It’s been a decade since Matchbox Twenty released an album, but on September 4th Rob Thomas and the rest of the 1990s alternative rockers will release North, their first new album since 2002′s More than You Think You Are.

Though MB20 never officially “broke up”, they did go on hiatus (their second break) around 2008, facilitating the release of Thomas’ two solo records.

The band revealed on its Facebook page today that the first single from North, a song titled She’s So Mean, will premiere sometime in “the weeks ahead”.

We seem to be entering an era where just about every band that was big 15 years or so ago reunites and plans a new album/tour – and let’s add MB20 to the list now as well.

While we wait for a new song to emerge, let’s bask in all things ’90s with the band’s video for their mega-hit, 3 AM.

If you had plans (and tickets) to catch Van Halen in the coming months, listen up: the band has postponed all tour dates after June 26th.

Specific reasons for the cancellations haven’t been made available, nor has any information about refunds been detailed either.

As of now, the last tour date on the trek will be June 26th in New Orleans.

Here’s the full list of postponed VH gigs, as per Pollstar:

7.7 — Uncasville, Ct., Mohegan Sun Arena
7.9 — Hampton, Va., Hampton Coliseum
7.11 — Philadelphia, Pa., Wells Fargo Center
7.13 — East Rutherford, N.J., Izod Center
7.15 — Baltimore, Md., 1st Mariner Arena
7.17 — Rochester N.Y., Blue Cross Arena
7.19 — Detroit, Mich., Joe Louis Arena
7.21 — London, Ontario, John Labatt Centre
7.24 — Toledo, Ohio, Huntington Center
7.26 — Grand Rapids, Mich., Van Andel Arena
7.28 — Cleveland, Ohio, Quicken Loans Arena
7.31 — Fort Wayne, Ind., Allen County Memorial Coliseum
8.2 — Columbus, Ohio, Schottenstein Center
8.4 — Knoxville, Tenn., Thompson-Boiling Arena
8.6 — Memphis, Tenn., FedEx Forum
8.8 — Birmingham, Ala., BJCC Arena
8.10 — Greenville, S.C., BI-LO Center
8.12 — Cincinnati, Ohio, US Bank Arena
8.21 — Spokane, Wash., Spokane Arena
8.23 — Portland, Ore., Rose Garden
8.25 — Sacramento, Calif.,Power Balance Pavilion
8.28 — Fresno, Calif., Save Mart Center
8.30 — Reno, Nev., Reno Events Center
9.4 — Salt Lake City, Utah — EnergySolutions Arena
9.8 — Albuquerque, N.M., Tingley Coliseum
9.11 — El Paso, Texas, Don Haskins Center
9.13 — Austin, Texas, Frank Erwin Center
9.15 — Oklahoma City, Okla., Chesapeake Energy Arena
9.17 — Wichita, Kan. – Intrust Bank Arena
9.21 — Moline, Ill., Iwireless Center
9.25 — Milwaukee, Wis., Bradley Center

Visit the band’s website if/when more details are made available.

There appears to be little doubt that the warm voice of Rumer is “the next big thing.” This isn’t news at all to those living in the U.K. where Rumer (aka Sarah Joyce) was already nominated Brit Awards for Best British Breakthrough Act and Best British Female Solo Artist.

Her first album Seasons of My Soul went platinum, and she’s already a personal favorite of Burt Bacharach, Elton John and Donovan (who spoke of her in our recent interview).

Most often compared to Karen Carpenter, Rumer is blessed with the soothing jazzy ’60s pipes that made Carpenter, Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark and Jackie DeShannon so popular in the States.

On May 28th, Rumer will release her second album entitled Boys Don’t Cry. Surprisingly (or not?) the songwriter has chosen to make this one an all-covers album, yet her choice of material is fastball-over-the-plate perfect.   Tracklist below.

Here is a preview of Boys Don’t Cry, with sound clips:

Here’s a recent live performance of Neil Young’s A Man Needs a Maid:

And lastly, here’s an out-take from the album, a cover of Randy Newman’s Marie:

Boys Don’t Cry – Track Listing
P.F. Sloan – Jimmy Webb
Be Nice To Me – Todd Rundgren
It Could Be The First Day – Richie Havens
Travelin’ Boy – Paul Williams
A Man Needs A Maid – Neil Young
Soulsville – Issaac Hayes
The Same Old Tears On A New Background – Stephen Bishop
Soul Rebel – Bob Marley
Flyin’ Shoes – Townes Van Zandt
Home Thoughts From Abroad – Clifford T Ward
We Will – Gilbert O Sullivan
My Cricket – Leon Russell

(Special Edition tracks)

Sara Smile – Hall and Oates
Just For A Moment – Ronnie Lane
Andre Johray – Tim Hardin
Brave Awakening – Terry Reid

If you want to get a free track – Welcome Back – all you have to do is sign up on Rumer’s official mailing list here: http://grabtrax.com/welcome-back

Slash has released the official music video for his new single, You’re a Lie, which will be part of his upcoming album, Apocalyptic Love.

The album is due out next week, on the 22nd.

You’re a Lie is a typically hard-charging rock anthem, with Slash’s vocalist Myles Kennedy delivering some pretty strong (and high-register) vocals. And of course the track features a few Slash solos.

