LIVE REVIEW: Ben Folds in Groton, MA (07.26.25)
Billed as Ben Folds and a Piano, the black Steinway piano stood center stage with a spotlight on it. For ninety minutes, Ben Folds sat at that piano and performed songs to a sold-out crowd at Groton Hill Music Center in Groton, Mass., on Saturday night. After playing the opening song, he looked around at the crowd, saying, “I picked the wrong day to have a stiff neck.” He turned his head again in several directions and then abruptly said, “Here’s some songs.” It was a delightful, thoroughly entertaining evening of songs and stories. It’s a lovely venue for this type of show. I truly enjoyed it, and it was clear that the crowd did too.
“It’s a nice hall,” Folds enthused. Feels very European here. The piano is very nice too. Thank you, donors. I’ll treat it right.” The nine-foot $200K Steinway D concert piano was donated by the family of a late adult student, Matt Fichtenbaum. Matt (1945-2022) was a violin student at Groton Hill Music School.
Folds is a funny, charming, and gifted entertainer. He’s an exemplary storyteller through his songwriting. He writes thoughtful and observant songs utilizing empathy, wit, and dark humor. During the pandemic, he taught a songwriting class, and each student wrote a song based on the same news article from the WSJ about a couple arriving home to a break-in and discovering the burglar still inside amidst broken items. The burglar started crying and gave the couple $250 from his pocket. Folds said that he wrote the song “Fragile” about the burglar turning himself into the crying victim. “Like someone else we know,” Folds stated. “(But) he just broke into a house. He didn’t sleep with underage girls.”
The songs are visual and relatable. He played 15 songs and a two-song encore. Six songs were (somewhat fittingly, being in bucolic Groton) off Rockin’ the Suburbs (2001). He pulled songs from his four other solo albums: So There (2015), What Matters Most (2023), Songs for Silverman (2005), and Way to Normal (2008), and two Ben Folds Five albums: Ben Folds Five (1995) and The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (1999).
He introduced “The Ascent of Stan” by saying he knew a “proper hippie” as a kid who was also a bass player. “He was a smart guy and got very successful in the dot-com business. Now it’s guys with glasses like mine. Tech nerds. Turns out a lot of them are f-ing mean.” The song ends with a long hold on the last line: “It suuuucks.” The audience laughed, and the guy behind me said, “That’s awesome.”
“Kristine from the 7th Grade” showcases Folds’s dark humor. Written about the great antivaxxer divide during Covid: “The anger, the all-caps/ And all the pseudoscience/ The misspellings, they must be on purpose/ We went to a good school, Kristine.” His songs could easily be turned into a musical, the same way that Alanis Morissette’s songs were on the Tony award-winning Broadway musical Jagged Little Pill. Folds said that early on, when Ben Folds Five was playing the Jools Holland Show, Pete Townshend told him he should write a musical and not to wait until he’s too old. “Too late, Pete,” Folds quipped.
Folds showcased his musicality and impressive piano playing through varied compositions and arrangements — sometimes soft, sometimes hard, slow, and quick. At the end of “Philosophy,” he played fast and furious and then segued into the song Dick Dale’s “Miserlou” from the Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction. He sang sweet songs he wrote for his twin (now adult) children– “Still Fighting It” and “Gracie Girl.” Folds encouraged audience participation in clapping or singing. On “Annie Waits,” there are certain parts where the fans know the clapping. On “You Don’t Know Me,” he asked the audience to sing the soft, sometimes almost whispery, Regina Spektor part, mainly at the chorus. The catchy “Zak and Sara” has a cool, frenetic intro and toe-tapping rhythm. From 1993 to 2000, Ben Folds fronted the alt-rock band Ben Folds Five. On Saturday, there was no “Brick” or “Song for the Dumped,” but Folds did play the melancholy “Don’t Change Your Plans,” the rocking “Philosophy” with plenty of classical music elements as well as the fan favorite “Army.”
Folds recently put out an album, which he recorded with the National Symphony Orchestra. From 2019 to 2025, Folds served as Artistic Advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. He quit as soon as the current president took over the Kennedy Center. Folds went on a rant about the NEA and arts funding cuts. He said that over the years, many politicians just said that the arts weren’t that important. Folds said, “Dude took over the Kennedy Center. So I f-in quit. If the arts weren’t important, why would you take over the Kennedy Center?” He added that in Europe, most countries fund the arts with their taxes. In the U.S., we don’t do that. He said, “The president isn’t supposed to have control over the arts and what hurts his feelings.” He said that our generation (GenX) was wrong to be the ‘shut up and sing’ generation. The next generation needs to be open and to speak out.
After a standing ovation, the show ended with an encore that included the subdued and poignant “The Luckiest.” I’m sure many in the audience were feeling lucky to be there for this special evening of unique compositions, clever songwriting, and a strong defying-the-establishment attitude.
Featured image by: Alysse Gafkjen
