Five for Fighting, finally, will make its first Wichita appearance
In the nearly quarter-century since his one-man band Five for Fighting hit the charts with “Superman (It’s Not Easy),” John Ondrasik says he’s never played Wichita.
But that changes next weekend when, backed by a string quartet, the 60-year-old singer-songwriter performs at The Cotillion.
“One of the blessings about my job is I get to see all of America and there’s nothing I love more than small towns in the Midwest,” he said in a Zoom interview from his native Los Angeles. “So we always are kind of a little more excited to come to new places than places we’ve been 20 times. We certainly are excited and have this circled on our list.”
Ondrasik also plays Lawence and Omaha next weekend.
“It’s really, you know, it’s the heartland. There’s a reason they call it the heartland, right? There’s a lot of heart. People, you know, they work hard,” he said. “They love music. They’re kind of the soul of America. Just last year, I kind of clicked off my 50th state. So, I’ve been to all of them. But the people are nice. They’re kind. They care about the world. They care about their communities. … And we certainly live that and understand that when we come through.”
As Five for Fighting, pianist Ondrasik began traveling with a string quartet during the spring and fall about 10 years ago, he said.
He was inspired by the growing number of symphony concerts he was asked to perform and wanted to continue the feeling in smaller venues.
The quartet is led by violinist Katie Kresek, a Tony Award winner for the musical “Moulin Rouge!”
“They’re literally these prodigies that love to come play rock ‘n’ roll and pop music,” Ondrasik said. “You’d think they’re all into classical and they’re Broadway, but they love Led Zeppelin. They love Aerosmith. They love James Taylor. They love the Beatles. We have a lot of fun and every night they just blow my mind with their abilities and their passion.”
The quartet, he said, “adds a new dimension” to Five for Fighting hits such as “100 Years,” “The Riddle,” “Chances” and “Superman.”
“You hear them in a way that nobody’s really heard them before,” he said.
The quartet also joins him for songs that Ondrasik doesn’t play when, accompanied by a live rock band, Five for Fighting heads out to summer gigs.
That includes “Two Lights,” a song Ondrasik wrote for military families, with Kresek’s arrangements.
“It really is a different experience than the rock band. I love the rock band and there are certain songs that I play with the rock band too that I couldn’t play with the quartet,” he said. “But it really, I think it’s a unique kind of intimacy and musicianship that you find in these quartet shows because it really is about the music and it’s about the songs and where they came from.”
Ondrasik said he loves the storyteller aspect of the shows, explaining the origins of his hits.
“The way I love to see my favorite artists is to see them talking,” he said. “I see James Taylor with a guitar and have him tell me, oh, here I was when I wrote this song and here’s the story and here’s a crazy thing that happened and that’s a lot of fun. And I’ve been blessed to have some incredible experiences, and I’ve got quite a few stories, and I think folks appreciate that sometimes as much as they do the music.”
Before the Grammy-nominated “Superman” hit in 2001, Ondrasik said he “did kind of fancy myself as a rocker back in the day” and thought the ballad wasn’t meant for him to record.
“When I first wrote ‘Superman,’ I thought it was a good song, but I’m like, well, maybe it’s not for me. Maybe I should give it to like James Taylor or Celine (Dion) or something,” he said. “When we were making the ‘America Town record (in 1999), my producer Greg Wattenberg kept coming back and saying, ‘You know, that little “Superman” song, we should cut that song. We called it a little song because it was this little song.
“And as we’re recording it. I kind of got the sense of like, if anybody ever heard this song, this kind of message of innate humanity and that at the end of the day we’re all human it might connect,” he said. “And when the record company put out a single, they didn’t even think of ‘Superman’ because it was a little piano ballad.”
The first single off “America Town,” “Easy Tonight,” he said, “did just well enough to have the label say, ‘All right, we’ll give you one more shot.’ And I kind of knew that if this didn’t work, you know, back to reality and go get a job. And so, if I was going to go down swinging, well, I want to do the ‘Superman’ song. And they’re like, ‘That’s not going to work. It’s too slow. It’s too sentimental.’ And initially, radio did not want to play it.”
While the song was languishing on the charts in the U.S., Ondrasik got word that it had become No. 1 in the Philippines.
“We saw a sense that there was something there. And then once it caught on, it kind of became what it did,” he said.
The song gained resonance after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Ondrasik said, eventually becoming Five for Fighting’s first Top 40 hit, peaking at No. 14, and a No. 1 song on the adult pop charts.
“It took on a stature that nobody could imagine. But I’ve played that song 20,000 times, but every night when I play it, it still seems resonant to me and other folks,” he said. “And the fact that there’s people now singing it back to me that were not alive when I wrote it, I guess that’s pretty amazing. And I’ll see that at these shows, which always makes my heart pitter patter a little bit.”
Ondrasik said he doesn’t mind that his singer-songwriter persona is cloaked in the name Five for Fighting, the name for a hockey penalty.
“My record company, when I made my first record, came to me and said, you know, John, it’s the age of boy bands, Lilith Fair, grunge music, the male singer songwriter is dead. It’s not 1977,” he said with a laugh. “You need a band name. And I was like, oh, really? And I’m a huge L.A. Kings, huge hockey fan. And I went to a hockey game and as they used to do back in the day, there were a couple of fights and Marty McSorley got five minutes for fighting and when the label said, well, what’s your band name? I sarcastically said, ‘Well, how about Five for Fighting?’ -- expecting them to be like, ‘Oh, that’s crazy.’ And they’re like, ‘We love it.’ And I’m like, ‘You guys are nuts. It sounds like a heavy metal band.
“And to be honest with you, I think from a marketing perspective, the disconnect between Five for Fighting this band to this guy, John, who’s not in this band has probably cost them a million sales of records. For me, it’s been great because it’s really all about the music. I can get a ticket to any hockey game in the world. And for me, it’s kind of allowed me a certain level of privacy, which I’m grateful for.”
Music isn’t Ondrasik’s only profession. His family has run a manufacturing business since the 1940s that makes shopping carts: “If you shop at Costco, you use our shopping carts.”
“My dad still runs it at 87 and my son works there so I spend my time doing shows, selling shopping carts, you know, being the best husband I can to my wife. I have a strange life,” he chuckled.
“It’s always busy but I’ll tell you it’s always, to me, so fun to come into new small towns and check out the diner and talk to people,” Ondrasik added. “It is, in a way, kind of my solace and my Zen, and brings me back to reality.”
FIVE FOR FIGHTING, WITH STRING QUARTET
When: 8 p.m. Sunday, April 27
Where: The Cotillion, 11120 W. Kellogg
Tickets: $35-$75, from thecotillion.com or 316-722-4201