After 20 years in the business, singer-pianist Ben Folds [ tickets ] still gets nervous around other artists. So when he recruited Regina Spektor to sing the explicit "You Don't Know Me" for his latest album "Way to Normal," he could hardly contain himself.

"I'm always nervous when I'm working with people I'm a fan of," Folds said during an interview with LiveDaily. "She was really easy going and she had an ankle injury so she kept on limping in and out of the room. It was really nice that she would spend the time while she was in pain to help me out."

Even though he was a little shy about the situation, he enjoyed working with Spektor, a singer-pianist as well.

"Oh, working with Regina's great," said Folds, 42. "We don't exactly play the same kind of music or anything. But we're so close that way in our process of thinking that it was really pretty effortless. She's just good. If nothing else, she makes great records. Great singer. Fantastic piano player. She's a great musician. It was easy. It was easy to just sit there and let her sing. That was awesome."

The former frontman of Ben Folds Five spoke to LiveDaily about a mistake he made on his album, the "fake" version of "Way to Normal" that he leaked on the Internet and the Ben Folds Five reunion.

Tell me about the name of the album, "Way to Normal."

It was just really three words taken out of context from one of the songs. There's a place called Normal, IL. We played a show there and, on the way to Normal, the van passed through Effingham and I thought it was Effington. And I made a song up called "Effington"--so I f---ed the name up. The song sort of ended up being about the randomness of where you end up living. You could just go, "Oh yeah. I could pick that town and just live there," as you're driving down the highway, "or I could just keep going to Normal." That's really kind of what the title's about. No one really knows what "normal" is anyway. I like the title "Way to Blue," which was a Nick Drake compilation record. I thought that was nice.

How did you come up with the idea to leak a fake version of your album on the Internet? That's classic.

It came from a lot of talking that the band and I seemed to do that revolved around technology, art, commerce and, I suppose, I would throw in fear. You've got people making fewer and fewer records, once every two, three, four years. People used to make albums once, twice, maybe three times a year. It's not because of the technology. If you think about it, it should be easier to make records quickly now. Then there's kind of a circus built in around making records sometimes. But it's not imposed. No one makes people do it this way. It just kind of comes from fear, like, "Well if I'm going to do it right, we gotta do it right. We have to get the wizards involved and spend a lot of money." This is in the middle of the business. On the other side, you have people like Ryan Adams who rails against it and makes lots of records and probably finds it really difficult to keep people focused on all those records. We were doing a lot of talking about that. It seemed like we found a really good opportunity in that there's a record coming out, "Way to Normal," and people are aware of what the titles of the albums are but they don't know what they sound like yet because it has yet to be leaked, which certainly it will be.

We wrote completely new songs around the titles. The lyrics were written basically in the airport on the airplane on the way from the continent to the UK. We booked a studio. We recorded for eight, 10 hours. We completely mixed, mastered, released to the Internet instantly. Sort of, we proved you could make and release an album in three or four days. Everything.

The reason this was such a golden opportunity is: any artist could make their own record in a day and release it the next day. But that doesn't have an audience for it. There's another component that's really interesting. We're calling it "fake," so you're not really responsible for how bad it sucks. It takes the fear out of it, and then you get back to the magic of making records, I think. That's why we did it and it was fun. People were very confused. Then fans started figuring out it was bulls---, and then [we got] to see people react. I think some of the songs that were fake rivaled some of the songs that were on the album. I don't care. Either way, it's fine. It's funny to watch people start to figure that out because someone said, "They're throwaways; they're fakes." So you don't rate them. They're not going to be on the album of the year. If you make a fake album and you release it on the Internet and you don't release it on a label, you're not going to get a Grammy for it. Obviously, it's low-stakes recording.

About the Ben Folds Five reunion you did for MySpace: is that going to lend itself to any other shows or new material?

Um, no, no. That was a one-off. We had a blast and I think we played together much better than we had. It all had to be done for MySpace. We were concentrating like hell. It was good.

What was the songwriting process like for "Way to Normal"?

It was all written in the studio. Some songs had been born on stage. I do a lot of that--a lot of making up songs on stage. Somehow, in the moment, I'm more able to just spit something out, and a lot of times it's good; I do like to work fast when I can. I would come in, usually sometime in the morning; we had a producer, so he was keeping us on schedule. I'd come in, I'd have some ideas. I'd say, "Let's check these fragments out." The band and I would play them a little bit. Then the producer and I would know pretty quickly what we were going to lean toward. Then the band would split, go to the zoo, go drop acid or whatever. No. No. Then I would finish the song and come back at night and play it.

Is it nerve-wracking writing in the studio, under that pressure?

Well, it is, but most of the fake tracks were written, six songs, on a plane ride, one hour, all of them. Then the music was written and recorded in eight hours. It's all in your mind. A song is three-and-a-half minutes, four minutes. If you could actually just make it up as you went along, you'd be finished. Sometimes, you actually can. It's not impossible. It's called freestyling, I suppose. It is possible. Sometimes you get locked in something. You know there's something there, [but] you can't find it. The longer it takes, the longer it takes.

What was it like to work with the Nashville Symphony?

Nashville was great. It was a fine symphony. They were one of the tighter groups of musicians I've worked with, for sure. I've done a lot of them. I'd say they were up there with Boston Pops, Sydney Symphony Orchestra. They're good.

It must be amazing to have that big sound behind you.

It's not, because, as a soloist, from my position, I can't hear s---. It does feel good. You can tell it's working. I know what the scores are, so I kind of know what I'm listening for. But where I am, it doesn't sound that good--but in the audience it does.