Ben Folds' Saltair show to benefit villagers in Cambodia
By David Burger
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 04/21/2008 06:17:04 PM MDT
It's not unusual for musicians to sign on to do benefit concerts in
far-flung places such a Ethiopia, Indonesia and Bangladesh and to
profess lifelong sup****t for those distressed regions, although they
probably would have difficulty finding them on a map.
And that's why it's refre****ng to hear pianist Ben Folds admit his
initial reaction to being asked to do a benefit concert for Cambodia
that takes place Wednesday at Saltair in Magna.
"There's a lot of things to be passionate about, and that's not
one of them," he told The Salt Lake Tribune.
Before you accuse him of being uncaring, he added that the benefit
"sounded like a good idea to me" after his agent booked him and he
learned more about the cause.
The concert, presented by Rock Star Shows and the Salt Lake
Rotaract Club, is for Care for Cambodia, a charity founded by the
family of Rotaract Club member Jack Stringham, a pre-med student at
the University of Utah, said Lindsay Hadley, president of the club.
The Rotaract Club is affiliated with the service-oriented Rotary
Club, and is for young adults 18 to 30.
The Stringhams set up the charity after Jack finished an LDS
mission in Long Beach, Calif., where he met many Cambodian immigrants.
He and his family traveled to the Kravanh district, in the western
part of the country near the Thailand border, to perform humanitarian
projects in the impoverished community.
Money raised will be used to build water wells in the district, a
place where one in five children die before the age of 5 from
waterborne diseases. Twenty-eight wells have already been drilled with
the help of the charity in that area, according to Paul Stringham,
Jack's father.
A thousand dollars will purchase one well, which would serve about
70 people for a lifetime, Jack said. Because the charity has no
overhead, all net proceeds from the concert will go to Cambodia.
The Saltair stop is in the midst of a college tour Folds and his
band are doing. He is premiering new material because his studio
follow-up to 2005's "Songs for Silverman" will be released in
September, he said. It will be his third studio album since the split
with Ben Folds Five, a guitar-less trio that unexpectedly found
success with 1988's "Brick." Folds called his music "punk rock for
sissies" as the trio blended hard-edged yet jazzy piano-based songs
with alternating serious and smart-alecky lyrics.
"[The new album] is much more of the uptempo side of [2001 album]
'Rockin' the Suburbs,' " he said. "It is more lyrically akin to [Ben
Folds Five's 1999 album "The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold
Messner"]."
Folds said that after he learned about the charity, he liked the
idea of an organization with a very specific mission. That group is
better than one his 8-year-old daughter asked him to sup****t, he said.
He sent $15 to some African organization, and supposedly a tiger is
now sponsored by the Folds family.
"We got a pin with a tiger on it," he said.
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* DAVID BURGER can be reached at dburger@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
or
801-257-8620. Send comments to livingeditor@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Each ticket helps dig a well
Ben Folds performs Wednesday at Saltair, 12408 W. Saltair Drive,
Magna. Doors open at 6 p.m.
Tickets are $34.50 at SmithsTix and Ktix. The "Concert Quench"
benefits Care for Cambodia.
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