A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

From genre-defying icon Ben Folds comes a memoir reflecting on art, life and music that is as nuanced, witty and relatable as his cult classic songs.

Ben Folds is an internationally celebrated musician, singer-songwriter and former frontman of the alternative rock band, Ben Folds Five, beloved for songs such as ‘Brick’, ‘You Don’t Know Me’, ‘Rockin’ the Suburbs’ and ‘The Luckiest’.

In A Dream About Lightning Bugs, Folds looks back at his life so far in a charming, funny and wise chronicle of his artistic coming of age, infused with the wry observations of a natural storyteller. He opens up about finding his voice as a musician, becoming a rock anti-hero, and hauling a baby grand piano on and off stage for every performance.

From growing up in working class North Carolina amid the race and class tensions that shaped his early songwriting, to painful life lessons he learned the hard way, he also ruminates on music in the digital age, the absurdity of life on the road, and the challenges of sustaining a multi-decade, multi-faceted career in the music business.

A Dream About Lightning Bugs embodies what Folds has been singing about for years: Smile like you’ve got nothing to prove because it hurts to grow up, and life flies by in seconds.