Post #17 — Either a Fruit Cake or America

Last week, Jonno and I had decided to quit our jobs and tell the others just before we step on stage at The Borderline. That was the actual plan, in writing: tell your two best friends you’re giving up your day job career, to go head long into death (poverty) or glory minutes before a headline show. Boom.

This is the week that led up to that moment. And to understand why two grown men with “decent” careers decided to abandon them for the band, here are the many wise reasons.

It arrived in the small hours of the 11th July. It was from EMI in America.

Forty minutes later, at twenty to two in the morning, Alex had already fired it round the band:

From: The Foxes [info@thefoxesband.co.uk] Date: 11 July 2007, 01:40 Subject: awesome!!!!

This is so amazing!!!!

EMI. Atlanta. Wanting to drive up to North Carolina to watch us play a benefit concert. The diary, written later that day, could barely keep its feet on the floor:

11.07.07. Myspace friends: 7100.

“We’ve got 400 odd friend requests we haven’t had the chance to respond to. Been frantically doing it. The woman who wants to fly us over to America is flying over this weekend just to see us play at The Borderline! Amazing….”

“Makes Sanctuary seem like nothing!? This could be very very good…but then, so could anything these days!”

Six months of Dave Ambrose and his slow-motion almost-yes, and here was a man from EMI in America offering to get in a car and come and find us. It wasn’t even the only American knock on the door that week: the night before Richard’s email, a Florida music publisher named Jonathan Lazar had messaged us on MySpace to say “We are very interested in signing you.” I forwarded that one to my parents with the subject line “Hmm!”, and we never heard from him again.

I should tell you now, so you’re not waiting for it: Richard Ryea was a marketing and artist-development rep, not an A&R man with a chequebook. But he WAS from EMI. He had connections we could (and did) only dream of.1

Here’s the thing the resignations might look like from the outside: an act of madness triggered by one week of emails. Here’s what they actually were. Back in March, at Alan McGee’s Death Disco, a stranger had asked if we could come and play in America. The same month I’d met Joe Trivigno, an American who ran a show touring US universities and had “all these ideas about us touring the east coast.” And on the 27th of March, three and a half months before any of this, the diary had already made its mind up:

27.03.07.

“We’ve been having serious discussions on leaving our jobs in 6 months or so and touring America, and China if we get it. Discussing taking a loan out etc…risky business, but worth it.”

Leaving our jobs in 6 months or so. Incredibly, we were right on target!

The permission came in the shape of Elizabeth. She’d messaged us the week before and was a woman in North Carolina who, as I’d put it in an email to Joe Trivigno a couple of weeks later, “saw us on myspace and is flying us over to do a charity concert for which she has some sponsorship with an airline.” That was the whole origin story. She saw us on MySpace thanks our being featured artists. The diary logged her with a mixture of disbelief and delight:

04.07.07.

“We’ve been booked to go to America by a women who’s going to pay for it so we can play at her charity event…we asked if she was aware of the cost implications, but she said ‘you’re worth it’”

We had asked an American stranger, more or less, are you sure you’ve understood how much four men and their gear cost to transport across an ocean, and she had answered like a L’Oréal advert. And we did feel very much worth it. Naturally, we did the responsible thing and immediately believed her. Well, that’s not true. In fact, we didn’t think it would happen at all, but acted like it definitely would right up to the moment that it ACTUALLY did. That’s why there was the “Greensboro, NC (USA)” showing up in all our gig listings - we’d put it in there on the tiny chance it would happen.

I forwarded her MySpace blog round the band on the twelfth, copying in my parents:

From: Nigel Thomas [nigeljthomasuk@***.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, 12 July 2007, 15:08 To: Alex, Geve, Jonno (cc: Dad, Isabella) Subject: USA trip

She really might be serious you know!

My dad, Ian, sound engineer, lifelong owner of the driest delivery in Somerset, replied at 7.35 that evening with great wisdom:

From: ian thomas Date: 12 July 2007, 19:35 Subject: RE: USA trip

Either she is a fully baked fruit cake or you’re going to the States!

I wrote back, “It’s a close run thing!”, and thirteen minutes later he delivered the coup de grâce:

That’s what I thought. It seems her hearts in the right place….left hand side of her chest..

He was, as he generally is, exactly right.

Here is the thing our MySpace profile didn’t show. We had, that week, somewhere north of seven thousand “friends.” On the eleventh we played our first ever gig in Southampton, at The Joiners2. On the thirteenth, Club NME at Charlie Browns3 in Luton. Both, the diary records with admirable honesty, were quiet:

17.07.07. Myspace friends: 7744.

“Well, it stopped being silly for the Southampton and Luton gig – both of which were quite quiet. Apparently it’s a new night at The Joiners so those nights can be quiet anyway…a couple of people came up to us afterwards and said they’d seen us on myspace and really loved our show and wanted to see us again…and bought CD’s.”

Seven thousand friends; two near-empty rooms; a couple of people at the end who’d genuinely come because of MySpace and bought a CD. It was still progress.

But the next night, the room was bigger…and it was full.

That room is next week.

Next week: a packed basement off Charing Cross Road, a missing cherry Gibson at half one in the morning, and a fan corners me to show off her fox-head necklace.

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