FOXYGEN 2023: TEN YEARS LATER
by Alexander Laurence
Foxygen “We are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic” came out ten years ago. This story goes back to when Jonathan Rado and Sam France met as freshman in high school in Agoura Hills in 2005. They spent much of that time doing bedroom albums to share with their families and friends. There were occasional shows. There were a lot of things that happened before their 2013 spectacular rise from nowhere. Foxygen never really played a ton of shows in the Los Angeles Area during that 2005-2012 period. They were never really a band. It was two people: Sam and Rado. They were fans of all types of music. They were into Beck, Flaming Lips, Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Richard Swift. They were into all sorts of retro sounds. They just appeared on the scene one day. Many bands build an audience by playing live shows. Foxygen didn’t do that all at.
In my own life, I was going to gigs heavily in LA for more than five years. I was interviewing most of the important bands, including The Killers and Interpol. I was DJ-ing at Bar 107 for a few years downtown during the Artwalk. I had been living and working in the Fairfax Melrose area for a few years. I met a lawyer and we talked about working with new bands. I started working with photographer Angel Ceballos at this time. I had started a blog called The Portable Infinite. It was a little vague and lacked focus for about five years. The music scene that started with The Strokes had started to peter out around then. In 2008, something new was forming.
I met Foxygen in front of Canter’s Deli in late summer 2008. I was working at the Kosher News newsstand across the street. It was during my last few months there and I only worked on Sundays. Sam and Rado were just out of high school. They were from Agoura Hills which I wasn’t sure where it was. It was somewhere in the Valley? At that time a lot of celebrities, actors, or bands would stop by the newsstand. I started talking to them because Rado was wearing a Brian Jonestown Massacre t-shirt. I told them that I knew Anton Newcombe.
At the time, Rado looked like a young Bob Dylan, and Sam looked like a young version of Roger Waters. Rado told me: “We got a band called Foxygen.” I thought to myself that Foxygen was a good name for a band. They looked good. I went home and looked them up on Myspace. I listened to a few songs that were from their self-made album “Kill Art.” It wasn’t garage rock or what was going on in music at the time. It was more like MGMT or Ben Folds Five. Maybe they were the next new big thing? I sent Rado an email saying: “We have to sent up a show?” Rado wrote back that they didn’t have time to do the band right now, because they were both off to college in two different states. Rado was going to SVA in New York City, and Sam was going to Evergreen in Oregon.
There was a year or so that passed by. In those years I was focusing more on being a tour manager with several bands. At the time, Sam and Rado, I would later learn, were trying to do films and write screenplays.
They went off to school for two years. They didn’t seem too interested in playing live shows at all.
I got an email from Rado in late 2010. They were going to do the band again. They had made another record in New York City in those quiet years and gave it to Richard Swift. They had given a CD to Swift at a gig at Mercury Lounge. This was the Take The Kids Off Broadway EP. Swift had listened to it and had hooked them up with a label. Swift later remixed it and it was released on Jagjaguwar Records.
Miranda Lee Richards (photo by Angel Ceballos)Rado had come back to LA for summer 2011. Me and Rado had set up a small west coast tour. I still had some contacts from west coast venues I had been to with the previous Alessi’s Ark tour. Foxygen had gigs Portland, SF, Cottage Grove, LA, and Agoura Hills. I met Rado at Cafe 101, and he arrived in his grandfather’s big car. We just talked about general music stuff. We planned to do an interview with them and Angel Ceballos was going to photograph them when they were in the northwest. It turned out she also filmed them for her documentary film which was never finished. There are photos and film footage of this time in Olympia. They played a house party with this expanded lineup. It was Sam and Rado, plus more friends from Olympia. When I interviewed them that summer, I was treating them like they were already an important band. Dream big, and it will happen!
I saw them at the Silverlake Lounge to check them out firsthand. Was this going to work? There were quite a lot of people onstage. When I saw them play “Teenage Alien Blues” I got excited. This band is going to be hot. The first tour of 2011 was the craziest and fun version of Foxygen. Richard Swift liked what he saw in Cottage Grove too. There are videos and pictures of some of the performances. There is a great video of the Portland show on Youtube.
