Foxing take over Orlando's Beacham to celebrate a decade of The Albatross

As you read this, Foxing songwriter and vocalist Conor Murphy has just taken his band on a tour that'll help them determine a long-term view of how they'll approach both their work and their art. A tour that will take them to Orlando's Beacham this week.

But more on that in a moment.

For starters, let's note that Foxing is going into this tour with an interesting twist for fans. The Albatross, the band's first of their four full-length releases, has turned 10 years of age and the band is playing all the songs off that album, supplementing those 30-odd minutes with a selection of tracks from their other albums.

"We'll be playing this front-to-back, then a collection of songs from the albums after that until right now," said Murphy in a chat with OW right before the tour's start. "A few of the songs on the [Albatross] album haven't been played live in like eight years. And one or two have never played live, or maybe just once or twice."

Murphy said the band's fans, a loyal lot, are probably just as excited, if not more, by the band's deep dive into their earliest output. He's aware that fans love the tracks they enjoyed throughout their 20s.

"I totally get that. I'm trying not to be a cranky, older musician, who at this point, is saying, 'Why don't people want to hear the new music?'" says Murphy. "I recognize that when I go to a show, I want to hear the songs that I know the words to as well."

Murphy adds that having fans that have lived with Foxing's music for a decade makes the band's approach to the songs an interesting experience for the band as they decide what new flourishes to add to the bones of the tracks. In doing so, he said he thinks fans will also be interested in "how somebody would treat these really small, nuanced parts of songs that you've enjoyed on record for the past 10 years."

Murphy has often taken a unique approach to bringing music to the fans. Though the band's discography of four albums may not seem prolific as such, they have released a dozen singles and there's always been a degree of creativity to Foxing's output. For instance, in the summer of 2022, the group released Live at the Grandel, recorded at a theater of that name in the group's hometown of St. Louis. Limited to a thousand vinyl copies, the album was released as a stylized video on YouTube soon thereafter.

Even the 10th anniversary reissue of The Albatross is getting a twist or two. The deluxe package includes covers of songs from emo bands that have come up in Foxing's wake, including Insignificant Other and For Your Health. The album also includes rerecordings of "The Medic" and "Rory."

There's a plan for what gets played this touring season. And the group members have reached a point in their career where a few sensible best practices have been put into place for road work.

"Everyone's gotten into a groove," Murphy says. "We have expectations for each other and we're at an age where we can go off and do our own things a bit. When we were younger, there's this spirit where we're all friends, going out on the road for weeks on end together. We're still all really close friends, but we need time away from each other to do our own things. There were years when we were on the road more than we were home. But now we give each other space, the privacy to have some semblance of ourselves when we're on the road."

But where they find kinship is in creating music — and Foxing is busy at work on a fifth album that should be ready for release next year. Though the band has changed lineups repeatedly over the years, the current crew — Murphy on vocals, guitar, trumpet and sampler; Jon Hellwig playing drums and sampler; Eric Hudson taking on guitar and vocal duties; and Brett Torrence handling bass, synthesizer and sampler — are happy to create, now doing so at the studio of Ryan Wasoba, an ex-member of the acclaimed indie band So Many Dynamos. Combining efforts with Wasoba in Edwardsville, Illinois — across the Mississippi River from St. Louis — allows the band a chance to create whenever they wish. And their fifth album is coming together at a pace that should see a 2024 release.

"I think we've gotten to this point in our writing and recording where we're able to produce and record ourselves," Murphy says. "It's a really comfortable place. We're able to demo ourselves and have combined our demo process with our recording process, to where an original idea could be on the final recording. We're tried to do it that way on every one of the four albums."

And now Murphy and company are succeeding in doing exactly that.