Relatedly – if you’re interested in playing a show with the man himself, check this out -

Slash To Let Unsigned Bands Open For Him On Upcoming Tour

After a mostly private battle with breast cancer, disco icon Donna Summer has passed away at the age of 63, it was revealed Thursday morning.

According to TMZ (who broke the story, as usual), Summer kept her illness to herself, so this news was a surprise to many, even close friends who told TMZ she “didn’t seem too bad” a few weeks ago.

Summer, a 5-time Grammy winner, is survived by her husband, three daughters, and four grandchildren.

Our thoughts go out to her family, friends, loved ones, and fans.

Steven Severin (formerly of Siouxsie and the Banshees) spoke with Rock Cellar Magazine last month about his various projects: Steven Severin Interview Here.

One of those projects is his scoring for the classic silent vampire movie called, well, Vampyr. The official soundtrack doesn’t come out until July, but Severin is giving a sneak preview of it starting now.

Enjoy all 15 of these creepy, ambient tracks courtesy of Mr. Severin’s own bandcamp – HERE.

Just when it seems as though the entire world is going to hell in a hand-basket we get a bit of good news.  Certainly, the recent Arab Spring which deposed several entrenched despots is worth celebrating, and the French people sure seem happy with Francois Hollande – their first Socialist president in nearly 2 decades.

But one of the brightest sources of hope on the global horizon is the recent startling democratization of Burma - led by a Nobel Peace Prize winner who has been so brave in standing up to the ferocious Rangoon goons that she’s portrayed by a former bad-ass Bond girl in a new biopic.

Beloved by her people, Aung San Suu Kyi is affectionately called “The Lady” and “Daw Suu.”  But for Westerners who have trouble saying her name (pronounced “Awn Sahn Sue Chee”) the pro-democracy leader suggests to just call her “Suu.”

On April 1, 2012, after decades of struggle, Suu and her National League for Democracy won 43 parliamentary seats in Burma (aka “Myanmar”) – the Southeast Asian country known for its teak, jade, gold-encrusted Buddhist pagodas, and oh yes – its brutal police state.

Although the NLD remains outnumbered in a parliament where 25% of the seats are reserved for the military and the pro-army ruling party, this is still a tremendous victory for democracy, and for The Lady who has led such an extraordinarily tumultuous life…

Photo: CKN/Getty Images)

SUU’s ROOTS

Her father, General Aung San, was a founder of the Communist Party of Burma and Commander of the Burma Independence Army, which resisted the Japanese and British colonizers. On July 19, 1947 the man considered the father of modern-day Burma was assassinated, when his daughter was only two years old.  Burma attained independence on January 4, 1948.

Suu’s mother, Khin Kyi, who’d been a Rangoon General Hospital senior nurse, headed social planning and social policy bodies in the new Burma and in 1960 became its ambassador to India, where Suu lived for four years.  But in 1962 General Ne Win staged a coup d’etat and ruled Burma with a military iron fist as a one-party state until 1988.

Meanwhile, from 1964 – 1967 Suu attended Oxford, earning a B.A. in philosophy, politics and economics. Suu moved to New York for graduate studies and worked at the U.N.  In 1972 she married Michael Aris, an academic specializing in Tibet, whom she’d met at Britain. She lived overseas, wrote, studied and started a family.

SUU LEADS

In 1988 Suu returned home to care for her ailing mother and was swept up into a seething monsoon of political turmoil, as Ne Win resigned and mass uprisings broke out. The daughter of the independence leader joined the fray, writing open letters, making speeches and touring the nation, and calling for a return to democracy.

On September 18 1988 the Burmese military established the State Law and Order Restoration Council, with the Orwellian acronym of SLORC.  A week after that the National League for Democracy was formed, with Suu as the party’s General-Secretary.

It is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it. — Aung San Suu Kyi

SUU – POLITICAL PRISONER

In February 1989 SLORC banned Suu from running in the promised elections.  In April, unarmed, she boldly walked toward soldiers aiming rifles at her in the Irawaddy Delta. Without any charge or trial Suu was put under house arrest on July 20, and she began a hunger strike.  Although Suu was detained and out of the running, on May 27, 1990 the NLD scored a major electoral upset, winning 82% of parliamentary seats.

SLORC refused to recognize the election’s results, and refused to cede power.

SUU – NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

In 1991 Suu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  As she was still under house arrest at Rangoon (aka “Yangon”), her children accepted the award in Oslo, Norway on her behalf. Suu went on to use the $1.3 million in prize money to create a Burmese health and education trust.

During her confinement the political prisoner was forbidden from seeing her sons; her husband died of cancer in 1999. Suu had declined a government offer to allow her to visit her stricken husband in the U.K., afraid she would be barred from returning to Burma.

MORE IMPRISONMENT, MORE UNREST

On July 10, 1995, the prisoner of conscience was released from house arrest, although Suu’s activities, such as public speaking, were restricted.  Suu was placed under house arrest again in September 2000 after she tried defying a travel ban to Mandalay. Although unconditionally released from house arrest in May 2002, Suu was imprisoned after a fight between her followers and a pro-regime mob in 2003. Eventually she returned to house arrest, where, for the most part, she remained until late 2010.

