Ben Folds Brings Holiday Mirth and Melancholy to SFJAZZ

The holiday season often feels like a cultural rhyme—an annual cycle where the visuals, smells, and sounds are intentionally, comfortingly, and sometimes maddeningly similar to those of previous years. This was the perspective that pianist and singer-songwriter Ben Folds explored last Monday night at SFJAZZ’s Miner Auditorium. Touring in support of his 2024 Christmas album Sleigher, Folds delivered a performance that was far from a typical revue of holiday hits. Instead, the evening felt like an examination of the season’s sentimental machinery, balancing the sweet weight of tradition with his trademark cynicism and sudden, piercing vulnerability.

Folds, wearing a red and white knit hat with a pom-pom and a tee-shirt that read “West Coast,” opened solo at the piano with “Little Drummer Bolero,” delivering a percussive performance that hinted at the night’s balance between reverence and subversion. He was soon joined by his quartet—Josh Cournoyer on bass, Paul Dumas on drums, John Schroeder on guitar, and Ross Garren on keyboards and harmonica—turning the pristine acoustics of the jazz hall into something more like a high-end living room party.

The setlist drew heavily from Sleigher, a project Folds admitted onstage he was initially hesitant to undertake. “I don't really think about Christmas much. I don't know if I even like Christmas,” he confessed to the audience. Yet, the album’s strength lies in that ambivalence. Sidestepping the sacred entirely, Folds treated the holiday simply as a secular milepost, a recurring rhyme in the long, messy poem of a life.

Ben Fold, Paul Dumas, and John Schroeder. Photo: Steve Roby

“Christmas was, like, the biggest rhyme of all time because it's the same stuff every year,” he mused before launching into “Christmas Time Rhyme,” a jazz waltz that explores the passage of time through the lens of recurring holidays. The song’s gentle lilt, enhanced by Garren’s atmospheric fills, underscored the bittersweet reality of aging—the way the same day repeats while the people celebrating it change, age, and disappear.

This story about “holidays as time markers” continued with “Me and Maurice,” a standout track describing a lonely, surreal Christmas morning Folds spent trapped in a snowed-in suburban cul-de-sac with his dog. The song’s imagery—deflated inflatable Santas looking “passed out drunk” on front lawns—was delivered with a wry smile, but the underlying loneliness felt authentic. It’s this specific kind of storytelling, where the absurd borders on the tragic, that makes Folds such a compelling figure in a setting usually reserved for instrumental purists. He finds the jazz in the chaos of human detail.

The evening wasn’t all melancholic reflection. Folds brought out special guest Lindsay Kraft, who wore a long pink silk dress paired with high-top tennis shoes, for a duet on “We Could Have This.” Kraft, whose voice provided a bright counterpoint to Folds’ reedy tenor, returned later for a chaotic, joyous rendition of “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire).” During this number, Folds abandoned the piano bench to wander the auditorium with a sack of gifts, tossing small green bags filled with chocolate candy balls into the upper tiers like a mischievous, slightly unhinged Santa.

Lindsay Kraft. Photo: Steve Roby

The concert also highlighted Folds’ long history of “accidental” holiday music. He shared the story behind “You Don’t Have to Be a Santa Claus,” a track written under pressure for the movie How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Folds described it as a “crunchy old Christmas song” written in a hotel room while security guards watched him view the film on VHS, and its frantic energy carried over perfectly to the stage. Likewise, “Lonely Christmas Eve,” also from the Grinch soundtrack, and “Bitch Went Nutz”—a fake song created to flood the internet and confuse leakers of a previous album—were performed with a punk-rock spirit that challenged the politeness of the Miner Auditorium crowd.

The audience, however, was eager to break decorum. During the second set, which shifted from the holiday theme to Folds’ extensive pop catalog, the crowd became an impromptu choir, singing along and double clapping on songs like “Army” and “Philosophy.” The room filled with the sound of hundreds of fans harmonizing and replicating horn parts from the original records. Folds, conducting from the bench with a tequila bottle occasionally in hand, appeared to enjoy the chaos. The lighting crew enhanced the atmosphere by projecting moons and clouds that shifted with the music’s tone, turning the sleek concrete hall into a dreamscape.

Ben Folds tossing Christmas gifts to the crowd. Photo: Steve Roby

By the time the band ended the night, the line between “serious jazz venue” and “rock club” had completely blurred. Folds had succeeded in treating the holiday season not as a sacred tradition, but as a shared, slightly silly human experience. Whether singing about deflated lawn ornaments or performing a three-part harmony on a song about an ex-girlfriend, Folds showed that the most genuine way to celebrate tradition is to embrace its quirks. As he mentioned earlier in the night: “It’s like, every fall there’s something similar, but then there’s always something new.”

Set I: “Little Drummer Bolero,” “Sleepwalking Through Christmas,” “Christmas Time Rhyme,” “You Don’t Have to Be a Santa Claus,” “Bizarre Christmas Incident,” “We Could Have This,” “Lonely Christmas Eve,” “Me and Maurice,”“You to Thank,” “Brick,” “Bitch Went Nutz,” and “The Christmas “Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire).”

Set II: “Army,” “Philosophy,” “Kristine From the 7th Grade,” “Annie Waits,” “Landed,” “Zak and Sara,” and “Christmas Time Is Here.”