Q&A: Foxing
by Sam Tornow, Contributor
St. Louis band, Foxing recently released their sophomore effort Dealer and are already receiving rave reviews from fans and critics alike. Dealer is their first complete album with Triple Crown Records. ACRN had the pleasure of asking guitarist Eric Hudson a few questions after their show at The Basement on November 5.
After the success of The Albatross, did you feel any added pressure during the recording process of Dealer?
Eric Hudson: Yeah, I would say there was more pressure. When you are in a band, as an artist, you want what you want, but at the same time you have a responsibility to your fans because your fans come to expect something from you. When we were recording the album, what was coming out at the time and what we were writing just wasn’t the same as The Albatross. In my opinion, it wasn’t in a bad way.
I think it’s just different because what we were going through as individuals and a band was much different. We all felt very desperate and were touring all the time and losing our minds. Dealer was a response to going through that, along with a lot of pain and growth. So while I think Dealer is more reserved to a lot of people, I disagree that it lacks intensity because to me, it is the most that all of us have put into a project and the most bare-all we have been. It was hard to say things that were said and musically putting ourselves in this mind set that properly scored how we were feeling. I am very proud of it though. I’m very, very proud of it.
After putting up the stream for Dealer, the album immediately drew positive attention from fans, and sites such as Wired. A few writers even claimed that the album was a must for their best-of-year album lists. Were you expecting this type of feedback and how did it feel?
To be honest, I wasn’t really expecting it. I wasn’t expecting when people heard the first single for the album that they would latch onto it as much as a song like “Rory,” which just gives it to you. That song, “The Magdalene,” didn’t really have that and when people began latching onto it and connecting with it, it felt really good. It was validating too, because we didn’t know how people were going to react to this new album.
Are there any songs off of the new record that you personally connect with, more so than others?
For me personally, it’s “Winding Cloth.” That song was a lot of me just writing and getting to the end of my rope and struggling financially and emotionally. It was one of those times when everything was about to change for good and not necessarily for the better. I recognized that and sat down at a piano and started playing these chords and it was just a very sad and beside myself moment. I heard the song in my head and knew that it could represent more. Without getting into specifics, it is a hard song to listen to for me. It has no words but it is about something. I hope that people can hear that feeling, it might resonate differently to others, but for me it is a heavy thing.
The videos for both of Dealer’s singles (“The Magdalene” and “Weave”) feature a looped scene of someone performing an action (a ballerina spinning and skateboarder in a pipe). Do these looped videos have any relation to the songs?
That was actually Josh who made those, he writes and edits most of our videos. I suspect that it was mostly to have something interesting to look at. That could be completely off base though haha.
This is technically your first release (besides a remastered version of The Albatross) with Triple Crown Records. Did having a record label behind you make the production of the album any easier?
Yeah, it definitely made it easier. With The Albatross, we pretty much paid out of pocket to record, same with music videos. Triple Crown has been very helpful by giving us the funds to record and also do things creatively that we wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. Triple Crown has been awesome.
Finally, why were “The Magdalene” and “Weave” selected as the initial singles for the new record as opposed to songs with harder hitting choruses and more straightforward song structures, such as “Night Channels” or “Glass Coughs”?
I think with “The Magdalene,” the reasoning was to show people where this album was going. I like to think of it as a dark, stoner, pop song. It’s not a super hard hitting song, but ultimately I think the idea that something is less intense because sonically it is quieter is wrong. I think intensity is not measured by that, it is measured by emotion and what you are putting into it. I think that was the draw with those two songs. With “Weave,” I think it was playing off the same idea of showing a new song and style for the band.