In 2007, inspired by Aung San Suu Kyi hundreds of thousands of Burmese people flooded the streets in  peaceful demonstrations against their economic desperation and corrupt leadership.   This “Saffron Revolution,” led by Buddhist monks wearing saffron-colored robes was met with a brutal suppression.  The 2008 Oscar-nominated Danish documentary Burma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country chillingly captured the military’s violent crackdown through hidden DV cameras and footage smuggled out of Burma:

And now, there is change…

Aung San Suu Kyi was sworn into office on May 2, 2012.  On May 8 she was issued her first passport in 24 years and now has plans to travel to Britain and Norway, where she will finally be able to accept her Nobel Peace Prize in person.

In December 2011 Hillary Clinton became the first U.S. Secretary of State in more than half a century to visit Burma, where she met with her fellow female leader at Suu’s home.  Since then Suu has already met with foreign ministers of Japan, Thailand, and Britain.

As the Western world gets wise to her story, it seems now as though Suu is attaining a popularity formerly reserved for saints and rock stars.  Or, kick-ass martial-arts actresses:

A new biopic about the turbulent life of Aung San Suu Kyi called The Lady has just been released - directed by Luc Besson and starring former Miss Malaysia Bond-Girl Michelle Yeoh (Tomorrow Never Dies, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Memoirs of a Geisha).  The film tells Suu’s heroic story and of her rise to power, proving that wielding democracy is as cool as punching and shooting people.

Of all Michelle Yeoh's characters, Suu may prove to be the toughest of them all.

In Johnny Cash’s humorous ballad A Boy Named Sue an absentee father gives his son an effeminate name in order to toughen him so he can withstand the slings and arrows of growing up in a harsh world without a dad. Similarly, a girl named Suu has received a name that’s hard to live up to by a father who likewise left her all too early.

Resistance leader Suu has risen to the occasion – taken on the mantle that history has thrust upon her, admirably leading her people and the cause of democracy. Through Gandhi-like nonviolent civil disobedience, this sarong-wearing, Buddhism-inspired unarmed feminine figure has fearlessly stood up to the iron heel of the state and become an icon and beacon of freedom around the world.

Her fight and Burma/Myanmar’s fight is far from over.  Though the European Union recently suspended sanctions against Myanmar, Washington has chosen a “wait and see” approach towards Myanmar’s military regime.  Aung San Suu Kyi understands that this huge victory is still early in the process:

“We are cautiously optimistic. We are at the beginning of a road. Many people are beginning to say that the democratization process here is irreversible.  It’s not so.”

After all of the wild twists and turns on democracy’s long and winding road that this 66-year-old has been on since childhood, it is easy to understand her tempered optimism.

As the revolutionary British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in his 1819 poem Ode to the West Wind:

“Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Photo: Adam Ferguson; The New York Times

For more informationon the progressive movement in Burma/Myanmar and even how you can participate, go to either of these two links:

National League for Democracy

National League for Democracy (Liberated Area)

Oh and finally – What Should We Call It Now? Burma? Myanmar? Well, as about.com suggests, it’s not that easy:

Question: Is it Burma or Myanmar?

Answer: Depends on whom you ask. Everyone can agree that it was Burma up until 1989, when the military junta enacted the “Adaptation of Expression Law.” This decreed English transliteration changes of geographic locations, including Burma becoming Myanmar and the capital Rangoon becoming Yangon.

However, because not all nations recognize the country’s current military leadership, not all recognize the name change. The United Nations uses Myanmar, defaulting to the nomenclature wishes of the country’s rulers, but the United States and the United Kingdom do not recognize the junta and thus still call the country Burma.

So use of Burma can indicate non-recognition for the military junta, use of Myanmar can indicate a distaste for the colonial powers past who called the country Burma, and interchangeable use of both can indicate no particular preference.  Media organizations will often use Burma because their readers or viewers better recognize that and cities such as Rangoon, but not as easily recognize the junta’s nomenclature.

~*~*~*

Reggae-influenced Aussie rock band Men at Work made headlines again just last month, although not for reasons they would have wanted:  Original member Greg Ham – best known for playing the fluttering flute riff in the band’s hit Down Under - was found dead in his Australian home. (Story HERE.)

Men at Work frontman Colin Hay said of his late bandmate: “We played in a band and conquered the world together. I love him very much. The saxophone solo on Who Can it Be Now? was the rehearsal take. We kept it, that was the one.  He’s here forever. ”

Just days before Ham’s death, Rock Cellar Magazine had an exclusive interview with Colin Hay in which he spoke lovingly of the band’s success and his post-Men at Work career.  In a eerie foreshadowing, Hay also talked extensively about death and dying – in his life, as well as in his songs.

With hit anthems like Who Can it Be Now? Down Under and Overkill, Men at Work sold more than 30 million albums, topping worldwide charts in the 1980s.  Although Colin Hay may have fallen off the pop-culture radar he is still very much a Man At Work:  he performs in music halls, theatres, churches and small clubs across the U.S. and is a prolific recording artist with 11 solo albums to his credit.  His acclaimed latest CD, Gathering Mercury, was released on limited edition vinyl last month.

RCM:  On your latest album there are a couple songs that explore themes of death and dying, like the title track Gathering Mercury.