Rado sent me some demos. Songs like “In The Darkness.” “On Blue Mountain,” and “No Destruction” are pretty the same as the demos as they are on the final record. “Oh Yeah” got a radical change. There was an early demo called “Free” which was reworked and became the title track. There was also the “Something’s Changing” EP (2011) which I thought was worth releasing as a single. “Where’s The Money?” did show up as the b-side on an early single.
Here's my 2011 interview with Foxygen: http://portable-infinite.blogspot.com/2011/07/foxygen-interview.html
They went up to Cottage Grove to record with Richard Swift in January 2012. I was going to go visit them with Miranda Lee Richards. She was going to sing on the song “San Francisco.” Foxygen had written a few new songs for her to sing on. We were planning to go but a big snow storm hit Oregon that weekend in Mid-January. Plus we were both broke at the time. I would have had to borrow some money to even think of going. We ended up deciding not to go. It was sad that we didn’t. Jessie Baylin ended up singing the part on the track.
Rado and I decided to go see Brian Jonestown Massacre at the Wiltern in May 2012. Rado had cut his hair and it was very short at this time. I didn’t recognize him. We went backstage after the show and I introduced him to Miranda Lee Richards and Joel Gion. Anton said hello to me but I couldn’t say Rado met him. They were in the same room. Later Anton wanted to do a collaboration with Foxygen when they were in Berlin.
Foxygen played Echo Park Rising. This version of the band included Sam and Rado, their friend Shaun Fleming on drums, Rado’s girlfriend, Jackie Cohen on vocals, and Matt Pulos on bass (later of Dub Thompson). When their did a tour with La Sera in July 2012, they had Justin Nijssen on bass guitar. Justin was in the Olympia version of the band, and would play with Foxygen on most of the early tours. There was a time when I tried to get Dani Miller (later of Surfbort) in the band. I had met her in San Francisco when she was 19, and thought she should be in a band. Dani Miller moved to New York City and Surfbort there a few years later.
photo: Angel Ceballos
The record came out a year later in 2013. It was a hit. They were popular at CMJ and SXSW. They were blowing up. The videos were good. When I was at SXSW 2013 with Deer Tracks, I went to a few Foxygen shows. There were big lines. There was some band bullshit. It was all going great until Sam fell off of a stage in Minneapolis in Summer 2013. I was in that same room a few months before. Sam broke his leg and canceled some shows. A year passed until they came out with Star Power. It was a new expanded lineup. Backup singers and dancers.
I saw Foxygen in different cities and festivals. They played the Fonda Theatre. They played Outside Lands. They played a festival with Morrissey. They played Coachella. I last saw them play in September 2017 at the Greek. They opened for the Shins. They played with the Spacebomb guys as their backup band. I saw these guys go from unknowns to playing the Greek in five or six years.
What does Foxygen mean now? They put out some cool records. They were guys who could have been actors, who were pretending to be a band. They were never a real band. I think this is what pissed people off. There were a bunch of journalists that hated them. They weren’t authentic enough? They were never going to be a band who puts out a record and tours heavily and plays the game. You can tell from what they been doing the past five years. Rado since then has produced a ton of records including Lemon Twigs, The Killers, Father John Misty and Weyes Blood.
The other members of Foxygen have done great stuff too. Sam France has been recording music and living life. I saw him play a great show at the Bootleg Theater a few years ago. Shaun Fleming became Diane Coffee and has released four albums. Justin Nijssen has been in the Alex Cameron band for a while. Jackie Cohen has released three solo records. Matt Pulos formed Dub Thompson and continues to create underground noise music. Kevin Basko has done stuff as Rubber Band Gun.
Foxygen has done numerous records and tours now. It feels like they are not active as Foxygen anymore. That stuff is out there in the world for everyone to find and enjoy. New bands come out every year that seems Foxygen-like, the band Blossoms, for instance. Rado has produced a dozen great records. Foxygen will always be a part of this era’s music culture whether you like them or not. They are still going strong as an influence and they are still one of my favorite bands of the last ten years.
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