On Our Way To Crazy

Last week we drove to Murray, Kentucky to see Ben Folds at Murray State University.

First thing first – do not go to Murray, Kentucky unless you absolutely have to. But! If Ben Folds is playing there, you have to. So we did.

I love Ben Folds so much. This is not news. So when those freakishly accurately targeted Facebook ads told me he was coming within two hours of town, I was in. (We won’t talk about how he LIVES IN NASHVILLE but rarely plays here.) Aaron and I drove up with our friend Becka and grabbed a super delicious and oh so fancy dinner at KFC before heading over to the campus.

The opener was Eef Barzelay, who you should know about if you don’t already. I had not heard of him, but late in his set he mentioned that his band is called Clem Snide, who I did know about, thanks to Mike and Kari. (That was a terrible sentence.) He? Was great. So interesting to watch and such good songs. We really enjoyed him as he played… and played… and played. It was seriously the longest opening set I have ever seen. Becka leaned over to me and said, “Maybe something happened to Ben Folds and there’s a guy in the wings doing the ‘keep going’ hand motion and whispering ‘One more!’”

It was funny until we realized she was right.

After Eef left the stage some kind of campus activities guy came out and said that Ben Folds was stuck in someplace called Beaver Creek and would be there as soon as he could. Everyone started groaning, except for us because we had no idea where Beaver Creek is. We asked the guy behind us who told us it was ‘down past the river, over the bluffs, on the other side of Hillbilly Junction but before Roadkill Bluff.’ (It’s possible that I am making some of that up.) When we asked him to clarify, he informed us that Beaver Creek was about two hours away. TWO HOURS. The promoter guy was telling everyone to head back to their dorms and come back an hour or so.

What the heck.

So we kind of sit there for a minute, because surely this is not real. We drove two hours to be here on a Monday evening. As much as I enjoyed Eef Barzelay, we did not make that trip to see him. We decided to go outside and try to find something to drink. We were just off the front steps of the auditorium when the promoter guy came back out and yelled, “They just got here! The show will start in 20 minutes.”

What the heck.

How he went from being two hours away to being 20 minutes away we will never know. If we had left when they told us to we would have missed the show completely. Instead, we got to move down to the front row of the half-full balcony and enjoy the show with no one sitting next to us. Pretty sweet.

I have to say, as much as I love Ben Folds and his shows, I am pretty much over his audiences. I have written about this before, and nothing has changed. He has a wide appeal among lame frat guys, and those guys turn out in droves for these shows. I think I’m kind of over it. He put on a great show with lots of new stuff, AND he played The Luckiest, but I just don’t know if I can sit through it again. They yell for the rap songs during the slow songs, talk through the ones they don’t know, and just generally make me insane. For the next Ben Folds show I go to I would like to handpick the crowd, pleaseandthankyou.

Overall it was a fun trip… the drive up was pretty and we had a good time hanging out. I’ve been listening to some Eef this week, which I love, and I bought a sweet t-shirt that I can’t find online. But, sadly, I don’t think I’ll be road-tripping it for a Ben Folds show again. If he wants to come to my house and play (it’s right around the corner!), though, I would totally be up for that.