“Foxing is a band. Someday Foxing won’t be a band.”
So reads the entirety of the biography section that for years has adorned St. Louis act Foxing’s Bandcamp page. As vague as it is, the description is completely appropriate for a group whose many stylistic shifts have left fatalism as its lone consistent feature. Throughout its 14-year evolution from a Midwest emo revival act into an expansive outfit that draws from post-rock, bright and synth-driven 2010s indie music, and even nu-metal, Foxing’s members have openly questioned in interviews and social media posts how long the group can survive. Despite earning the kind of enthusiastic fanbase and national critical acclaim most artists would kill for, Foxing has long wrestled with both a tense creative process and the harsh economic realities that face all working musicians. So in many ways, Foxing’s September announcement that it will go on indefinite hiatus following its December Chicago and St. Louis shows came as little surprise.
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But months later, guitarist Eric Hudson admits he is still processing what life will be like without his band.
“Some days I feel like I wake up and like, every day we get closer to the last shows, it’s like [an] I’m walking to the gallows type of feeling,” he says.
Even with this intermittent dread, Hudson recognizes the need for a change. The band’s September statement doesn’t pull punches, reading in part that its members’ “relationship with music, each other, and our sense of self without the band has eroded.”
That relationship goes back a while—while not an original member, Hudson joined Foxing in 2013 before the group recorded its breakthrough debut album, The Albatross. Vocalist Conor Murphy and drummer Jon Hellwig are the only other members from that lineup to remain in the band (touring bassist Brett Torrence was eventually promoted to a full-time member). That core saw emo fans embrace The Albatross and many of them reject 2015’s polarizing follow-up, Dealer, a more atmospheric effort that nonetheless has its fair share of supporters. The band would see-saw in this manner through many more highs (increased national profile, tours with big acts like Coheed and Cambria) and lows (a touring van crash and a theft of their trailer full of gear) while reaching new audiences with 2018’s Nearer My God and 2021’s Draw Down the Moon.
All of those aforementioned albums were released or reissued by established record labels, but Foxing made the conscious choice to put its most recent, self-titled album out independently. While Hudson says the band maintained good relationships with its prior labels, he wondered, barring a life-changing payday, “What’s the point of having a label that is basically just trying to impose some sort of creative control or is trying to impose a timeline?”
Photo by Carrie ZukoskiPhoto by Carrie ZukoskiFoxing’s Eric Hudson.
The resulting record, released September of last year, stands as possibly the group’s heaviest set of songs, both musically and thematically. Even the gentler songs that don’t dissolve into distortion or climax with crushing guitars and screams bear the weight of thick synth tones and generous reverb. Lyrically, the album features tearjerkers about Murphy’s late dog and also wrestles over whether pushing through tough times would actually be better than giving up, as Murphy told Stereogum last year. If this truly is the end of Foxing, it’s a hell of a brave way to go out. Hudson says Foxing didn’t record the album with the intent that it would be its swan song, but it’s nevertheless easy to hear the group’s existential conflict in its lyrical themes.
One of the biggest factors in this conflict was money. By many metrics, Foxing is a successful band. It has 156,745 monthly listeners on Spotify and has played to huge crowds on both opening slots and headlining tours. Yet the type of income that would make it possible for the band’s members to live comfortably off of their musical output alone has remained elusive.
“I think we were very lucky that we got to make enough [money] for a little while to pay some of our bills,” Hudson says. “Now, granted, we all had to have, like, side hustles and stuff. But I think that’s just the reality of being in a band, unless you get very, very, very lucky.”
In addition to the practical appeal of financial stability, Hudson says this situation took a mental toll and notes his relationship with music had “gotten a little unhappy.”
“The way that we were working creatively was a little unhealthy,” he says. “And I think it was all this coming from a place with caring a lot about the thing, but also letting it affect our lives too much. And getting a little too bent out of shape about things in the industry that we feel like should be different than they are. I would like to get to a place with whatever I do next that I can just sort of exist outside of that.”
Hudson clarifies that he doesn’t have concrete plans for his next act as a musician, but notes, “I doubt it will leave my life entirely.” Foxing’s other members have ongoing concerns. Torrence will continue to assist Murphy in his other project, Smidley, and Hellwig has been touring with acts such as Thursday as a drum tech.
In the meantime, Foxing still has its last scheduled shows to prepare for, and the band plans to go out in a big way, with two-night stands in both Chicago and at The Pageant and Delmar Hall, all of which are sold out. Hudson says these will be the longest sets the band has ever played, and that each night will feature largely different sets drawing from all of its eras.
“I think there’s something like 23 to 24 songs in each set,” he says. “And I think only five or so are, like, the same. So that’s 17 to 18 unique songs every night.”
After that, the future is unknown. But if this is it for Foxing, Hudson is rightfully proud of what the group accomplished.
“You got to do many of the things you’ve set out to do and got to travel the world and got to meet many of my heroes that I grew up listening to … and I got to work with many of them and meet them and become friends with some of them,” he says. “I just got to have—and we as a band got to have—an experience that, like, it’s just very few people get to have. And I think that is a tremendous privilege, and that is always gonna be something that means a lot to me. And I am very thankful for it.”
