Project Description
Interview with
ERIC HUDSON
from
FOXING
by Leah Lovegrove
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Howdy! How are you?
Hi! I’m good! How are you?
I’m good thanks! So, your band Foxing is coming to Australia between February and March. Are you excited to come Down Under?
Yeah! For sure! I’ve never been. I don’t think any of us have ever been. And we’ve seen kind of, of the photos. Just of over the years of seeing our friends go down there. And particularly I guess there’s like a wildlife sanctuary that is often the first place you go whenever you visit for American bands. And you get to hold the koala and I’m pretty excited for that. Um, yeah, in general for me whenever we go places that we’ve never been or never thought that we would go I’m not like super worried about how the shows go. I’m just kind of happy to be in a place that I’d never thought I would be. If that makes sense.
Yeah! Is there anything else that you’re excited to see or do down here other than seeing the koalas or maybe see a kangaroo?
Yeah, I’ve always heard that Sydney and Melbourne are really cool cities. And I don’t really know much about them, really. But I’m just excited to walk around and kind of be a tourist while I’m there and just kind of get the lay of the land, so to speak. I’ve never been anywhere like that before so I’m really excited. I’m excited to go because it’s the summertime in Australia right now.
Yeah, it’s really hot at the moment! It’s like 40 degrees-ish at the moment.
Oh wow!
I’m not sure what that is in fahrenheit though.
Yeah, that’s really hot. Yeah, here it’s like one or two degrees celsius right now. So that’s you know, total opposite. And we have nine inches of snow on the ground where I live. It’s going to be quite the shock for my body, I’m assuming. That’ll be interesting.
And the jet lag.
For sure. I’m sure I will get pretty sick but I’ll try to push through it.
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So you’ve been through some pretty unfortunate moments as a band and decided to stick through it and keep going. For example, getting hit by a runaway truck and dealing with broken noses. What keeps you going through these sticky situations?
Well, I think in the moment when it’s happening it kind of feels like, there’s that sort of like, ‘Why are we doing it?’ kind of thing. Like it doesn’t it feel worth it, but ultimately I think that it’s worth it because number 1, we it’s what we genuinely love to do. Pretty much everyone in our band have been a musician since we were children and we love doing it even if we aren’t compensated in the way we would like. And the sort of perks of doing it are kind of like I said, travelling and seeing the world. Seeing other perspectives because when you meet people in other countries it’s generally very different in how people tend to think in America. I think that experience alone is pretty valuable and even if say we breakdown over there or something crazy happens, whatever, that’s kind of only a temporary setback or a temporary sucky situation. The experience of being there at all is something that you can have forever. Even after you’ve forgotten what sucked about, you know, being stranded somewhere because you’re van broke down. Or you’re having to go to the hospital because you’re arm broke or whatever. You know what I mean?
Yeah! And I saw a video from 2014 where Connor said the band wouldn’t make it five years down the track. And of course it’s five years down the track now; it’s 2019. Did you ever think you’d make it this far as a band?
Honestly, no, I didn’t. I thought that- I think we’ve always been aware of how difficult it is to like get any kind of recognition as a band, if you know what I mean. It’s very hard. To even be like a relatively small band like us. But I didn’t think it would happen. I didn’t think we’d be touring a place like Australia or like Europe or anywhere outside the US, let alone the US itself. At this point I’m extremely grateful for it. I’m very happy that it’s happening and that’s not lost on me how cool of an opportunity it is but at the same time I’d be lying if I said, ‘Oh yeah! I definitely knew that it was gonna go this far and we were going to be going to all these places.’ I definitely never thought that was possible. Especially when we were first starting out.
Yeah, looking back from five years ago to now, it’s pretty insane going from maybe what, recording demos in your bedrooms or being casual musicians to actually touring the world.
Yeah, it’s fun. It really is. Like, we would like play in people’s basements for like ten people sometimes, maybe sometimes no one besides the other bands that would be there and that was always kind of, you know, a pretty humbling experience. You have dreams of playing in front of big audiences, of course and then whenever you’re first starting out it’s very much like not that way. You’re playing in front of pretty much no one. And it’s funny to play the same songs that we’ve played to like literally just five to ten people in a basement and now we play the same songs in London and England for four hundred people. That’s pretty cool. It’s just funny having that moment onstage and being like, “Yeah, I remember playing this and no one cared at all and now all these people care.” It’s pretty cool.
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I just have to say your music is just amazing. Like mash of many different genres and everything. Do you find yourselves being placed in a certain genre or being compared to certain bands?
I feel like it just kind of depends on who you ask because I think that one thing our band kinda has, especially after our last album, it’s like a very collective mix of sounds that we’ve drawn upon. With that I feel that depending on what song certain people heard of us first, they tend to be more in line with that kind of music. For example, I feel like on our new record a lot of people have kinda compared us to a band like TV On The Radio or like mid 2000’s indie rock. Whereas, on our first record people were comparing us to like a lot of emo, like 90’s emo acts that were happening in the US. So I feel like it kind of depends on what world you’re coming out of. If someone’s more into emo music, they tend to hear the more emo side of our band. And if someone is more into like prog-rock they might be like, ‘Oh, I can see where you guys got influence from by The Mars Volta,’ and I’d be like, ‘Well, that’s interesting because I don’t hear that.’ It’s funny listening to people compare us to things because sometimes I’m just like, ‘Oh, that’s awesome that you hear that,’ and then other times I’m like, ‘I really don’t understand how you hear that,’ but I think that’s cool.
On your latest studio album ‘Nearer My God‘, did you personally have any influences in terms of artists or songwriters when writing and creating this album?
Yeah! For me I was listening very specifically to the band Interpol and I was listening to Radiohead, TV On The Radio and The Mars Volta. And I was kind of discovering the 80’s wave of post-punk. Like New Order and The Cure and alsoJoy Division. Bands like that. I was trying to find ways to incorporate that into our songwriting because I felt that was something that we hadn’t necessarily touched on before and I thought it was at the time really inspiring to me, more so than some of the other things that have influenced us in the past.
And your lyrical content is so unreal, raw and emotional. Is all the lyrical content a solo effort or do you all work on it together?
A lot of times we come up with sort of a concept of what we want a song to be about or like an album to be about. And then Connor will then take that and then write on it. Once he has a very solid foundation of what he wants to say, he brings it to the rest of us and then he’s like, “Hey, what can I do to deliver this message better?” and then we all put hands in. But really at the end of the day it’s really him doing most of the lyric work and finding the real meat of what’s being said and we just help him deliver it in a way that would make the most sense to a listener.
One last question, is there anything you would like to tell your Australian fans before you arrive for your tour?
Yeah! I would like to say thank you for having me in your country! And if you come out to a show that it would be really fun to hang out and just, you know, shoot the shit, just have some fun because I’m sad I don’t get to come there very often so let’s just make the most of it!
That sounds great. Thank you so much for your time!
Yeah of course! Thank you!
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FOXING
AUSTRALIA 2019
TOUR DATES
TICKETS HERE
Feb 27 / The Reverence Hotel, Melbourne
Mar 1 / Factory Floor, Sydney
Mar 2 / MacCabe Park, Wollongong (Farmer & The Owl Festival)
Mar 3 / Crowbar, Brisbane
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Connect with FOXING
@ ONEBIGLINK
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