Colin Hay:  These are some of the strongest songs I’ve ever written.  Gathering Mercury was inspired by a friend of mine who I went to school with, and who I still know, who has technically died twice.  He was in a coma for nine days and flatlined, and remembers going towards the white light, then remembers making a conscious decision to come back.

That’s where that song came from – this idea he told me, and how he’s now happier with the knowledge that he doesn’t understand anything – and he’s not trying to anymore.  He’s been to the point where he felt a benevolent presence and a sense of euphoria when he was close to death, or indeed technically dead.  I just found that completely fascinating in that here’s someone who technically died, left his body and came back, and now he just truly loves walking around above ground.  Because that’s all we really have, I think.

RCM: So you don’t believe in an afterlife?

CH:  People seem to hang on to this idea that in the end, everything is going to be okay. Certainly when it comes to religions, whether people are creating terror in this life or are victims of it, they hold on to this idea that in the afterlife there’s going to be somebody there to make it all right – but there probably isn’t.

I often think to myself how people say that old friends and relatives are waiting for you in the afterlife, but I ask, “Is that pre-Alzheimer’s or are they still not going to know who I am?”

That’s why I really believe that for the present to have relevance, you have to be constantly vigilant in your mind in trying to keep bringing things back to the moment you have right now.  Because nobody knows.

RCM: In the beautiful lullaby Dear Father, you lament on your father’s death: “I never got to say goodbye, I was singing on the river Clyde, and I didn’t know.”

CH: My father was very intense and our relationship was complicated. We locked horns on many, many occasions. But there was an intensity of love that ran through everything.

The last memory I have of him is standing outside a bookstore in Melbourne. I was buying a book and I looked outside to see him holding my jacket. He was doing a little dance for me, and whenever I think of him, I remember that last image I have of him dancing.

Which is what he was – a singer and a dancer. That’s the image I always see when he comes into my head – him dancing outside that bookstore – and I consider that a great gift he gave me.  Because it reminds me that’s all we’ve got. All we can do is dance, in whatever way we can.

RCM: Before you moved to Australia in 1967, your family lived in Scotland and owned a music store, right?

CH:  Yes, it was a single little shop front with a house behind and above it, where we lived on a main street in a small town in Scotland. Dad sold everything from records and guitars and strings to pianos and drums. He was a piano tuner. It was a small store but it was beautiful. It was your classic small town mom-and-pop music store, and it was the only one in town.

RCM:  What was it like moving from Scotland to Australia at the age of 14?

CH:  When I first got to Australia, it was very unsophisticated in many ways. But in other ways, it was streaks ahead. For example, in Scotland there was social entrenchment and a lot of sectarian violence between Protestants and Catholics. If you went to a Protestant school you got in fights with Catholics, and the whole class structure was very strong in Scotland.

When we arrived in Australia, it was what I imagined America to be, although it was probably even better than America because there were not that many people.  You could have a whole beach to yourself, there was so much space. You could walk down to the shore and there was nobody there. It was one of the most pristine, beautiful things I’d ever seen and yet it seemed like nobody was there.

RCM:  What was the Australian music scene like in the ’60s and ’70s?

CH:  The music scene was full of immigrants. A lot of the great bands, great musicians and songwriters in Australia had come from Britain, whether it was The Easybeats or The Twilights, who were a precursor to The Little River Band. And The Bee Gees lived there also. So there was this huge number of immigrants who formed bands and did really well.

Then there were a lot of Australian bands that never really got out of Australia. Cold Chisel is a great example of that, and for me at that time, a music fan in the ’70s, they were like the classic band. They had the introverted, brilliant, piano playing songwriter, an incredible guitar player who could sing, a drummer who wrote great songs, and a really solid rhythm section. It doesn’t get any better than that, y’know? And then there was Chain, an Australian blues band based on American blues. They had this wonderfully odd sound, like a marsupial influence or something, where they sounded like nothing else in the world.

RCM: The same could be said for Men at Work, with your instantly recognizable voice and reggae beats.

COLIN HAY: I remember when I first heard Sting sing, it was on the radio, and I had to pull over to the side of the road and thought, “Fuck — there’s a guy that sounds exactly like me!”

Well, not exactly, and of course they got famous first. And there’s not much you can do to change your voice, but the similarity was always there for me.

RCM: Men at Work’s sound was also distinguished by the use of woodwind and brass instruments – thanks largely to the multi-instrumental skills of Greg Ham.

CH:  We had good songs combined with Greg’s instrumentation on saxophone and flute, and a sound that connected with many different people in many different parts of the world.  Whether they spoke English or not, countries in South America and European countries picked up on the band long before America.  Israel was the first country after Australia where we had a No. 1 hit with Who Can it Be Now? before we even did the album.

RCM: You were signed by CBS to record Men at Work’s first album Business as Usual, released in Australia in ’81. But it took until April of ’82 before it was released in the U.S. Why was that?

CH: The record was rejected twice by the A&R department of CBS in America because they didn’t think there were any hits on the record – despite the fact that Who Can it Be Now? and Down Under were on it.  They were idiots.  Early on it was really quite difficult to get a release in America.

