Two dudes named Ben and a gay guy walk into a bar... no, wait, that's not how this one goes.

At least one dude named Ben and a gay guy named Rufus rocked a nearly sold-out Bryce Jordan Center last night on the first stop of the Odd Men Out tour. Ben Lee, Rufus Wainwright and Ben Folds took the stage to an increasingly receptive crowd, dodging the heat and yesterday's strangely pervasive smell of cow dung to put on what turned out to be one heck of a good show.

Aussie rocker Ben Lee took the stage to a recording of BobDylan's "The Times, They Are A-Changin'" just after 8 p.m. It was a strange choice for lead-in music, as his first (and best) tune "Gamble Everything for Love" sounded quite a bit like a 70's Dylan track run through elevator-music reggae. Lee's six-song set was tuneful, if awfully bland; he commented to the swelling crowd at one point that "I'm playing you filing-in music," and just in case you were one of the ones navigating your way to your seat during Lee's half-hour on stage, you didn't miss too much. He seems like an awfully nice fellow, though, and that's got to count for something.

After a brief set break, the kids pulled out their camera phones in droves to catch a glimpse of Rufus Wainwright taking his place behind the piano. For his hour-long, highly-emotive set, Wainwright cut back and forth between piano and guitar, added and dropped members of his band from the mix, and even employed the help of his younger sister on a pair of songs.

Rufus works best when he's most unadorned; his voice is too gorgeous and his delivery too perfect to mess up with a bunch of wah-wah guitar. And he's not always the greatest enunciator, either, so anything but him and the keys beneath his fingers can sometimes mean losing his voice in the mix.

That said, his takes on "Poses" and "Memphis Skyline," both stripped down almost completely bare, anchored his set much more than any of his fuller-sounding, guitar-driven tracks. But even when you can't understand what he's saying, the man makes beautiful music.

Wainwright's between-song banter was a laugh and a half as well. On his pre-gig time at Penn State yesterday, he mentioned that he'd freaked a few folks out at the on-campus pool earlier in the afternoon by wearing a hot-pink swimsuit (one can only assume a Speedo), and then mentioned that "the smell of s-- was really nice, too."

Finally, Ben Folds took the stage and Penn State made it perfectly clear just how happy they were to see him. Although a decided lack of classic Ben Folds Five material put a bit of a damper on the singer's hour-plus set, when Folds hit a groove there was no stopping him.

Quite a few of Ben's new songs can sound an awful lot alike, and that can make a set with a bunch of them in a row drag just a bit. The biggest exception is the stunning "Still Fighting It," but for the most part, the audience responded most to the stuff they've been listening to for years. The biggest surprise of the night might've been Folds' cover of Dr. Dre's fantastically profane "Bitches Ain't Shit;" let me tell you, you haven't heard G-funk until you've heard it in three-part harmony. It might've made a few of the parents in the audience squirm, but everyone else was rolling in the aisles.

As the set went on, the hits kept on coming. Folds pulled out a few tracks from his old band's heyday; he gave the band a breather to pound out tearjerker "Brick" by himself. As an encore, Folds involved the whole crowd for a three-part harmony on "Not The Same." It was an excellent cap to a mostly fantastic night of music, and it's hard to imagine anyone filing out of the BJC last night feeling anything like disappointment.