motel void

Portland-based Foot Ox are about to release their new album A Lighthouse with Silver Dog Eyes. On this occasion, we spoke with Teague Cullen, the creative force behind the project.

MOTEL VOID: You’ve been on the scene for nearly 20 years now – since 2007. Your upcoming album will be your seventh. What keeps you going after all these years? And how have your inspirations evolved since those early days back in 2007?

FOOT OX: Well, dang, yes, I guess it has been a lot of records! It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long, I don’t know. I don’t find it a struggle to come up with ideas for new music or new songs, I just really love playing music, and I love my friends and working on something, so I just keep doing it. I was just hanging with my friend Stephen Steinbrink, also from the Tempe Phoenix music scene, listening to new recordings we are both working on. I think the difference now is, I feel like there are so many influences over the years, including friends and collaborators, but now it’s maybe harder to latch onto one thing in particular. I think most of my friends from that era seem to have found their own way of expressing themselves that, to me, doesn’t really sound like anything else, though there might be threads.

MOTEL VOID: The new album is titled A Lighthouse with Silver Dog Eyes. Could you share a bit about how it came together – what was the recording process like?

FOOT OX: Well, I was on tour with AJJ, and I was writing a lot of these songs during that time, and I had some older ones that seemed to fit. I think once you have a handful of songs with a certain vibe, it can be like a magnet pulling in other ideas. I really like how David Lynch talks about ideas, like they’re swimming out there in some dark ocean of mind, and you just have to learn how to catch them. It’s kind of magical and mysterious, but that’s how I think about art and music.

The recording process was all over the place, tracking some initial stuff down at Balboa in LA, doing a lot in my garage, a noisy string experiment up in Seattle, Preston and Lee did some stuff down in Tucson at Desert Shore, and Sean did some stuff on the road actually haha.

MOTEL VOID: You described the new single Bleached Yellow as “trying to get that feeling of Arizona, where everything’s sun-bleached and washed out.” I actually spent a few weeks in Arizona myself, and the song immediately brought me back… Would you say the whole album is tied to different places or states in the US?

FOOT OX: Yeah, it’s actually funny that you ask that. I feel like out of anything I’ve ever made, this feels very tied to set and setting, and it is about, and was made in, the West. It’s a western, like an old spaghetti western, at least in my mind it is haha. Not sure how that translates into our record, not like some ridiculous cartoon thing with horse sound effects, but somehow in spirit. If it was an old movie, 100 percent.

I thought about that a lot when it started to come together, even thinking about the instruments. Thinking about western swing music, old Hollywood, even Meat Puppets, Pavement, but also thinking about what doesn’t fit in there. Like certain things would come out and I’d say, now that sounds like the Velvet Underground (who I love) but this isn’t New York. And I really thought about the string section stuff. In my head I was like, no Nashville sound, this is an old Hollywood Western score. But the difference, I couldn’t tell you, just vibe.

MOTEL VOID: I read that the album reflects both the past and present vibe of the American West – pairing abstract, dreamlike narratives with a kind of nostalgic familiarity. That resonated with me – I often associate that atmosphere with literature. So I have to ask: are there any writers or books that have inspired you lately?

FOOT OX: Absolutely! I’d say the three things I was reading during the making of this record that found their way in there…

I reread The Grapes of Wrath, or probably really read it for the first time. I think they made us try to read that in school, but I never paid attention. Damn, that guy can write. It made me so grateful for things like… cornmeal haha. Me and my girlfriend started hitting the bulk section at Winco around that time, and I was buying things like a 30 pound bag of rice, being like wow this is a miracle that we have access to this haha.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov – probably one of my top 10 books I’ve ever read, Soviet era Moscow, overlaid over ancient Jerusalem, the devil comes to town, with his best friend, a talking black cat, the author writes themselves into the story, it’s just really gorgeous, with deep meaningful stuff in there , I’ve never read a book like this before ever, I think it stands alone, and I think it makes you want to be ambitious with your own work.

And also Myrna Loy’s autobiography, Being and Becoming. This is probably more specific to me. I just really love old Hollywood, and it made me think about recording this record like somehow in that way. Like focusing on it, giving deadlines, but it’s not just like a factory, or even though it was a factory rather, old Hollywood understood the merit of having passionate, creative people who care deeply about a message or something they were trying to explain. She talks about that at length. Really super inspiring.

MOTEL VOID: On streaming platforms, your most popular track is Angel Eyes and Basketball, with around 15 million plays. When and how did that song take off? And did it have a noticeable impact on your career, like bringing more people to shows?

FOOT OX: Haha I have no idea!! If I did, I would make it happen again. And yes, it totally had an impact on me, like that blows my mind. I think I wrote that song when I was probably 18 years old. I had no idea it would reach anywhere near that amount of people.
But honestly, it’s confusing. Sometimes we play a show somewhere and it sells out, sometimes not. When we were on tour with AJJ, I could literally see people in the crowd, as we started to play that song, notice, whisper to their friend something, and then be like oh shit it’s that band, having had no idea who we were up until that point. Then realizing we were a band they had listened to a lot. So maybe having a history of playing shows and building something steady (like AJJ) is far more stable. But regardless, it’s really crazy, I’m super grateful that people have found meaning in something I made so long ago, and it has its own wings and it’s flying around out there.

MOTEL VOID: You’re currently based in Portland, Oregon. What would you highlight from the local scene – whether it’s artists you admire or favorite venues?

FOOT OX: Honestly, I feel like I live under a rock, or at least in the garden, when I’m at home. I don’t go to too many shows. But I would have to say if you’re looking for bands in the Portland area:

Moth Kit!
Soda Jinx!
Daisy Leaf Band!
Eden Arnold!
Fly Taninger!

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