Five For Fighting performs at The Cotillion Ballroom Sunday, April 27.
The evening finds singer-songwriter John Ondrasik joined by a string quartet performing not only some of Five For Fighting’s best-known tunes, but deeper cuts and the odd cover thrown in for good measure.
Five For Fighting’s commercial assent began in the early 2000s with songs such as “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” and “100 Years” becoming significant hits and establishing Ondrasik as one of the most recognizable voices of the decade.
Chart success and visibility became difficult to maintain, however, and by the middle of the last decade, Ondrasik shifted gears. He sold a TV series to ABC and landed music on shows such as “Code Black.”
In more recent years, he has written a series of globally conscious songs such as “Blood on My Hands,” a tune critical of the U.S.’s withdrawal from Afghanistan; “Can One Man Change the World?” about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and “OK,” in which Ondrasik examines the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel by Hamas.
If these weren’t songs that appealed to Top 40 audiences, they still found listeners, some of them even unaware of Five For Fighting’s previous output.
Of late, Ondrasik has also lent his voice to the music education endeavor “Let Music Fill My World,” which is celebrating the return of its Music Matters Challenge in 2025, encouraging people to share their stories about the transformative power of music.
The following interview has been edited for length and for clarity.
What was your inspiration for the string quartet shows?
I was asked to do some symphony shows. I’ve been blessed to work with fantastic composers, so I have these fantastic arrangements for many of my songs. Not “Superman” or “100 Years,” but deeper cuts I wouldn’t necessarily play with the rock band. That experience for me was so invigorating, to hear these arrangements, to sit at a piano with a 32-piece orchestra behind you and also to hear the different dynamics that they bring to the popular songs. That was so wonderful for me, and I think the audiences liked it that we wanted to take it to smaller venues.
We reduced the arrangement to quartet. I’ve been blessed to play with some of the best string players in the world. They’re all Broadway players. My lead violinist Katie [Kresek] won a Tony Award for “Moulin Rouge.” So, these truly are the best of the best. The musicianship and the intimacy of these shows are so wonderful. They also allow for storytelling, the interaction with the audience. I love playing the big rock shows -- we do that every summer -- but for me to do these intimate shows with the quartet is just wonderful and inspiring. I get lost in their musicianship every night as well.
I would think that there would have to be something about being on stage with the songs in a setting like that at that volume.
There is an intimacy to the quartet because you’re literally in a pin drop environment. When you’re on stage with a rock band, people are screaming and walking around. It’s a rock concert, they should be. You’re running around on stage, and you’re having fun, and it’s a rock show. But this is really more of a musical experience. We love that, and we love the smaller arenas. You can literally see the people that you’re performing for and sometimes have conversations with them.
It is a little more pressure on the musicianship side. I’m certainly not a prodigy like these folks but also vocally, too. You can pull songs from your catalog that you wouldn’t do with the rock band, that you would only do in this intimate environment. You’re a hundred percent right, and I think that’s why I’m so excited every year when we roll these out.
There are bands that I love, and I’ll hear them on radio call-in shows and fans will ask, “Are you going to play that weird B-side from ’88?”
[Laughs.]
And there’s no way that that can happen in their show but is that for you?
Yes! We actually do that. We say, “What do you want to hear?” If we know it, we play it and every tour we add a few new songs from my catalog or we add a new cover. It really gives you the luxury to do that. And we’re a family show, some place you can bring the kids and not worry about what’s going to go down. I think we enjoy that aspect, too, that we have all ages, all different walks of life.
We’re so excited to come to Wichita, too. It’s our first time there. One blessing of my “job,” if you want to call it that, is that I get to go to small towns across America. I’ve been to all 50 states. They call it the heartland for a reason because the people have the biggest hearts. To see America through these small towns is a blessing for me. We’ll probably play “Wichita Lineman” three times. [Laughs.] It’s one of my favorite songs.
I was curious about your development as a songwriter. I would say that if there’s a thread running through the songs that you’ve written is that there’s some kind of hope in there someplace. Is that a reflection of your personality or is that something that you found was just starting to come out in the songs? “These seem to be saying something to me.”
Early in my career, I was writing about girls and cars and things young guys write about. But I do think you saw a change of tone when I had kids. You could kind of see. It went from kind of those things that single guys write about to things that are maybe bigger picture. And some of the things I struggle with. “100 Years,” live in the moment, accept the moment, recognize the moment. That’s something I wasn’t very good at. Maybe I’m still not very good at it. “Superman,” “It’s not easy to be me,” it’s kind of our innate humanity. We’re human at the end of the day.
