Interview with The Foxies: ‘It sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before but it has The Foxies’ grit’

Nashville-based pop punk trio, The Foxies, are riding high on the success of ‘Summer Never Dies’, with a darker, twistier track, ‘Little Monsters’, up next.

With their uniquely feral brand of rock ‘n’ roll, The Foxies are a power trio built on thrashing punk energy and the hypnotic pageantry of electronic pop, comprising front woman Julia Lauren Bullock, guitarist Jake Ohlbaum and drummer Rob Bodley. ‘It’s kinda crazy how we met, it was completely kismet,’ Julia said. ‘I started The Foxies in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2014 but I got the opportunity to move to Nashville in 2016. A friend from high school knew Jake and Rob came into play about a year later. He came up to me at a show we were both playing at and said “I met you a long time ago and your drummer sucks!” I was like, ok, and he ended up joining the band!’ Initially, she called the band ‘Body Talk’ but changed it when everyone though they were an Olivia Newton John cover band. ‘I was looking on Spotify and there are are so many songs with ‘fox’ in the title. People assume we’re three women but it’s just me – the boys are my foxies!’

Last month, they released their single ‘Summer Never Dies’. It’s a massively addictive track, especially the chorus, which has been my earworm for days. ‘I like to say that the song is like digging up that time capsule you buried 10 years ago and reliving those moments all over again,’ Julia laughed. ‘We were tired of hearing songs about lockdown, we wanted to give people something dancey, to take them out of it for three and a half minutes. I love going out and doing what I want but this past year has taught us that you don’t know what tomorrow will bring, so just live it. Three weeks ago, we played it live for the first time in Georgia – our first show since 2019. That and ‘Screws’ are my two favourites to play for their energy.’

As Julia belts out in the chorus: ‘Tonight I’m taking my chances, black light, tongue-tied and romancing. No time, we’re stuck in this moment. Summer never dies when I’m with you. Pink skies in your eyes, I’m helpless. I know you know you’re my weakness. No time, we’re stuck in this moment. Summer never dies when I’m with you.’

‘I’d say of the song, expect the unexpected!’

Next up may be their single ‘Little Monsters’: ‘It’s the whole overview of a day in a life with the intrusive thoughts, things you accidentally think about,’ she said. ‘My big thing is getting paranoid about another car ramming into me when I’m driving. I hate to drive but I need to. I’d say of the song, expect the unexpected! Hang on, I’ll sing a bit to you.’ She sings what I assume is the chorus, which is edgy, punky and very hooky. ‘It sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before but it has The Foxies’ grit,’ she said. ‘Imagine yourself out at a club where they play this dark tune, with a weird synth sound and these layers that you can feel more than you can hear. It’s very David Byrne vocally (lead singer of former American new wave band, Talking Heads).’ I joke that I reckon it’s minus his questionable dancing but I like how spacey it sounds and she laughs. ‘Yeah, that’s a great description, it’s very spacey, as if you were listening to it underwater!’

‘Screws’, which they also released this year is about self-acceptance: ‘It’s about coming to terms with the fact that you’re weird and realising that you’ve never been like everyone else,’ she said. ‘It’s about learning to love your quirks. We want to bring light to that kind of thing, to normalise the weird. We normally play ‘Summer’ towards the beginning of a set and ‘Screws’ towards the end. We play all of our instruments live but if it’s a synth we can’t patch in, we’ll add it.’

Earlier this year, they released their energetic and entertaining single ‘Timothée Chalamet’ inspired by the American actor of the same name: ‘Jordan, my friend, brought the Timothée Chalamet idea to me, you know, many people love him and he’s beautiful to look at,’ she said. ‘His name is perfectly percussive. The song’s saying to your lover, “Just give me someone else or give me Timothée Chalamet!”‘ I ask her if she knows whether he’s heard it. ‘Oooh, I don’t know, I would love him to hear it! We did a TikTok of it, our manager said it was the perfect time to get on TikTok and I thought it would be the perfect TikTok song.’

As the track kicks off: ‘I get lost in the look on your face when you talk to me like Timothée Chalamet. When I’m dreamin’ and when I’m awake, I need somebody like you or Timothée Chalamet.’