RCM: Business as Usual was huge – it topped the U.S. charts for 16 consecutive weeks, knocked off only by Michael Jackson’s Thriller. What was that first tour of North America like, opening for Fleetwood Mac?

CH:  I remember the first time we played in Canada was in Edmonton, and it was massive! We played to 13,000 people, opening for Fleetwood Mac.  Then after that tour, we went off and did our own gigs in Canada, playing to almost as many people as Fleetwood Mac were playing to in America — 13,000 to 15,000 people. I thought, “Wow! This is out of control.” Canada picked up on the band probably six months before America did. America was really the last country to discover Men at Work.

RCM: The year 1982 must have been a remarkable year for you as Business as Usual went multi-platinum selling more than 10 million copies. You also went back in the studio that same year to record Men at Work’s second album, Cargo, and won a Grammy for Best New Artist.

CH:  It was quite phenomenal, but I don’t really think about it all that much.  For me, it was tinged with some mixed feelings I had about the band I was in.  We really should have made more of it.

Yes, we had massive success, but we were in a position where we really could have slammed it home in a way.  Creatively, we could have gone further and made some other great albums, but it just wasn’t in that group of people to go the distance.

RCM:  Though you stayed close with Greg Ham for the past 40 years, you had a falling out with Men at Work guitarist Ron Strykert.  It was in the news a few years ago that he was arrested for allegedly making death threats against you. Can you comment on that?

CH: Ron and me worked together as a duo for about a year before Men at Work were formed. When I knew Ron, he was a very inspirational guy and was really important for the band and for me as a songwriter and musician. He’s a beautiful guitar player and he created beautiful soundscapes. And that’s the Ron I know.

There’s really nothing else to say about Ron, because the Ron you’re talking about, I don’t know who that person is. So when I think of Ron, I think of that beautiful inspiring musician I knew who was so important for me as a songwriter.

RCM: Tell us a bit about your approach to songwriting.

CH:  I try in many ways to get out of my way. These days, that’s the thing I think about more than anything, trying not to inject myself into the songs, personal experiences and all that. There’s nothing wrong with that essentially, and there’s always going to be something that’s somewhat autobiographical because you’re the one writing the songs. But often, the songs feel like they’re coming from somewhere else and you’re grabbing them out of the air.

Photo by Marty Smith

But writing songs which are based on your mind, or personal experiences are limited by the way you’ve been living your life.  Whereas imagination by nature is limitless –  and that’s more interesting to me.  Making stuff up, and making that work.  The whole singer-songwriter genre always leaves itself open to the whole idea of, “Here’s a song about me!” and I think, “Fuck, who cares!”

RCM: Was it challenging to start a solo career and find an audience after the phenomenal success of Men at Work?

CH:  After we broke up, it became apparent to me that Men at Work didn’t build a foundational audience. That audience didn’t transition over to my solo career. Men at Work had massive radio success, but when that goes away and the band breaks up, then the audience seems to disappear as well. So it’s like starting all over again, and that’s what I did by going out on tour, trying to find my audience while earning one fan at a time by word of mouth. And the audiences weren’t very big as I’d play to a hundred people.  Sometimes less.

RCM: Your audience is growing though as you sometimes play to sold-out crowds of 500 people these days, depending on the venue.

CH:  My solo career has been building, slow and steady, for the last 16 years that I’ve been touring. I really don’t have anything to complain about as I’ve had a wonderful career and a great life. And it’s great when younger audiences discover the music of Men at Work, who weren’t old enough to remember them.

RCM: Songs like Overkill and your solo track, Waiting for My Real Life to Begin, were introduced to a whole new audience thanks to the hit TV series Scrubs, where you made a cameo. How did that come about?

CH:  It happened very organically.  Bill Lawrence, the creator of the show, came to see me play one night and he actually became a bit obsessed with the song Overkill.  So he asked me to come on the show.  And it was really good for me because Bill was somebody who didn’t really understand the music business.

When he heard the new songs he said, “Why aren’t these songs on the radio?” And I said, “That’s a good question! I don’t have an answer for that.” And he said, “That’s messed up. I’m going to use a bunch of your songs in my show and see if I can make a difference.”

And that’s what he did, he used probably seven or eight of my songs over the course of a season on Scrubs, in different episodes. He single-handedly gave me a whole new profile, a whole new awareness of me to a whole lot of younger fans. So I will forever be indebted to him for that.

RCM:  Your setlist these days features a lot of solo material, mostly from Gathering Mercury, along with big Men at Work hits. Do you ever grow tired of people yelling out for Down Under during your set?

CH:  No, I really don’t. There are certain songs that I will probably always play like Overkill and Who Can it Be Now?  But that wasn’t always the case, as I haven’t always played those songs on tour.  I’d say it’s only the last five years that I always play them, but before that, I didn’t always put them in the set. I really like them still, and I really like playing them.

I love Down Under. It’s been really good to me, and you’ve got to have respect for that, I think. I will probably always play Down Under…until they put me down under.

Click the letter. Read the letter.

Dear YOU,

Do you ever miss the good-ole days of opening the mailbox to find a hand-written letter?  Or how about the FUN of actually penning one yourself?  With the advent of Techno-fascination, we have all felt the demise of hand-written communication.

