Caleb Southern

Caleb August Southern (December 26, 1969 – July 6, 2023) was an American musician, record producer and computer science lecturer at the Georgia Institute of Technology.^[1][2] He was referred to as the "fourth member" of Ben Folds Five.

Caleb Southern
Born	Caleb August Southern (1969-12-26)26 December 1969 Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
Died	6 July 2023(2023-07-06) (aged 53) Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Alma mater	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Occupations	Record producer arranger musician
Known for	Working with: Ben Folds Five Archers of Loaf
Spouse	Josephine "Jo" Worthington ​ ​ (m. 2014)​

Early life

Caleb August Southern was born on December 26, 1969, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to David Southern and Susan Naumoff.^[3] He attended Jordan High School, where he formed a band called "The Ledbetters". They played a gig at Cat's Cradle in 1988.^[3]

Southern completed his bachelor's in mathematics and computer science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1996, having paused his education while touring with Ben Folds Five.^[3]

Career

In the early 1990s, Caleb founded Kraptone Studios, where he produced for Ben Folds Five and Archers of Loaf.^[3] As of 2002, he was a member of Partners Against Crime, District 5.^[4] Ben Folds has called him the "fourth member" of Ben Folds Five.^[5] He collaborated with Ben Folds on their album Fear of Pop, as well.^{[citation needed]}

Southern began a PhD at Georgia Tech in 2010, focusing on human–computer interaction for mobile devices.^[2] He was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship in 2012.^[3]

Personal life and death

Southern was married to Josephine Worthington. They lived together in Atlanta, Georgia, where he died on July 6, 2023, at the age of 53.^[3]

Select production credits

• Archers of Loaf, Icky Mettle (1993)
• Ben Folds Five, Ben Folds Five (1995)
• Ben Folds Five, Whatever and Ever Amen (1997)
• Ben Folds Five, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (1999)

Select publications

• Southern, Caleb; Clawson, James; Frey, Brian; Abowd, Gregory; Romero, Mario (2012-09-21). "An evaluation of BrailleTouch". Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services. MobileHCI '12. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 317–326. doi:10.1145/2371574.2371623. ISBN 978-1-4503-1105-2. S2CID 7090994.
• Frey, Brian; Southern, Caleb; Romero, Mario (2011). "BrailleTouch: Mobile Texting for the Visually Impaired". In Stephanidis, Constantine (ed.). Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Context Diversity. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 6767. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. pp. 19–25. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-21666-4_3. ISBN 978-3-642-21666-4. S2CID 1437801.
• Romero, Mario; Frey, Brian; Southern, Caleb; Abowd, Gregory D. (2011-08-30). "BrailleTouch". Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services. MobileHCI '11. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 707–709. doi:10.1145/2037373.2037491. ISBN 978-1-4503-0541-9. S2CID 41547754.
• Zhang, Cheng; Yang, Junrui; Southern, Caleb; Starner, Thad E.; Abowd, Gregory D. (2016-09-12). "WatchOut". Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers. ISWC '16. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 136–143. doi:10.1145/2971763.2971775. ISBN 978-1-4503-4460-9. S2CID 15096573.