‘Jake tends to bring the melody as he’s good at that’

For a band that has been active during the pandemic, their songwriting has mainly taken place over Zoom: ‘The way we co-write is that someone will have an idea, maybe a melody or a chorus. We signed our publishing deal during the pandemic, so we do our co-writing over Zoom,’ she said. ‘I normally write the lyrics as that’s my strong suit and Jake tends to bring the melody as he’s good at that.’

We get chatting about older songs and I tell her that my favourite song of theirs is probably ‘French Boy’ from their EP ‘Growing Up Is Dead’ (2020), complete with its fuzzy guitar line, synths galore and her own punky vocals and she gets very animated: ‘I’m so pleased you said that ‘cos it’s one of my faves, too, and I think it gets overlooked. It was inspired by a friend of mine, he’s a beauty! The funny thing is that we spent six hours in the studio trying to write a different song, which wasn’t really working, and we thought, why not write a rock song? It only took us 15 minutes to write it.’

As the track kicks off: ‘C’est la vie to my heartstrings. Say, you really wanna go ‘cuz I really wanna know you. I really wanna show you off.’

She describes the Nashville music scene as very diverse and close-knit: ‘We’re friends with everyone we’ve worked with, she said. ‘We’re a family here. We really like out friends Nightly and Coin. The pop side is growing in Nashville, it’s rad to say we’re part of that. Do you know Shame, the band?'(An English post-punk band). I say that I do. ‘We’re waiting for that sound to get back to America. Our live show is very punk, you don’t know if we’ll kiss you or spit in your face, I think people like that.’

‘With every new song, we take inspiration from someone else’

She cites Green Day and No Doubt as being hugely inspirational and two of the bands that got her into playing music, as well as Joy Division, The Cure and David Bowie. ‘With every new song, we take inspiration from someone else, it could be Nirvana or Garbage next. We’re going to get into garage punk!’ I ask her if she covers Green Day sometimes: ‘ We do, we do ‘Welcome to Paradise’, we mix it into Bohemian Rhapsody, we’ve also mashed it up with ‘Rebel Rebel’ (by Bowie). I call him the King AND Queen of music, he was a very creative human being, his brain was always working. I have the Album by Album book about him (by Paolo Hewitt, the book looks at the life of David Bowie through every album that he put out during his life). He got bored of himself and changed his look, he wasn’t following anyone. He was THE trendsetting icon.’

We chat about touring and I say they must have had some funny experiences on the road: ‘I feel that every single time we’re on the road, something funny happens!,’ she laughed. ‘This one time in LA, we’re all playing – shall I keep it PG?!’ I say she doesn’t need to. ‘Haha, ok, a friend made weed cupcakes, I’d had three whisky waters, so I felt great! Apparently, there was 100mg of THC (the main psychoactive component of cannabis) per cupcake. I started cutting them into fours and every time I did it, I’d lick the fork, so I ate 35mg of TCH, normally I can’t even do 5! Afterwards, I was in an Uber and I said to Jake, “Oh, when did we get an Uber driver?” and he said “It’s Kyle (former bandmate), he’s not out of the band yet! When I got home, I took off all my clothes and howled at the moon like a werewolf, haha! The next morning, I had to catch a plane with the guys, I almost missed it. When they knocked on the door, I thought it was a ghost so I ignored it but it was Jake. I was convinced it was a ghost (laughs), I didn’t realise until I saw them putting all their stuff into the car and I had to throw things together!’

If she could hear one of their songs on a TV show, she picks their track ‘Little Monsters’: ‘For that quirky feel, I’d like to hear it in a dance scene in Sabrina or something (the Netflix version of Sabrina the Teenage Witch). Or in something avant-garde and European.’ I say I think it could be great on another Netflix show, ‘The Serpent’, because it’s dark and twisty and set in the 70’s with a great, dancey soundtrack. ‘Oooooh, wait,’ she said, scribbling it down. ‘I love dark shows where you don’t know what’s coming.’

Her ideal tour partner would have been Bowie: ‘I would love to tour with Bowie, it would be a tour that would be unforgettable and I’d learn from him. If we’re saying someone alive, I’d like to tour with The Strokes or Arctic Monkeys. Can I have both?’ Living in Nashville, she has a wealth of musical legends to choose from: ‘One of the greats I’d love to duet with here is Kacey Musgraves because she just seems like such a sweet soul and it would be wonderful to share that with her. But also Willie Nelson, that would be a legendary moment.’

(Photo from left to right: Jake, Julia and Rob)