A wrap of the Friday, April 3 show by B.Treotch; photo by Phil Bardi.
Walking by the Ritz in Ybor city last Friday night, you may have thought some tech convention was going on. Tucked-in shirts, leather belts and fresh haircuts are not your normal rock concert attire, but then again, Ben Folds isn’t your normal rock star. The clever singer/songwriter has straddled the line between thick-glasses nerd and cool piano-popster for more than a decade now.
The 42-year-old, supported by a drummer, bassist and multi-instrumentalist played over two dozen songs that spanned his solo career and his three studio albums with the Ben Folds Five. Drawing heavily from last year’s under-the-radar Way To Normal, Folds opened with “Errant Dog.” The band then worked the crowd with tracks from Songs for Silverman — “Landed” and “Jesusland” — followed by the Whatever and Ever Amen’s anthemic “Battle of Who Could Care Less,” Normal’s “Effington” and Rockin’ the Suburbs’ “Losing Lisa.” Then they brought it down with “Lullabye” from The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner and a new one, “Kylie From Connecticut.”
This article appears in Apr 1-7, 2009.