Tweeting a one-liner, or effortlessly pressing the “Like” button has become the norm; and by neglectfully abandoning our Bic pens, we have left a valuable life-skill behind.

Soulful & True communication is a dying art.  The expressive ink strikes that bring a writer’s thoughts to life are No More.  LOST is the subtle nuance of an “i” dotted with a heart… and the dreaded Fat-Toungued-Mouth gotten from licking an envelope’s glue flap is just sweet nostalgia now. (Only to be shoved out by carpal tunnel syndrome, no doubt!)

This is a call to anyone that gets giddy when their daily bill-fetching trip delivers a mighty surprise, and an unexpected note form an old pal sparks utter delight.  I CHALLENGE YOU to take five minutes from your Smartphone, sit down, and write a personal letter by hand.  –Too damned busy, you say?  Then grab a postcard from 7-eleven, slap on a stamp, and scrawl out a simple “Thinkin’ of you.”

…Tell Aunt Sally that you miss her delicious potato salad.  Remind your college roommate of that Kick Ass party you guys threw when you were supposed to be studying for finals.  Or at the very least, leave a little, out-of-the-blue post-it note over on your partner’s pillow. (Maybe a funny quote or private joke shared only between the two of you?)

So go ahead and make someone’s day a bit brighter!  Pick up an ol’ no.2 pencil and see how good it feels.  –I dare you.
Sincerely,
Your Conscience

In 2008, Ben Folds reconnected with Robert Sledge (bass) and Darren Jessee (drums), the rest of the Ben Folds Five, for a live run-through of 1999′s The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. While it was intended as a one-off, the trio reformed again in 2011, and are finishing up work on a new studio album (which will be their first as a unit in thirteen years). A rough cut of one of the album’s songs, Do It Anyway, was released as a free download recently (and you can listen to it below, toward the bottom of this article).

Rock Cellar Magazine recently had a delightful conversation with Ben Folds, as the songwriter/pianist/The Sing-Off judge/producer/jack of all trades shared some insight with us about his band’s unique promotional campaign, the music industry, and why the Ben Folds Five decided to give it another shot. 

Rock Cellar Magazine: Talk a little bit about the whole crowd-funding thing – how that came about, how you guys realized this would be a viable way to fund and work on a new Ben Folds Five album.

Ben Folds: Well, it’s like we fell down steps, or something, and that’s where we ended up. I mean, it was just tossed up in the air. We made the record on my dime – I have a studio – the timing of when we got together was real touch and go for a while, and so we didn’t know when we were gonna be doing it. And then BOOM, we did it. We never discussed whether or not we would have a record label involved. So once it was sounding really good – I think we really realized that it didn’t feel great to have to audition. You know, going out and finding a label to do it.

RCM: Pitching yourself.

BF: Yeah, yeah, the pitching, but mainly because the process of the record was so right and special for us. We’ve done it enough to know that you can pretty much go through a process of selling your record, which can kind of undo some of that magic feeling. And I just don’t think any of us were willing to do that. Last time we were in the studio together making a record there were no cell phones. We didn’t have cell phones. I mean, they existed, but we didn’t have ‘em. And we didn’t have computers sitting around. It wasn’t like that, so I think that in a way we kind of stepped off a spaceship. And we’re all of a sudden some kind of Rip Van Winkle shit, and we’re making an album in this era – I think that makes us a little more open-minded to it because it all seems nutty.

So I don’t know how we decided to do the crowd-funding, except I know that my manager had talked to Pledge Music months ago, and then brought it up to me that that might be a way to do it. We didn’t discuss it any more – I think we were talking to labels, and then suddenly last weekend we just decided to let it rip. And I think it probably wasn’t the most comfortable thing for everyone who’s doing business, that suddenly we have our record up on Pledge Music, crowd-funding it. So it’s kind of fallen together, and we don’t exactly know what we’ll do next, but I think we’re relaxed about it, because as far as we know this is the only record that we’ll make together and we just want it to be…we just want everything to feel right.

RCM: It seems like every three days a band from the 1990s gets back together, but in a lot of those cases it seems like they just want to get back together, play the hits, and make some money. It seems different from your perspective, because you’ve had a very successful solo career. What made you decide to get the guys back together and give it another go?

BF: When we played our Myspace reunion-y thing, the Front to Back – I don’t know if you know about that –

RCM: In 2008?

BF: We played a thing for Myspace, it was called Front to Back. You know, take one of your albums and you play it front to back.

RCM: You did Reinhold Messner, right?

BF: Yep, we did Reinhold. It went really well and we thought, “maybe we should make a record” because it felt really natural and good, so the next time our schedules converged, was 2011…or 12. Whatever year this is. So that’s kind of what happened, we just decided to put it back together, but it took forever. I’ve just stayed really, really busy. We kept putting it off by six months, and putting it off by six months, I don’t really remember what happened. I think I booked some of the time out, called the guys, they were good and they drove to town, and we just started doing it.

RCM: Speaking of the new album, you said it’s done, it’s supposed to be out in August or September?

BF: Yep.

RCM: How does it compare to Whatever and Ever, Amen, Reinhold Messner and your self-titled? Does the music sound like that, or is this a new era for the band?

BF: Well, it’s kind of both. I’d say that the approach was very similar to the first album.

