whole thing into a toy.  The chorus of this one song called “Levi Johnston’s Blues,” the percussionist just took it.  He just takes off with it.  It’s insane sounding.  It’s like two bass drums and marching snares just squashed to living fuck left and right, and that becomes the sound of it.  The drummer’s just sitting there, Sam’s [Smith] just sitting there playing bass drum and hi hat.

Did you notice any themes running through his lyrics that helped you write music to them?

Well, Nick could probably say the best, but the way it felt to me was that Nick has themes in his books, and those themes were also to be found in his lyrics.  I found certain things to be true consistently.  His way of portraying and seeing through the eyes of kids was always a certain way, a certain view.  The folly of the male psyche, how honest his characters are with you and with themselves about how fucked up they are, was present.  But, they don’t really tie in.  Some of them could have been songs that could accompany his book, Juliet Naked, I thought.  And he’s a big fan of pop history, so a lot of times he likes to write about that.  So, there’s a song called “Doc Pomus.”  You know, who would think to write about a songwriter from the ’60s?  It’s very cool, though.

The whole thing kind of seems like an Elton John, Bernie Taupin type partnership.  Did it feel that way to you?

No, it’s like the Elton thing a little bit, except since I’ve spent my career and life poring over my own lyrics, I probably have a little different way of looking at how the music is affecting them.  I think there’s a real strength in the way that Elton can just almost disassociate himself from the lyrics.  He just sort of flies by complete intuition.  I’m more likely to look at them and really think about where was this character that day?  What does this feel like from this point of view, and what do I want to emphasize?  Sometimes if there are two opposing points of view represented in a song – like one that’s called “Claire’s 9th” – I felt there are two sides of the story.  One side could be overemphasized if it was too dramatic, and the other side could be overemphasized if it was too funny.  I work on that stuff, and I don’t know if that’s better or worse.  Probably, for your mainstream audience, it’s worse.  Probably better just to do what Elton does.  It grabs people in, and then they can think what they want.  I’m probably pushing buttons more.  That may be unique for me, because I really feel for the lyricist.  It was my mission to make sure his words spoke, and not always the way he wanted them to speak.  Sometimes writers write things they didn’t intend – almost Freudian slips.  I wanted to make sure I was on that, because here’s something I can do for him.  I can kind of show him where I thought he was coming from when he said it.

How did the fact that you didn’t have to worry about writing lyrics change the way you wrote the music?

It made it a lot easier.  It also kind of forced me to use all of that extra energy and brain space just on music, so this is a more musically inventive album, even if it’s subtle.  I think it’s a more musically inventive album that what I’ve done, because that was my whole gig.  I mean, if I couldn’t get the music right, then I’m fired.

So many of your songs tell stories, and now you’re telling someone else’s stories.  It seems like there’s a connection there.

*CLICK TO LISTEN* That’s what I always intended to do with my career, at the beginning.  I always wanted to write things that other people would sing, and it never worked out.  I would write something and show someone how to sing it that was a better singer, and it didn’t sound right.  But, what you can do, what I really enjoy doing with people like William Shatner – it’s like, he’s got songs in him.  He’s interesting.  We can make this into songs.  Let’s see what it takes.  Get his life story, get him talking, get him writing some stuff and find it.  And the same with Nick.  There are songs in his words.  I find it really satisfying, and much more interesting, because as musical artists, we do sort of tend to run out of story, and then it becomes all about the music.  And really, so many artists have just continued to make great records, whether it’s Beck, or Radiohead or Bjork, people who have been doing it for a good fifteen years and still make great records.  I couldn’t tell you what their records are about anymore, and I doubt that they could tell you either.  And I understand.  I totally understand.  But, you take someone like William Shatner, or take anyone with a story.  I’d like to go make a record with Jesse James.  Let’s make a record, because these people have an interesting life, an interesting way of looking at it and are compelling.  Nick has written his same themes, like we all do, but since they haven’t really been expressed in music, then he gets a chance to say the same things again, do it in a different kind of verse, and then it’s fresh.

Do you feel like you’ve run out of stories of your own?

It’s a shame to have the cultivated craft, talent, experience, willingness to go into the dark some to figure out where you are, and not have . . . you’ve got the vehicle.  It’s all there.  And I’m not saying I have nothing left to say, or that Bjork has nothing left to say.  But, it’s a service to be able to use that.  As soon as someone starts talking, or telling their story, or has a part of a line or anything I can imagine and put in context, suddenly I’ve got music.  I hear the arrangement, and it’s exciting.  It comes from places I wouldn’t normally think to come from, because it didn’t come from my mind.  That’s exotic territory.

So this gives you almost a fresh perspective on songwriting in general.

Exactly, that’s what I mean.  I’m connected enough musically to where, if I can perceive it, if I feel a feeling out of someone’s words at all, immediately music comes to mind that sort of came from it.  I was calling myself a lyric whisperer.  It was a matter of really communicating with [Nick], and then ideas come out of your head that are not normal for me.  They’re not out of my stockpile.  My vocabulary is huge.  My stockpile is not huge because I tend to use the same vocabulary.  Like, you and I would be talking, and I’d say, “You know, you know, you know, like,” you know?  That’s going to come out.  If you had to sit down and talk to Butros Butros Gali or something, you’re going to stop that shit [laughs].  You’re not going to sit at the U.N. and say, “You know, you know, you know, like.”  So, it mixes it up.  I mean, I took more of a front seat than I even wanted to with the Nick one, because it essentially sounds like one of my records.  Maybe the next one I do, if I do another one with a poet, or a lyricist or a novelist, they’ll also be a musical artist that we’re actually writing for and producing.  That would be fun.

It seems like you’d also have a little less pressure on you since you aren’t writing the entire thing.

No, and anyway, the record’s good.  In this case, it’s very cocky to say, but, if they don’t get that, then what can I do about that?  I wouldn’t change a note on it, even if nobody gets it, and I guess that’s where the confidence comes from, is knowing it works for me, it works for Nick.  We’re happy about it.  And I get to brag about it, because it’s fifty percent Nick’s, so I can brag about it fifty percent more than I ever have.