There’s fresh action from a couple of Ben’s former sidemen, original Ben Folds Five drummer Darren Jessee and guitarist Ryan Lerman, who toured and performed with Ben in the post-BFF days.
Darren has announced that he’ll be at one of the first venues where Ben Folds Five performed, the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, N.C., on November 19. He’s opening for Rose City Band, actually solo country rocker Ripley Johnson from Portland, Oregon. Darren’s picked up a few outstanding North Carolina musicians, has promised new music coming soon and “announcements right around the corner.” Tickets are $15 and are now on sale.
Meanwhile, Ryan Lerman, active in solo performances and touring in recent months, has teamed up with Boston vocal trio Tiny Habits on a cover of Plain White T’s “Hey There, Delilah.” It’s a stripped-down, very sweetly-harmonized vocal underlaid by Ryan’s strumming along with Greg Liesz, also on guitar. The trio met while students at Boston’s esteemed Berklee College of Music and, during the pandemic, discovered each other’s vocal talents via Instagram and decided to get together. Of the trio, Ryan says “if you don’t know Tiny Habits go down the wormhole. Their unison has been shown to reverse the aging process. Their arrangements are so special.” Their TikTok videos garnered over a million views, and they’ve been picked up by the cover site Stories to do a four-song set with Ryan and Greg. Check out more of their work on their YouTube channel.
If you’ve attended a Ben Folds show in recent years, you may remember Tambo-Man, the mysterious figure who appeared on stage to play the tambourine and occasionally the guitar. Tambo-Man is actually former tour manager Chad Chapin, a Grammy-nominated drummer in his own right, who got the role, as the story goes, when Folds had a dream that Chad was playing drums during a show. Chad comes from a musical family – he’s played the drums since childhood, and his brother Lonnie plays bass. They got their start playing in the band at their dad’s church and went on to back up Michael Tait in his Christian rock band TAIT, where Chad earned the reputation of “the Tommy Lee of Christian rock”.
Darren Jessee, former drummer, songwriter and vocalist for Ben Folds Five, has another new work of his own. Available today, Remover is described as an album that “redefine[s] the significance of quiet moments with grand consequence.” Indeed, the leadoff single of the ten tracks, Never Gonna Get It, is a quiet ballad about separation and loss, laced with dreamy orchestrations and gentle melodies.