RCM: No guitars again?

BF: No, we’ve never had a guitar in any of it. There was a b-side I played acoustic guitar on once, but we’ve never had that. So it’s just piano, bass, drums – what made it similar to the first one is that there’s not really an overdub thing going on.

It’s mostly about what can be done with piano, bass and drums, and three voices. With the exception of this one song – there’s one that we put some strings on.  Paul Buck Masters, who always does string arrangements that I can’t do, did those.

RCM: You mean there’s something you can’t do, musically?

BF: Oh, there are loads – but I have a harder time arranging my songs. I do it sometimes, but I have a harder time doing it. I didn’t have a problem when I produced this Sara Bareilles record, I just threw strings around. I enjoy it, but it’s when I do my own record. Yeah, so that’s how it’s like the first record. I’d say it’s quite a bit more up tempo than the Reinhold record, and maybe it’s more intense? It seems to be more powerful in some ways. I think that’s just because we hadn’t played together in a long time and it was nice to have the break…we got better.

RCM: Have you created any more fictional characters for the songs, like Kate and Alice Childress, or have you abandoned that kind of thematic structure?

BF: I think I’m probably writing more fiction from first person.

RCM: Along the lines of Army, or was that autobiographical?

BF: That was much more autobiographical. And then it became more – the end was a lot of little funny analogies and side stories going on. I mean – always take some freedom with it, you know?

Take some artistic license to be from Mars if you want to. I have a feeling David Bowie would go to Mars. If you listen to his songs, one would assume that David Bowie did go to Mars, but I’m gonna venture to say that he didn’t. So yeah, I screw around with it sometimes. As soon as I started collecting songs for it (the new album), it seemed to have a theme of loss of ego, or the attempt to do so. That generally goes…the way that that endeavor usually goes, which is wrong.

RCM: So that would imply the ‘intensity’ of the songs, then, if it comes from that kind of a theme.

BF: Yeah. And so they come from first-person points of view and they’re obviously not true. For instance, I didn’t tour manage Frank Sinatra for 35 years.

RCM: Well that would have been cool.

BF: Yeah, it would have been. One of them is from the point of view of Frank Sinatra’s tour manager, another one is about when my father died. But he didn’t ever die, or he hasn’t done so. That’s a weird thing to do, but it’s like fiction.

RCM: A bit of a detour in topics from the new album: People ask you about the song Jesusland. Especially since you’re from North Carolina – you initially said that song wasn’t really a “statement”, that you weren’t trying to get out there and critique society, but do you think the song has any kind of added meaning or value, especially now as compared to when you wrote it?

BF: Yeah, I think it has, more and more. But I think the human part of it is what I’m always interested in when writing something like that. There’s a thought I have about the song that I didn’t have when I wrote it. There’s a movie, a short documentary called Life-Like Dust, which was about a Vietnamese kid who was sold in slavery, ended up in Los Angeles, joined a Vietnamese gang and ended up in jail. It followed a lot of his life.

Ben Folds Five, circa 1990s

But there was this section where he had been – basically, his parents put him in this boat, sent him off to someplace safer, in the middle of the night, he doesn’t know what the fuck’s going on, it’s 4 in the morning or something, he’s maybe 5 or 6 years old, and he ends up in the back of a car, riding through the nastiest, roughest neighborhood – wherever in Los Angeles that is – and he’s looking out the window. The documentary maker showed how ugly the houses were, they were just beaten down, no grass…the whole thing just looked really beat-up and horrible. And he said “I’d never seen something that beautiful in my life.”

He kept talking about how beautiful that was, and it makes me think about that song, how to me all the strip mall stuff, the whole Jesusland …lots of monuments to this nasty sort of capitalistic thing in the name of The Big Man. I don’t know, it seems like there would be – there should be something that resembles universal beauty, a standard, some gold standard – but I don’t think that’s the way people see it. I think people see what they want to see. So I don’t know. When I sing the song that’s what I think about now.

RCM: You think about Vietnam.

BF: I think about ‘Nam.

RCM: We wanted to ask a fun question, because of that ridiculous fervor that went along with the Tupac hologram at Coachella –

BF:  (Laughs) Yeah.

RCM: If you could perform with any musician, alive, dead or hologram, who would you pick and why? You’ve worked with Sara Bareilles, you’ve said you would like to work with Mike Skinner of The Streets, which would have been really cool –

BF: Yeah, we almost worked that out. That was exciting, and then it didn’t happen. Well, I don’t know…Scott Joplin? I don’t really think of it like that, because I only work with – if someone decided to shoot a hologram into the middle of the studio, randomly, whoever it was, that’d probably be fine with me. I go towards what sort of glows at the moment. It’s like being in the grocery store – “Oh that apple looks more luminous than that apple does.”

The Amazing Flying Ben Folds. Photo by Alex Searles

I don’t have a set thing, like “I want to work with this person or this person”. They come into your periphery, and it’s like a satellite – do you start circling the same thing? Sara and I decided to work together before The Sing-Off happened. It just seemed like everything we were doing was at the same time. We came into the same place, made the record, and…yeah. So I’m not good at that one, I can’t think of anyone you’d want to put up a hologram of. Buster Keaton?

