Today, Nathan Fox will be releasing the music video for his song Trouble.
The artist uses music in order to better his storytelling process. Nathan collaborated with his wife Anna in order to create an artistic masterpiece with the Trouble music video. The Knockturnal was able to discuss the music video, the couple’s collaboration, and what is next for the pair in this exclusive premiere!
The Knockturnal: You have been working in the industry for almost 20 years. What has been a valuable lesson you have learned?
Nathan Fox: The lesson I’m continually working on learning is to have fun and not take my projects or myself too seriously. Moods are really contagious and they transmit through recordings and performances. If I’m too focused on making something perfect, it tends to lack feeling and fall flat. I’m finding it even more important to remember now that we’ve got a baby girl crawling around the house. It’s incredibly rewarding to step back from what I’m working on and savor the finite moments I have with my wife and daughter.
The Knockturnal: How would you define your artistic style?
Nathan Fox: Good question. I don’t believe I’ve ever been asked that before. Off the top of my head I’d say that my artistic style is storytelling through song. I like to change up the arrangements and production from song to song so that each story is told with my desired setting, feeling, and tone.
The Knockturnal: What is the greatest inspiration for your music?
Nathan Fox: Most if not all of my songs start out in my head as a story or character I find interesting in some way or another. They usually come to me as I reflect on a movie, a book, or a life experience I’ve had or am told about. Once I’m hooked on the story, I can’t help but work out an interesting way to tell it through the music and lyrics.
The Knockturnal: What was the inspiration for the song “Trouble” and what was the inspiration for the music video?
Nathan Fox: ‘Trouble’ actually came to me after a casual conversation with a friend of mine about fantasy movies and shows in which he suggested I write a song about a witch. Before I knew it I was writing a song about a badass witch.
As far as the inspiration for the video goes you’d better ask my wife Anna about that. The concept for the video came entirely from her head.
Anna Fox: When I think of witches I think, entranced, bewitched, mesmerized, spellbound. Aerial silk performers make me feel all of those things. I wanted to create this character, this witch who weaves her body around the silks as if she’s casting a spell on all of us.
The Knockturnal: In 2012, you decided to focus on what you refer to as a passion project. How would you describe this passion project and how has it evolved over the years?
Nathan Fox: During that time in my life leading up to 2012 I was working really hard on jobs as an assistant to different film and tv music composers because it seemed like a good way to make a living as a musician. The whole while I wasn’t really focused too much on what I was really passionate about which was songwriting and performing. At that time it just didn’t really seem like a viable career path. I eventually got to a breaking point with it and started to work on producing and recording an EP with my good friend Jake Staley who happens to be an amazing film/tv composer. When it was finished I remember feeling more proud and satisfied with it than any other thing I had ever worked on in my life up to that point. And it just so happened that it became fairly successful and allowed me to put a lot more of my focus on writing and perform my songs. Over the last few years I have been highly focused on writing and performing. I have a stack of new material to record and before our recent pandemic I was performing on an average of 3 nights per week. I guess it kinda took the shutdown for me to dive deep into my home studio and came up with ‘Trouble’.
The Knockturnal: Your wife Anna Fox directed the video. What was it like being able to work together on this project?
Nathan Fox: Working on the video with Anna was incredible. She has such a beautiful way of seeing things and storytelling through her videos and movies. She expresses herself through color and visual composition where I do so in aural tones and musical composition. I have enjoyed putting audio and music to her movie projects in the past, but it was a bit different to have her take something I did musically and transform it to video. I just stepped back and let her do her thing. In fact, I was on baby duty for the whole shoot.
The Knockturnal: What can fans expect to see next?
Nathan Fox: I’ve got a handful of new songs I want to record. I’m not sure yet if I will do an album or just release them each as singles. And I’m really looking forward to see what Anna comes up with as far as videos for any and/or all of them.
The Knockturnal: What was your experience directing the video?
Anna Fox: When you spend months growing your brainchild and then finally see it walk onto the screen it’s almost an out of body experience. I feel so lucky to have the caliber of crew that I did on this shoot and I walk away from this experience with an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for every single crew member involved and for the amazingly talented and freakishly strong Kristen Woods for giving her performance everything she had and for making my vision come to life.
The Knockturnal: What was it like collaborating with Nathan?
Anna Fox: Nate and I have talked about doing a video together for years now, and now that we have, it feels so good! Aside from having a killer voice that I will never grow tired of hearing, he has fantastic ideas, and visions. I think collaborating together made us an even stronger team, and we were pretty dang solid to begin with. I look forward to more projects together in the future.
The Knockturnal: What else are you working on?
Anna Fox: The next project I’m going to be directing is a short film I wrote called “Barbie”. I’m also working on writing my first feature and that is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done, well besides childbirth of course. We have a beautiful 9 month baby girl and my real job is raising her to be a good human!
