“It just seemed like the right time to do it,” says Josh Fox. He’s talking about getting his parents, Penny and Dave Fox, into the studio to record Come Back Baby, their first album.
In a city as musically active as Milwaukee, that might mean just another CD and Bandcamp download among many. But the elder Foxes are elders of the local folk music community, too. They first appearance in what arguably became the hub of the Cream City’s acoustic music community, the Coffee House, occurred at one of the venue’s open stage nights in 1969.
The Coffee House will host vocalist Penny and guitarist Dave, with Josh providing additional accompaniment, in a celebration of Come Back Baby’s release. Why wait half-a-century for the couple to document their love for the repertoire of acoustic blues and folk they've been playing for so many decades?
“We never really got an opportunity to record in the early years. It just wasn’t in the picture,” Dave remembers. Josh adds, “From my perspective, I think playing music for them, and especially my mom, was never ever about being ‘professional,’ meaning that the things one does in order to build a career in music were just not interesting. My dad has done that with [fellow Milwaukee folkie] Will Branch, but I just don’t think my mom ever had any patience for it. She just wants to sing.”
A Woman’s Take on Man-Written Songs
She has come around, though. As Josh observes, “This project has been a kind of revelation. She loved being in the studio and is really happy with what we have made.” And there’s a palpable happiness to be heard in Penny’s vocalizing, recalling as she does the narrative, depth and inspiration her and Dave found in Bessie Smith, Lead Belly, Doc Watson and Dave Van Ronk.
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With a love of singing nurtured by a mom who enjoyed doing so and a husband who write down for her the lyrics of the records they were listening to, she approached the material thusly: “I was drawn to the drive and the intensity of the music, but also, after a time, the way the blues spoke of fight and survival. I just sang the mostly man-written songs from a woman's viewpoint. Saying, ‘I’m gonna get me a pistol, shoot my chauffeur down’ felt pretty good. I sang a song over and over until it was right but tried to never sing it exactly the same way twice.”
And she may not be able to achieve the same tone as she once did, but she’s fine with that. “In the last few years, I started to think that my voice was no longer as good as when I was young, and I worried that I wouldn’t be able to do the project justice. But I discovered while doing this record that it's just a different voice, and that’s OK.”
Channeling Blues Guitar
On the development of playing style, Dave recollects, “A big influence on my guitar playing was getting to spend time with John Jackson, a bluesman and songster from Virginia. I got to spend a week with him at the Augusta Heritage Workshops in West Virginia.” He also had opportunities for exposure to American roots music. Running the Folk Arts Society at the UW in the ’60s, he got to meet a lot of Chicago bluesmen and others who were taking advantage of the era’s folk revival.
For Josh, getting his parents to record an entire project of their own was a matter of getting it done while the getting was good, “For years, I’ve had in the back of my head the idea of getting the two of them in the recording studio as a way to document for ourselves and also to share with other people. Neither of them has any very serious health issues, but they are clearly getting older.” His dad adds, “We look at it as our last chance to document what we spent our lives doing.”
Josh counters enthusiastically, “I hope it’s not the last chance, because I would like to do another record—they know hundreds of songs—but we're just going to take it one record at a time.” About the concert celebrating his parents first album this Saturday, he says that it will be “the first time Penny and Dave have performed in a formal setting in a very long time. We will perform songs from the album and other songs from the family's repertoire. I will do a few solo numbers, and long-time family friend Lil' Rev will join the band for a few songs, as well as a few by himself. Basically, the four of us will perform in a number of different configurations.”
The Fox family will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 11, at the Coffee House (inside Plymouth Church at 2717 E. Hampshire Ave.).
