Ben Folds Five's Approach To Steely Dan's 'Barrytown'

06/22/2000 4:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(6/22/00, 4 p.m. ET) - Ben Folds Five has contributed a smoking version of Steely Dan's "Barrytown" to the Me, Myself & Irene soundtrack album. The song epitomizes the Northeastern mood of the movie, which stars Jim Carrey and Renee Zellweger and hits theaters on Friday (June 23).

LAUNCH asked Ben Folds Five bass player Robert Sledge if they compared the sound of their version to Steely Dan's original. "We did it and we looked at the meters," he said. "You run white noise through a spectrum analyzer and then you use a microphone and EQ the room. If you can get it flat, that's supposedly the bomb track. Steely Dan sounds like that -- they're so ultra hi-fi, and we don't sound like that, but we did listen to it and then we didn't listen to it, yeah. Because Ben started using this chorus-y piano thing that sounded really neat, and I'm using, like, a synth bass and stuff, so it's a bit more out there than they did. We tried to do a bit of a trippy thing with it -- as trippy as we can be."

Ben Folds Five will visit CBS's The Late Show With David Letterman and play "Barrytown" on July 19.

-- Darren Davis, New York

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