The smell of beer, reflections of green shirts and the buoyant sounds from Ben Folds’ piano filled the air of the Omaha Music Hall Tuesday night on a special St. Patrick’s Day performance.
Due to a night Theology class, I entirely missed the first band, Jukebox the Ghost, but one of my friends was pleasantly surprised by their set.
After what was supposed to be the only intermission of the night, an all-male a cappella group from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, The Bathtub Dogs, took the stage. Although originally not on the billing, the singers performed three songs, including a cover of Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida.” Perhaps this was to spur interest in the newly announced album, Ben Folds Presents: University A Cappella! The UNL group was sufficient in their routine, but they could have chosen better songs to sing, perhaps a Ben Folds song to get the crowd into it. Though they were better than anything we have on campus. (Someone should really get on starting a Creighton a cappella group. Ahem music majors?)
After the second and longer break, Folds appeared to a roaring, largely inebriated crowd (to quote someone behind me, “I’m so —ing trashed right now!”) The contingent, mainly consisting of frat boys, frat boys with backwards caps, frat boys with goatees, former frat boys and girlfriends of frat boys, rose to their feet as Folds started the show with one of his “fake” leak songs “The Bitch Went Nutz.” He then went into two songs off of his actual new album Way To Normal, the reflective “Effington” and the uptempo Brainwascht.
Folds interacted with the crowd, recalling his earlier shows in Omaha. He specifically remembered playing the old Ranch Bowl and opening for Better Than Ezra. He also took an unspecified shot at Nickelback, who were playing a few blocks east at the Qwest Center. “Our demographics are little different,” he said.
The next songs were “Annie Waits,” “Alice Childress,” and another ‘fake’ “Way to Normal.” Folds talked about trying to make the worst political song ever and leaking it on the Internet.
“I got a lot of hate mail for this,” Folds said, “This song is a piece of — and I admit it.”
He then proceeded to play it with a comical light show lighting the stage. His last lyrics in the song trailed off to seem overly emotional which incited laughs throughout the crowd.
Folds toned-down the set with “Cologne” (and its intro “Before Cologne”), going into “Bastard” and his single “You Don’t Know Me” with his bassist singing the Regina Spektor parts.
He played up the crowd a bit while talking about his love of playing Omaha. Then he also mentioned other places he loved playing – Des Moines, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Glasgow and Nova Scotia – so the original comment’s value declined a little.
The band exited the stage and left Ben to his solo portion of the night.
“Fred Jones Pt. 2”
“Lullabye”
“Best Imitation of Myself”
and his two songs he hastily wrote for publishing deals:
“One Down and 3.6”
“Secret Life of Morgan Davis”
After the band returned, he continued with:
“Kylie From Connecticut”
“Dr. Yang”
the ground thumping “Hiroshima”
“Landed”
Ben Folds pulled out one of his oldies, “Army” for a highlight of the night. The experienced crowd filled in the “bah da bah” bridge, replacing the trumpets on the original track.
“Fair”
“Zak and Sara”
“Kate”
and his set ender “Philosophy” with an impressive “solo” which really wasn’t because Sam Smith the drummer accompanied him.
After three minutes of straight applause, Ben and company came back out for the encore. He demonstrated how he used an Altoids can to play “Free Coffee,” and ended the night with “Underground.”
Overall, the show was amazing. Folds puts a lot of effort into his piano-pounding and keeps the crowd on their toes. My only disappointment was the lack of “The Frown Song” and his most mainstream song “Brick.” He didn’t even grace us with The Creightonian’s love song pick – “The Luckiest.” But every song he did play, he played to perfection and much better than anything Nickelback.