I think some of these songs are Post-it Notes to myself. Things that I struggle with, and they just happen to be things that we all can relate to. I think as I got older songs like “World,” “What kind of world do you want?” I started to write about the world around us and the world our kids are going to grow up in. I think as I got older and more experienced and met military families and Gold Star families and true heroes, I think those experiences started reflecting themselves in my songs as well to this day frankly. I think the evolution was kind of like my life evolving. That just reflects itself in your music.
This isn’t to take the stance of, “Artists have a responsibility,” but you do have a megaphone, and you can say some powerful things that position, so what are you going to say?
When “Superman” became one of the songs that recognized the heroes of 9/11, and I performed at the Concert for New York with all my living icons …. I was this young guy who had a song and here I am. I think that really triggered in me the reality that music is more than hits and concerts and fame and fortune. Music can really affect people’s lives, provide solace in no other way and move the needle in the culture in no other way. So, I had a certain respect early on about, “What is music really all about?”
I think I’ve carried that throughout my career. Not that I want to get on a soapbox and lecture and say, “My way or the highway!” Not at all. But using the platform to really shine the light on true heroes [like] our troops, ALS families, heroes that evacuated people from Afghanistan, people that make you proud to be an American. That’s kind of how I look at it now: When you have this platform, you can be a voice for people who are voiceless. I take that very seriously, and I try to honor that when I write some of these songs that have more of a moral message.
There are also times when you’re not thinking about any of that when you’re writing something, but it takes on that other significance based on when it arrives or when someone hears it.
That’s what separates music from all other mediums. You read a book once or twice, you see a movie maybe once, maybe twice. You listen to your favorite song maybe 5,000 times in your life. Music is the marker in our lives. We hear a certain song, and we flash back to 25 years ago. “I remember my first girlfriend broke up with me to ‘Three Times a Lady.’ Whenever I hear that song, I’m breaking up with her again.”
That’s the beauty of music. It marks our lives; it has us listen to ideas more compassionately than a speech or an op-ed. I think that’s why it’s so important to us. It breaks through walls like no other medium, too. But you’re right. We all have those songs and, for me, I’m very blessed to have a couple songs that are those life moments for folks, who maybe heard “100 Years” when they were getting married at the top of that second verse and now they’re in the bridge like me, 60-years-old. [Laughs.]
There are very few people, except for Elton John and Billy Joel, before he stopped writing songs, who have hits year after year after year. You had hits, but then you had a pivot. The industry changed; tastes changed. How did you navigate that?
That’s a good question and a lot of my colleagues from the 2000s hit that wall. We all hit that wall. There’s a time when radio just won’t play you. You age out. But that doesn’t mean that you have to stop writing. For me, I took a year off. I was really depressed and thinking, “What am I going to do?” But I think you need other mediums for people to hear your music. I sold a TV show; I started working with ad companies or whatever to hear my music.
More recently, I’ve written songs about world events that haven’t once been on the radio but have gotten 20 million impressions. With social media today, you don’t necessarily have to have FM radio and a record company to have your music heard. I’ve found ways for people to hear my music and to have it impact them frankly in ways more significant than having a hit song, which I could never have imagined which again has given me energy to keep going, for sure.
Each night that you’re out there playing, whatever town you’re in, that’s probably some kid’s first show. Do you have an awareness of that as a performer?
I do. And I remember [being] 15-years-old, Billy Joel, “Glass Houses,” Fabulous Forum in Los Angeles. My first concert ever. I will never forget it. It changed my life, and I think also, as a performer, you feel an obligation understanding that there’s always someone in that theater or that concert hall and it’s either their first time going to a concert or it’s their first time and only time they’ll ever see you in their whole lives. [You might have] sung a song 10,0000 times but it’s like an athlete: It’s an obligation to perform at your highest level and understand that.
You’re so right. So many times, parents will bring their kids and [say], “This is their first concert.” I’m so tickled by that and honored by that. That’s also why we’re very conscious of and take pride in the fact that this is a family show. I know that many times parents are nervous to bring their kids to music shows because sometimes it’s not conducive for kids and artists say things that you wouldn’t want your kid to hear [or do things you wouldn’t want] your kid to see. That’s why I love when families come and it’s their first concert because as I said, I actually had the honor of telling Billy Joel that story once. I was able to tell him, “Thank you for that night.” That was kind of a completion of the circle for me.
