Drawing Down the Moon with Foxing

Interview by Natalie Melendez

Graphic by Rebekah Witt

One year after the release of their fourth studio album, Draw Down the Moon, Foxing have found themselves in a familiar but recently estranged position: headlining their own tour. Much like the rest of us, the last couple of years have been difficult for the St. Louis-based band. Working remotely on their most instrumentally and lyrically intricate album to date was no easy feat, but releasing the final product in a world plagued by disease, fear, financial instability, and limited touring opportunities proved itself another great struggle. After hitting the road this summer and playing new songs to friendly faces, Foxing feel as if Draw Down the Moon has finally come to full fruition. Now is a time for celebration and looking forward to better times. I recently had the chance to catch up with frontman Conor Murphy before the band’s show at the Constellation Room in Santa Ana, CA. We talked about the recording process, the album’s thematic inspirations, and the joys of being on tour. 

How's your day going? How's it been so far?

It's really good. We went to Disneyland earlier.

How was that?

It was awesome. We got there right when it opened and crammed in as much time as we could, but we saw everything we wanted. So now we're exhausted and ready to play a show.

Did you guys go to both California Adventure and Disney, or just one?

Only Disney. We only had like fourish hours.

What rides did you go on?

Let's see, we did Space Mountain. We did Rise of the Resistance. Smugglers Run, Pirates of the Caribbean.

Nice! That’s a classic. So have you guys played any new cities so far in the tour?

New cities? I don't think so. I think we've played every city that we're playing on this tour.

Awesome! You've played in Santa Ana before?

Yeah. We've played this room actually a few times.

Have you played at Chain Reaction in Anaheim?

Yeah, that was our first time in Anaheim, I think.

What songs have you been the most excited to play live recently?

Really great! You know, it's a hard thing with COVID, and I don't know, economic problems for everybody. It gets harder and harder to go out on tour because people are just so exhausted and like, “I don't know if I can get out to a show.” Or people are trying to save money, so they're like picking which concerts they're gonna go to. So we were super nervous about it. But the second that we actually got out there we're like, “Oh, we're actually doing it.” I think we were dreading it a little bit because we were like, “What if nobody shows up to any of these things?” And the shows have just been incredible.

What was it like releasing the album in the middle of a pandemic?

Uh, horrible. You know, there's kind of like dream scenarios for that that some people put [the album] out, and it just was a hit because everybody needed something to listen to and gravitate towards. I don't think that really happened with our album. I think if we put out the exact same record, not in a global pandemic, I think it would be a really, really different experience. But doing it that way was so difficult because, you know, you work on something for a really long time. You put all this effort in, and then you're not able to actually see people. You're just reading things online, seeing people not like it or like it. You're just trying to do these mental gymnastics, as opposed to when we're on tour and we're actually playing the songs and seeing people sing along. That's just a direct response. You invest a lot of your heart into the songs that you're writing, and not knowing what your fanbase thinks of it is really, really difficult. I think, on top of that, we just missed doing our jobs, which is performing and entertaining people. So now that we're actually out and doing the thing, it feels like the album is actually coming out now, you know?

What was the process of actually recording the album? I'm guessing it was mostly done during quarantine.

Yeah, yeah. So, the writing and recording, we kind of do it all at the same time. So Eric, who plays guitars, is the producer. Eric was [at] the very beginning stages of it when, you know, March 2020, when everything was just so scary. We were in this crazy position where, at first, we were doing nothing, and then we were like remote, you know, over Zoom, talking about stuff. Nobody knew how the thing traveled yet. Everybody was still wiping down surfaces all the time. Then we got to a point where Eric would set up the room at our studio and then leave, and I would like to come in and record. Then he would come in after. There was a point where we were working in two separate rooms where Eric was recording and John playing drums. It was horrible. And more than anything, I think the hardest thing was because we did it that way, we were never really able to play the songs together until the album was actually out. That was really tough. But I think, in a lot of ways, it served the songs well because we were in complete recording mode instead of refining it on the road or something. Sometimes you kind of get in your own head about that stuff, and you base how you're gonna make a song around how a crowd is reacting, which is not necessarily the best way to do it.

Throughout the album, you explore 10 different themes, ranging from love to death. How did you come about those?

I think I've talked about it before, but Joe Pera is this comedian and has this thing you can find on Adult Swim or YouTube that's called "Joe Pera Talks You to Sleep.” It's this really beautiful thing where he's just got a very soothing voice and is kind of just talking to you, and you're supposed to listen to it while you fall asleep. It's like a 10-hour loop. But anyway, at one point during that, he is talking about Stephen Hawking and Stephen Hawking cheating on his wife. And then he's giving this crazy example of thinking of it from Stephen Hawking's perspective. He's pondering the universe all day and how expansive it is— what does it matter if one man cheats on his wife? Following that same train of thought, if the universe is so vast and you found one person that loves you, why would you want to hurt them? Hearing that I was kind of like, “Oh, this is what I want to write all the lyrics about: the idea of your cosmic significance and how you relate to the grand everything.” I think to do that, we realized pretty early on, it's a very vague idea. But if you can kind of pin it down to relationships between yourself and your family, or your relationships with people that have died, or to your own age and mortality, that kind of thing, it makes it a little easier and a little more specific. So that's what we did. So every song on the album, it's like 10 different relationships with ideas and people.

