Will Fox: Sometimes you get to choose ‘Which Way’ and sometimes the way chooses for you

Kevin Bronson on July 10th, 2019

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There’s a house on a hillside in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains that’s a thematic linchpin of Will Fox’s debut album “Which Way.” It’s his parents’ dream home, built for a retirement that almost didn’t happen on a plot of land overlooking the Shenandoah Valley near where his father was reared.

The home represents one of those times that plans worked out. Often, they don’t, and for the most fickle of reasons. And Fox’s album is filled with fingerpicked, softly crooned meditations about what happens at life’s crossroads: Sometimes you get to choose “Which Way” and sometimes the way chooses for you.

“The title represents so many different kinds of forks in the road — physical, emotional, professional,” Fox says. “Should it have a question mark? Technically, yes, since I was dealing with lots of questions during the process. But the completion of it takes the question mark away.”

Fox’s album (out Friday) poignantly navigates the treacherous ground of post-relationship malaise, his father’s cancer diagnosis and the songwriter’s tenuous feelings about his current station in Los Angeles, slugging it out in the service industry to pay the bills. His nuanced cosmic folk songs are reminiscent of his songwriting heroes, Nick Drake, Bob Dylan, John Fahey and Leo Kottke, and the album features collaborations with the likes of Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, Kurt Vile, Cass McCombs), Tim Keen (Ought), Greta Morgan (Springtime Carnivore), Jessica Maros (Escondido), Brendan Lynch-Salamon (Los Angeles Police Department) and Matt Schuessler (Loma, Joe Pug).

“Which Way” is an emotional travelogue for a 29-year-old whose very life has been a geographical one.

Just ask him where he is from.

“Exactly,” he deadpans with a smile.

‘You just have to say you’re a citizen of the world.’

After a pause, he adds: “My mom always told me, ‘You just have to say you’re a citizen of the world.’”

The answer actually involves four continents. Fox’s father worked for an oil company, “which sent him wherever they needed him, without a lot of choice,” says the songwriter, who was born in Houston while his father was stationed in the Congo. “My mom did not want to have me there, because she’d had my brother in Brazil in a hospital without any electricity and he was premature, so it was a little scary. But six months after she had me, we moved back to the Congo, and then to Nigeria for six years. My kindergarten-age memories, the first memories I have, are from Nigeria.”

Then it was on to London, where the family lived for eight years. “My fondest memories are from there,” Fox says. “We used to go to Battersea Park and play Wiffle ball — we were probably the only people playing Wiffle ball in Battersea Park.

“My parents are American — my dad is from Virginia and my mother is from Boston, they met in college in Maine — and they always wanted to instill American culture in us no matter where we lived. Part of a way of doing that was playing baseball. It’s bonding with your kids in the most classic way, playing catch, and connecting us with some kind of roots in the states. I went to a British school, had semi, in-and-out British accents … but even in London, where we spoke the same language, I always felt like an outsider.”

‘You’re not American.’

Then, when Fox was 13, his father was transferred to Paris, where he spent his high school years. “My parents were always adamant about us staying super-positive about wherever we went,” Fox says. “But in Paris we were faced with a new language and everything … So you end up feeling even more like an outsider. But I ended up making a ton of good friends there and got to appreciate being an adolescent in Paris — you know, being able to experience independence and feel like you’re an adult.

“And while it felt really cool to get a taste of the culture there, French people didn’t consider me one of them, and English people didn’t really consider me one of them. I figured when I got back to the States, I’d finally feel like one of them. And when I did, people would ask me where I’m from, I’d have to explain it the way I’m explaining it now. And they’d say, ‘You’re not American.’”

The takeaway, though, was a valuable lesson: “I had to adapt to wherever I was living.”

On summer breaks, the Fox family would return to their home turf, sometimes picnicking on that plot of land in the Blue Ridge Mountains that his father had purchased when he was young. (The cover of “Which Way” is an old photo of Fox’s father and grandfather walking in the area.) And the younger Fox would finally have an American mailing address when he went off to college in Boston, where he studied music but admittedly didn’t excel.

‘We spoke the language of guitar.’

Fox’s musical chops were honed everywhere, from the piano and cello lessons foisted upon him by his mother in London to his guitar instructor in Paris (an American ex-pat originally from Redondo Beach) to a guitar teacher in Brazil (where his parents moved during his college years) who exposed him to bossa nova. “He didn’t speak any English and I didn’t speak any Portuguese, but we spoke the language of guitar,” Fox says. “I went over there every day for two months and he taught me all these classic songs.”

When Fox first undertook guitar in Paris, he merely focused on playing. “At the time I was embarrassed to write lyrics, because I didn’t think my life or my journey was universal in any way,” he says. “So just being able to emote through music and not complicate it with lyrics, it felt really good. And once you start fingerpicking, it’s a more delicate and complex way of emoting. I wasn’t a rowdy kid who just wanted to rock out, like a lot of my friends who just wanted to get an electric guitar and turn it up to 11.”

After college, Fox moved to Los Angeles, following his brother Tim, who had come west to pursue acting. Fox began playing in singer-songwriter Ryan Pollie’s band Los Angeles Police Department and slowly accumulated songs of his own, drawing from experiences he could now put into melody and words.

One, “Morning in LA,” is about his father and that dream of a house on a hill.

“My father spent so much time away from home during the 30 years of his career. He was constantly in airports; he’d be home for three or four days then be off again,” Fox says. “He was good at what he did, but he was never passionate about it. He just did it to support the family. And to save enough money to build this house.”

‘It seemed so Shakespearean in its tragedy.’

Five says before his scheduled retirement, Fox’s father was diagnosed with leukemia. “It was crushing,” the songwriter says. “I was mad at the world and there was no one to be mad at. The fact that it happened seemed so Shakespearean in its tragedy. So ‘Morning in LA’ is about wanting to be with my folks. His cancer turned out to be treatable, and my dad’s never complained about it once, although I knew my mother was taking it hard.”

The song “Wild Mint” is an homage to his father as well, recalling the times the family would picnic on the land they now call home. “When you’re there, the heaviness of life is lifted,” Fox says. “When you’re there, you’re reminded that we are nature.” The song is backgrounded by field recordings Fox made while visiting the spot — a creek, the sounds of footfall on leaves, crickets. Wild mint grows on the property.

The lure of the locale almost brought Fox there for good. On an extended visit (that coincided with some of his frustrations with living in Los Angeles), Fox took on a job as an apprentice at a gristmill. “The couple that owned it were getting older,” he says. “I was so confused about L.A., not being able to make a living. … My parents joked, ‘Hey, you could move here and be the miller.’ And I said, seriously, ‘Can I try this? because I’m not that happy in L.A.’ I worked there, learned about all the different kinds of grain and corn, and it was romantic to be there. It was my Neil Young ‘Harvest’ moment.”

‘When you hit the crossroads where do you go?

Eventually, Fox’s “Which Way” brought him back to L.A., though not without some inner wrestling. In the title track, he repeats the lyric “You can’t decide” five times, as if prodding himself to go ahead and choose a path.

“I repeated that idea a lot on the record,” he says. “When you hit the crossroads, where do you go? When you’re on your own and no one’s making the decision for you, which path do you choose?”

As much of the album indicates, those questions apply to relationship issues as well. Because as Will Fox knows very well, it’s not where you’re from but where you’re going.

||| Stream: “Which Way” in its entirety