RCM: Well you did an album with Nick Hornby, so anything’s possible.

BF: Yeah, I did one with William Shatner too.

I think Buster Keaton would be great. Charlie Chaplin would be good. I’d make an album with him. John Wayne, he could sing…

RCM: So going back to what you were hinting at earlier, you pretty much think you guys will release this album, which doesn’t have a title or lead single yet, and then that will probably be it? Or is it one of those “we’ll see what happens” situations?

BF: I think we’ll see how it feels. And so far, so good – the first week I took home three CDs full of ideas we had started working on. Thirty-five ID numbers, with vague descriptions – “E Flat”, stuff like that. I think part of it is that the experience of the whole process of making the record needs to feel good, and that’s why we’re doing it starting with the crowd-funding. Preaching to the choir, rather than going out and kissing every ass in the world, trying to hope that one out of ten new people like it. We did that for years, but it’s a little deflating after a while.

Ben Folds Five, 2012

That’s the main thing, if we can make it…if we can tour, but not tour to the point where we’re ragged. We moved our own baby grand piano for the first three years we were a band. We were only in it because of the music, and then when it stopped feeling right, and we were getting the highest paychecks we’d ever gotten, we just stopped one day. We didn’t give anyone any notice; we just called our manager and said “We’re done.” “Why?” “We’re finished.”

RCM: You just didn’t feel it anymore.

BF: Yeah, and that was kind of always the way we’ve done it. And that’s what we’re doing now.

RCM: Is there any creative difference in how you conceptualize your solo material versus with Ben Folds Five?

BF: Well I bring in the ideas in pretty much the same way…it’s just with them, we came up together, so we have associations. And we have a different way of editing stuff. It’s not that they go “hey, that sucks” or “that’s great”, it’s just that “wow, that sounds awesome” and “boy, they don’t get that, and I don’t get that, so we’ll just put that aside”. The stuff that we gravitate towards starts to determine the style. So I write to that, then. That probably causes me to write a little bit more heavy – the writing is heavier on this record. Robert’s an aggressive player, and Darren is a very lyrical drummer, and it brings out those things.

RCM: In closing the new record discussion, what are your expectations or goals for a new album? What are your expectations or hopes for the fans and for yourselves?

BF: Well, to have made a great record and to not defecate on the memory of it by going out and just being prostitutes. That’s basically it, and I’m excited to deliver the record to everyone who wants to hear it. I’m not at all interested in talking someone into liking the music that doesn’t like it, and I’m not even really interested in their opinion.

RCM: Pitching and promoting, not interested.

BF: Yeah, but it’s really freeing, I think is the thing. When you make a record, you have the weight of your legacy up to that point. You know what worked for you, you know what you got a piece of candy for, what you got kicked in the ass for, what made it easier for you to get a table at one place or offended someone. Those things mount up, and you can see how the baggage of a long career becomes pretty heavy if you’ll accept it.

Take a magazine like Rolling Stone – it’s gotten so personal, that they absolutely to me disappointingly invalidated their entire magazine, and I used to really like some of it. How could you allow a writer, two times in a row, to be so personal? It’s like “did you not listen to the music?” And when you start thinking about that stuff, it slows you down. You’re in the studio and you feel like you’ve allowed yourself to do that. You allow yourself to become creatively bullied by someone who doesn’t even care, they’re somewhere sippin’ a fuckin’ latte at that point, and you’re sitting in the studio thinking “wow, I guess I shouldn’t make this sound like this”.

I think all artists do it, and the artist that doesn’t do that is lying. But I think you can free yourself of it by considering the long-term process, and like you say, “what do you want to do with it?”

And what I want to do with it is make a great record and be alive to hear that some people enjoyed it.

I think that’s really all you can do. Then later on, the record may find a place that is beyond what you guessed…or it may just end up in a pile of plastic somewhere…so I don’t know. I feel pretty good about it right now, and the reason I do is because we’re taking it very easy.

RCM: But it’s intense.

BF: The whole thing about being an “artist” is the difficulty of actually purely expressing, because there are so many things in the way. Technique is in the way, and there’s your brain and all sorts of things. But you need those things at the same time. So you’re trying to employ them and push them away at the same time, and the balance of that is what it takes.

If you’ve got to be Cat Stevens and go somewhere else for the rest of your life…maybe he makes records now and they’re better than they would have been because he did that, or Bill Withers…or if you’ve got to be David Bowie and change every five minutes, or Ryan Adams, and put out an album every five minutes, you see people doing what they can.

I think the “real artists” are the ones that are trying these things because the attempt is to make something great. I would always say, “Okay, so have we gotten this song to the point where I could go out and get hit by a bus now?” Everyone thinks that’s a morbid thing to say and they laugh, but I always do think about it. “Can you finish this if I were to die tonight?” I think you do that as an artist, and after that it becomes increasingly about an artist’s ego at that point: how many can you sell, who liked it, and that’s totally acceptable. We’re human beings.  But then you build it up, and you have to make the next record, and you’ve brought all this horrible garbage with you that you have to get out of the way. So, that’s where we’re at.

——————–

Visit Pledge Music to find out more about the Ben Folds Five’s crowd-funded album, which has already shot well past its intended financial target.