This album definitely seems to be one of the most vulnerable ones. Did you have any trouble writing any of the songs because of that?

No, I feel like this one was the most natural to write. It was mainly because it was coming from a place of optimism and positivity, as opposed to the previous three, which were a lot more about like depression and sadness. This one was just kinda looking around, especially while the world is kind of burning, just looking around and thinking about the people and places and ideas that make you feel alive and make you feel, you know, loved. That was really, really helpful for me while, you know, going through all that and staying home all the time, being scared. Yeah, I think it was definitely the easiest one to write and also the one that I feel the proudest of, just lyrically.

What song would you say you're the proudest of?

I, in no way, think that my lyrics are awesome. But for myself, I was really proud of some of the things I did because they were more clever or researched than things that I've written previously. So the opening song “737” is probably the proudest I was of nearly any song that I've ever written. There are just easter egg things throughout it, and like the end of it is essentially giving the track list, which I was super excited about. Probably “737.”

Does the order of the tracks have any significance?

Yeah, I mean it starts with age and ends with death. So kind of the idea is like, you know, the present and ending with the inevitable end. I was trying really hard not to look back on it because we've done that in previous albums where we're thinking about dark times in our lives. I was trying really hard to think of nothing behind what is currently happening. I don't know if I was true to that the entire time, but for the most part, I was trying to really stay in the moment and think about what's around me.

What are your thoughts on people listening to albums out of order? Because personally, I'm a very big proponent of listening to them in order, especially when I know there are some songs—like on your new album—that have really good transitions from one another.

Yeah, I think it's ridiculous to listen out of order. I get like, I listen to songs alone, you know, like a playlist of stuff, or just listen to a song from an album. But yeah, to listen to an album on shuffle or something is absolutely wild. But whatever, to each their own. It's like there's intentionality built into every album that's ever written. It's funny to me when people just kind of skip around on them, but gotta do what we gotta do.

I saw that some people were upset by your change of sound in your most recent album, particularly with songs that are a bit more pop. How do you deal with that feedback while still trying to push your own boundaries and staying true to what you guys want to make?

Well, it's funny because we had this kind of intentionality with it where we wanted to make songs that had immediacy to them, [songs] that you listen to for the first time live or on record, where the first time you hear it you're like, “I kind of know this song.” You know those are the songs that I always tend to gravitate to. We wanted that to happen while also having an album that was complex, and those same kinds of songs with immediacy had more depth to them, where on a 15th listen, you can find something new. I think we accomplished that. I think Eric did an incredible job producing the thing to include these complexities in a soundscape way where he's really painting a picture with sounds. I like to think that I did that with lyrics, where it's like there are things hidden in each song. But anyway, that was the intention with all of it. We kind of knew going into it, if you're looking for immediacy, that is inherently what pop is. The best pop song is one that you can sing along with it the first time you're listening to it. You know, you already know the chorus of the song on your first listen while it's going. I was in no way offended by people saying like, “Oh, I don't like this; it's too poppy” or something. I get that. I mean, there are plenty of bands that I love that have done that thing, and I'm like, “Ugh, this record.” But in the inverse, there's an insane amount of people who discovered our band because of it. They're like, “This is the only one I like, throw the other ones away” kind of thing. Anyway, I feel no animosity toward people. Everybody's got a favorite album and a least favorite.

Were you guys musically inspired by any other stuff that you were listening to at the time?

I think we were all just listening to different things. Especially discovering new things in 2020, 2021 was a really important part of everything. You know, it's so easy when you're scared to kind of just rely on your old standby records. I was trying to force myself to listen to new things consistently. I was listening to a lot of electronic music and a lot of hip hop during that time, like trying very hard to listen to new things. Eric and John were definitely listening to all kinds of other things. So everybody had their own thing that they were bringing in and being excited about or inspired by.

What other sorts of things did you discover while you were in quarantine? Like in terms of TV shows or any other sort of media?

I'm not really sure. I definitely was playing a lot of video games and watching an insane amount of television and movies. I started listening to audiobooks. I'm very, very bad at reading. I've heard about Isaac Asimov's “Foundation” for a long time, and it's inspired “Star Wars” and everything. I've always thought “This will be way over my head, I'm not a good reader.” But I listened to an audiobook version of it and got really excited about it and started listening to other sci-fi and that kind of thing.

So what are your plans after the tour is over?

Hopefully, we'll be able to get back and start writing. We have a few songs that we've been working on, and I think it's just a matter of everybody feeling settled in and then being able to go back into a studio and start making songs again. And then, personally, I have a solo album that's coming out later in the year, so that'll be fun. But other than that, we don't have any touring planned or anything like that. I think we're gonna play a December show in St. Louis, like a little Christmas thing. It'll be fun.

Dive into some of the universe’s biggest existential questions by listening to Draw Down the Moon, available on all streaming platforms.