Artist Interview: Fox Violet
Games, Brrraaains & A Head-Banging Life are pleased to bring you an interview with melancholic rock artist, Fox Violet.
1. How did you get started as an artist?
Out of pure desperation! Jokes aside, I actually never intended to be a musician. I have equal parts fear equal parts incredible joy from writing songs and releasing songs. I started exploring songwriting about ten years ago as a form of therapy, to cope with some ptsd I was suffering from at the time.
2. How would you describe your sound?
Like a mutt! I’m a mixed bag. I just write what I feel and try to find the sound that really connects to the words and the melody.. so I don’t have any strict agenda to fit into a sound or a genre. I guess at any one time it has been described as “melancholic but not depressing” “shoe gaze” “dark pop rock” “ambient” “rock” so someplace in between all of that..
3. What bands/artists would you say have influenced your style of music?
I always say Radiohead and that’s getting boring, but you know what I just try to really feel as much as possible from any artist I listen to or see perform. You can learn SO much from so many people so I hope that I am constantly influenced by things I love and feel drawn too. Sometimes that is an artist and sometimes that is a score of a movie or just the movie itself or a piece of philosophy. It’s about being inspired and compelled.
4. Has the rise of YouTube & music streaming helped or hindered you as a band?
For me personally I enjoy posting videos to the internet it’s a different type of challenge and I appreciate the freedom of streaming,. I think without that it would have been hard for an indie artist like myself to survive. That said, clearly we get paid very very poorly sadly for streaming and it is not s correlation of the time work and effort and also personal money that a lot of artists put into creating music.
5. What do you enjoy doing when you’re not making music?
So many things. Conversations with my loved ones about everything that is going on in the world right now is a huge comfort and solace. I love a beautiful movie, making art of any kind, adventure trips in nature.. you name it.
6. What are your future plans musically? Tours?
I wish I could tour. Even without the pandemic though this is very hard for a fully independent artist like myself as I have to self fund the whole trip. You re-coup through tickets and merchandise etc but sadly its just not enough to support a whole band so it really makes it tricky. I just try to play one off shows in other cities as much as I can, or that was the plan pre-pandemic but we will see what happens in the next year. I hope the music industry will survive this. Venues are having such a hard time right now too.
