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Robert Sledge | |
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| Birth name | Robert Ewell Sledge |
| Born | March 9, 1968 |
| Genres | Rock, alternative rock |
| Occupation | Musician |
| Instrument(s) | Vocals, bass guitar, synthesizer, double bass |
| Years active | 1992–present |
Robert Ewell Sledge (born March 9, 1968) is an American musician, best known for his work with Ben Folds Five.
Robert Sledge began playing bass guitar at the age of eleven. His brother was playing guitar at his house so he also learned how to play the guitar at the same time. Before playing with Ben Folds Five he was bassist for bands Toxic Popsickle and Lexx Luthor (with Godsmack's Sully Erna). [1]
Robert was a founding member of the piano-rock trio Ben Folds Five. Robert was the bass player for the group as well as taking up backup vocal duties on almost every song at the time. During the eponymous tour in support of their album The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, Robert began to use several synthesizers on stage, as well as his typical electric & acoustic basses. These would remain until the band's break up in 2000.
Robert is known for his unique use of a Big Muff pedal, used to provide a layer of fuzz distortion on top of his typical bass tone. Sledge played a Hamer Blitz Bass throughout the early years of Ben Folds Five. It was used on their eponymous debut album. He later switched to a Fender Jazz Bass to record Whatever and Ever Amen , while playing his Gibson and Epiphone Les Paul basses in live shows from that time to the present. Sledge had a sponsorship from Epiphone for his use of the Les Paul Bass, which can be seen in the Ben Folds Five performance on Sessions at West 54th . He also plays an upright double bass for several songs, including "Brick".
After Ben Folds Five broke up, Robert Sledge performed for one summer with the short-lived rock group Brother Seeker, a band composed of Robert and former Squirrel Nut Zippers members Tom Maxwell and Ken Mosher. According to John D. Luerssen's Rivers' Edge: The Weezer Story Sledge was heavily considered to replace Mikey Welsh as the new Weezer bassist in 2001 but instead Scott Shriner took the job.
He later joined the band International Orange, as a songwriter, bassist and vocalist. International Orange broke up in 2005. [2]
Robert currently lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he gives music lessons and plays in local rock bands "Organ Failure", [3] and "Surrender Human." [4]
Sledge lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with his wife and son, Henry Sledge, who goes by Archie.
Jonathan Michael Richman is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. In 1970, he founded the Modern Lovers, an influential proto-punk band. Since the mid-1970s, Richman has worked either solo or with low-key acoustic and electric backing. He is known for his wide-eyed, unaffected, and childlike outlook, and music that, while rooted in rock and roll, is influenced by music from around the world.
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Ben Folds Five was an American alternative rock trio formed in 1993 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The group comprised Ben Folds, Robert Sledge and Darren Jessee. The group achieved success in the alternative, indie and pop music scenes. Their single "Brick" from the second album, Whatever and Ever Amen (1997), gained airplay on many mainstream radio stations.
Benjamin Scott Folds is an American singer-songwriter from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. After playing in several small independent bands throughout the late 80s and into the early 90s, Folds came to prominence as the eponymous frontman and pianist of the alternative rock trio Ben Folds Five from 1993 to 2000, and again during their reunion from 2011 to 2013. He has recorded a number of solo albums – the most recent of which, What Matters Most, was released in June 2023. He has also collaborated with musicians such as Regina Spektor, "Weird Al" Yankovic, and yMusic, and undertaken experimental songwriting projects with actor William Shatner and authors such as Nick Hornby and Neil Gaiman. Since May 2017, he has been the first artistic advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
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Whatever and Ever Amen is the second album by Ben Folds Five, released on March 18, 1997. Three singles were released from the album, including the lead single, "Battle of Who Could Care Less", which received significant airplay on alternative radio and on MTV, and peaked at number 26 on the UK Singles Chart and number 22 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, and the band's biggest hit, "Brick", which was a top-40 song in numerous countries.
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"The Good Life" is a song by American rock band Weezer, released on October 29, 1996 as the second single from their second studio album, Pinkerton (1996), as well as an EP in Australia. "The Good Life" was rush-released by the record company to try to save the commercially failing album, but was not successful.
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Volume 1 is the name of the first album by the experimental band Fear of Pop. The album was a project of Ben Folds, John Mark Painter, Fleming McWilliams, and others. It was released on November 17, 1998 on 550 Records.
"Brick" is a song by American alternative rock group Ben Folds Five. It was released in November 1997 as a single from their album Whatever and Ever Amen and later on Ben Folds Live. The verses were written by Ben Folds about his high school girlfriend getting an abortion, and the chorus was written by the band's drummer, Darren Jessee. "Brick" was one of Ben Folds Five's biggest hits, gaining much mainstream radio play in the US, the UK, and Australia.
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"Do It Anyway" is an alternative rock song by the band Ben Folds Five, from their 2012 album The Sound of the Life of the Mind. It was the first song released by the band in over a decade.
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