Written by: Alex Green
Photo Credit: Lloyd Aur Norman
We’re proud to debut the leadoff track from Ted C. Fox’s new album A Gospel Of Dirt.
Set for release on June 24th via Villian Place/Rock Ridge, Fox’s debut is a moving and sometimes harrowing account of what we leave behind and what follows us, no matter how far we go.
A Gospel Of Dirt is teeming with ghosts, sorrows, regrets and heartache and Fox’s compositions are aching, bluesy narratives that shadowbox the past and brace themselves for an uncertain future.
Richly produced with textures that veer from post rock to shoegaze to indie rock gospel, Fox’s first effort is one of those rare debuts that comes fully formed and redolent with wisdom and heart.
Stereo Embers Magazine: What inspired “Maiden”?
Ted C. Fox: “Maiden” is a different take on Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” Because the narrator in Cash’s song is imprisoned and bemoaning his inability to ever ride a train again, I decided to make the narrator a person embarking on a journey to destinations unknown. As the narrator in Cash’s song was restrained from travel by a society who had condemned his killing of a man, I had to reinvent a different society. I envisioned a village community with a mythology about the stars. It is from this society that our narrator embarks on a journey for reasons unknown. The opposite of the narrator in the Cash song. He meets the evils of the night and eventually sails off on foreign seas to unknown destinations, never to return.
SEM: Was it a tough track to write?
TCF: The song fell together rather easily. So easily I often take it for granted. Many of these songs were 15 years in the making but Maiden fell together one night instrumentally and another night lyrically. And that was it. It’s always such a nice thing when a song comes together that easily. I wish they all did.
SEM: Can you talk a bit about the recording process?
TCF: In the studio, Villain Place took the song in a new direction than the way I play it live. On stage, I like to play a very angry and violent version with lots of distortion and big drums. In my mind, the narrator is a violent individual embarking on a violent journey. In the studio however, VP decided to go with a more restrained sound, pregnant with the tension of potential violence. It’s similar to Johnny Cash in that way, the emotion is pulled back in presentation but no less full of tension for that. Sometimes never releasing the tension of the art in presentation makes the latent energy implied in the lyrics and instrumentals more powerful. And this is certainly the case in the studio version of “Maiden.”
SEM: What’s the reaction been to both the studio version and the live version of the song?
TCF: Both versions have become a crowd favorite. And I personally love doing a version on stage that is big and dramatic, but having a studio version where the tension is under the surface.
