No Bricks, Just Bangers From Ben Folds & A Piano

Ben Folds
4/13/25
Robins Theatre, Warren OH
Opener: Lindsey Kraft

In a century-old theatre, under a cathedral dome, Ben Folds held church, his altar a black 1935 Steinway & Sons Model B Grand Piano and his choir roughly 700 strong. 

If you’re lucky enough to be admitted “into the fold” on this tour of “Ben Folds & A Piano,” as I was in the sleepy suburban city of Warren, Ohio, on a pleasant springtime Sunday evening, you’re likely to be spirited away by his engaging, emotional, powerfully personal and highly intimate set. 

Recall that Folds’ big break, perhaps still his most-radio-played hit, was “Brick,” a song he wrote about driving his pregnant high school girlfriend to the clinic for an abortion, released in 1999 on the second album of his band Ben Folds Five, a piano-led trio (hilariously, there were never five of them). That song didn’t even make the set, but it stands as a testament to just how personal Folds gets with his songwriting and performance. Instead, in this set, he emoted in his widely ranging vocality about his twins, a boy and girl, born several fraught hours apart, in “Still Fighting It” and “Gracie.” 

Opening for Folds, Lindsey Kraft warmed up the Steinway Grand with a similarly deeply personal set of songs she has written for her still-in-the-works stage musical “Love Me.” These included a heart-wrenching nursery rhyme, “Sam I Am,” about discovering at a young age that her quirky dad, Sam, was an addict. On that, as Kraft laments, “I wanna be better than you, so much better than you,” she got an assist from off-stage Folds, who provided an almost godly voice of reason and reassurance: “You already are.” 

Folds later kicked things up with a commanding performance that, despite the sophisticated simplicity of the spotlighted single instrument on this stage, rocked this suburb as thoroughly as any three- (or five-) piece band could. The piano might as well have been on fire, as Folds hammered the keys to add a percussive beat beneath the bright strikes of the strings. A drum effect also came from his sensibly-loafered feet (giving off big Dad energy) kicked forcefully into the polished wood of the stage, a well-timed tap of the microphone, and the rhythmic clapping of the audience which he prompted with a tilt of his head. 

As alluded to, more choir than crowd, the audience also three-part harmonized beautifully with Ben - so much to his delight that he asked the collective fold to duet with him, in the Regina Spektor part of “You Don’t Know Me,” and gave the vocal part to the crowd completely for “The Luckiest,” which was so damned beautiful it should’ve been lit by candlelight. 

Part of Folds’s musical genius is his ability, as “the Great Collaborator,” to bring everyone into the fold, and by doing so, elevate them, if not to his level - because, let’s face it, there are few equal - then at least in harmony with him. Among his perhaps, on the surface, most unusual of collaborators is William “Captain Kirk” Shatner, who has recorded a series of spoken-word soliloquies over his music, the latest of which is a reflective essay on his eye-opening (but not as might be expected) flight to the edge of space aboard Bezos’s Blue Origin. He also had been in the prestigious position to collaborate with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center as its first artistic advisor, for eight years until just recently. 

And so when, following a boisterous, pulse-pounding piano solo, the voice of an old man exclaimed, “that’s some good shit right there,” we all had to agree. Folds jokingly remarked: “Dad, you’re actually here?” 

Songwriting is Folds’s other superpower, with each piece artfully telling stories both singularly personal and thoroughly relatable. As with “One Down (and 3.6 to go),” about his feat of writing exactly 4.6 songs in two days to just satisfy his contract with the paycheck-withholding studio, played in this set as part of the encore to appease a fan’s sign-made request. Or with “Fragile,” a song inspired by a newspaper article about a home burglary in which the burglar, caught in the act of breaking and entering and thieving, suddenly plays the victim. Folds opines that he never bought it, and compares the situation to an abusive relationship, which has notes of such a relationship that the entire world finds itself in today. The big difference is that some abusers and bullies, while quick to play victim when caught, never even feign remorse. 

As an aside, Warren’s Robins Theatre is a real gem, a beautiful venue for seeing a live performance. I spoke with an usher who shared that he has worked there “since the theater opened.” The guy didn’t look to be that old, leading me to ask how long that’s been. “About four years,” he said, with no hint of irony. He had of course been referring to the Robins’ second grand opening. The first was in 1923. The second came in 2000, after the theater had sat dormant for more than 40 years, collecting inches-deep worth of pigeon poop through a hole in the cathedral ceiling. A wealthy benefactor with ties to the area has restored it to a state of glory. 

I spoke with three fans. One, a disabled retiree with a cane and a Beetles tee in the front row, who told me before the show that he was still trying to convince his unenthusiastic wife that they were in for a fantastic show. (I didn’t get the chance to ask later if she’d been won over, but I don’t doubt it.) Another, an at-most-20s something, nose-ringed girl who told me she first fell in love with Folds’s music as a kid watching the Dreamworks movie “Over the Hedge,” which featured a soundtrack of songs written exclusively for the Bruce Willis-voiced wildlife caper. As she’s about my own daughter’s age, I had to ask which Ben she likes best: Folds or Platt. “Who’s Ben Platt?” she replied, adding that she feels like it’s not easy to discover musicians at the talent level of Ben Folds. Count me impressed. My fourth encounter with a Folds fan was simply to compliment a fan about 5 rows deep on his vintage “Ben Folds Five” shirt, which definitely looked well-worn and loved (not a Target knock-off or throwback). A connoisseur of concert tees myself (if there’s no shirt, did it even happen?), I’ve always appreciated the gesture of a passing compliment, so I return that whenever warranted. It was. 

I exited the regal auditorium without a shirt as a memento but with a camera full of captured memories and a singular, resonant thought: “I am … I am … I am … the luckiest.” 

Robert McCune is a career journalist and a part-time photographer, reviewer and podcaster. Follow his journey on Instagram at every_thing_after_photo.