Part 1

Name: Fox Apts.
Members: Dave Kajganich (vocals, keyboards, piano), Jerry Popiel (guitars, bass, mandolin, harmonica, piano, backing vocals), Tom Stickley (drums, percussion, backing vocals)
Nationality: American
Current release: The new Fox Apts. album Omen is out now.
Recommendations: Dave: Just for fun, I’m going to stay out of my lane and not give suggestions for alt rock music or film / tv. Ingram Marshall’s album Fog Tropes jumps to mind first. I first heard it three decades ago and I save it for listening only when I need it, because I don’t want to dilute its power through casual listening. There’s a whole universe on that album. I think it’s every bit as alive and demanding as something like Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” but in some murky, storm-lit void. It’s something everyone who loves to be transported and haunted by music should hear at least once.

My other thought is to mention a Ukrainian painter named Danylo Movchan who has been painting a vision of Russia’s war against Ukraine that is unlike anything I’ve seen. He’s taken the grammar of icon painting and modernized it to be able to depict the atrocities happening in his country in a way that allows for both rage and compassion to be communicated frankly, without embellishments. In a spiritual sense, I learned more from those paintings than weeks of watching CNN.

If you enjoyed this Fox Apts. interview and would like to know more about the band, visit them on Instagram, and Facebook.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you’re listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

Dave: Eyes open. My body’s response to music isn’t a visual one, though I’d be really curious to know what that’s like. For me, with certain kinds of music, I lock into tones in a way I sometimes feel physically. Ambient and drone, mainly; but motets and other kinds of polyphonic music; Indian Classical music, things like that.

It’s hard to describe. It’s not like a trance; It’s more like what a magnet does to metal shavings. My attention and perception are immediately reorganized around the music’s specific tone, but with full lucidity.

And it’s not something that comes with emotional clarity, which is what’s so fantastic about it. It’s specific in terms of how it feels, but completely ambiguous in terms of what it means. And in that space, a lot of ideas come. It’s strange, and I don’t particularly understand it, but I seek it out all the time.

What were your very first steps in music like – and how do you rate gains made through experience versus the naiveté of those first steps?

Tom: In terms of learning to play an instrument (I took instruction in drums and, much later, in piano), for me I was drawn to the math and the structure of it--whether it’s the arithmetic of a time signature, or the consistent distance in pitch between notes of a chord, or the relationship of a relative minor key to its major key.

As far as where I’ve made gains? Overwhelmingly, through experience. For me, drums played without some level of musical insight or a desire to really collaborate and interact with the music is just a calisthenic exercise. I suppose the same can be said for any instrument. I could practice rudiments in my room for years and never become a musician.

Creating a new piece with other musicians requires access to more tools in the chest, and I think most of those tools are acquired over time. 

Dave: My first steps were awkward. I’ve never trained on an instrument past grade school, or studied music theory--all my formal education is in writing. So, when I met the people with whom I love to make music, I had to grope along fully on intuition, trying to draft behind Jerry and Tom and pick up everything I could.

Being in a band is fascinating because you have to come to speak a common and precise language about what you’re making. The language we’ve found is mainly about emotion and energy. And because the way we talk about music is rigorous without being overly driven by theory, I can keep up. I’ve never really had to give up my musical naiveté and I’m grateful for that.

Jerry can answer any theoretical question in about half a second. He’s the theory brain in the band. I’m often the one coming up with the stranger ideas precisely because I don’t understand what is and isn’t musically logical. Sure, I know a lot more about how to record, perform, and mix music now that I have many weeks in a studio and an album under my belt, but the songwriting steps still feel as naïve to me now as when we started, in the best way.

Unsurprisingly, I don’t think about making music on my own, at all. I only want to do it with these two people.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

Tom: Listening to music transported me, out of my chaotic environment, to anywhere I wanted to go in my head. I frequently spent hours at a time listening to music. Playing drums (properly) gave me a sense of pride as a kid / teen.

As an adult, I don’t listen to music the same because I don’t need the same thing from it. At a young age, music helped me modulate the way I felt.

Dave: It was the mid-80s when I was 16. I was growing up in rural Ohio with no exposure to music that wasn’t for mass consumption. I was nowhere near a college, nor did I even know yet what “college radio” was. But what Peter Gabriel was doing really hit me, Bowie of course, The Police--that’s the kind of music that impacted me most.

I’d hear a song like “Let’s Dance” or “Shock the Monkey” on the radio and I could feel a difference. It opened up a path for me to something a little bit uncanny under the surface of what was being called “commercial.”



The thing that’s changed now is that I can leave what’s commercial way behind whenever I want and follow that weird path into the mountains and beyond. But back then, if it wasn’t on popular FM radio, or sold at the mall, I wouldn’t have heard it.

That sounds dire, but some of that music still contained multitudes. Pop music can be a fantastic Trojan Horse in the right hands.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools and how have they shaped your perspective on music?

Jerry: Mine is one really good acoustic guitar. It’s a Gibson SJ-100 jumbo acoustic. You can make music on any guitar that’s playable, but practicing, writing and performing on a great instrument makes me want to play more and pull more sounds and feelings out of it.

I had many guitars before this one, but I’ve bonded with this guitar during hundreds of performances. Ideas often come to me when I’m playing it aimlessly during evenings. It sounds, looks, and feels great. It even smells great. Sitka spruce, mahogany and bubinga wood.

It’s been with me at performances where it’s snowing, and in a hundred degrees. It’s road tough, yet sensitive when I need it to be.  

Tom: The metronome, for all the obvious reasons. But I remember playing rhythms with scarce notes at very slow tempos, alone, with a click. You really get to experience how much space there is between the notes, and how little you need to adjust in order to change the whole feel of the rhythm.

It’s like if a quarterback could slow down the moment and see a play develop. It almost feels like cheating.

Dave: The training and experience I’ve had in writing narrative is something I lean on, though I try not to depend on it. A song can certainly be a story, but not always, and sometimes not to its advantage, so I try a lot of different approaches to writing lyrics.

But, musically, all I have to work with is the encouragement of my bandmates, and a willingness to confuse them, and myself, chasing some musical intuition.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

Dave: I’m a little terrified of sentimentality, so as soon as something we’re working on feels like it’s being pulled in that direction, we try to find a way to break its nose. Sentimentality to me is cause for distrust. It’s a little bit the same with the idea of earnestness, or nostalgia. In different ways, those things are always about feeling something again, rather than for the first time.

I try to stay out of habits that allow old feelings to come in too much. The chance to try to feel and articulate something new, or participate in our band in an unexpected way, is the biggest motivator.

Tom: I play drums melodically. Whether it comes out that way to a listener, I don’t know. But when I’m playing a pattern on the bell of a ride cymbal with my right hand, I’m hearing melody. The same with ghost notes and accents on a snare, there’s melody there.

I’m motivated by getting more out of the limited technical ability I possess. Since I’m never going to be Steve Gadd, I need to find other ways to make what I’m doing contributive to a song, as well as interesting to me. And creating original work with two other people has been the biggest motivator. You start with nothing, jumble together the input from three different minds with completely different perspectives on music, listen, tweak, talk, listen, tweak, talk a lot more.

Eventually you come away with a weathered work that now exists in the world, entirely built up from your band’s DNA. 

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What’s your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

Jerry: I have to agree with that. I listen to the whole thing first, whether it’s our music or someone else’s. The essence first—is it compelling, interesting, exciting, mysterious?

I may notice specific parts the first time I’m hearing something, but more often I will catch those on repeated listens. I will process the sound of a lyric before its meaning quite frequently, which is I guess why Sigur Ros and Cocteau Twins work on my emotions … it’s the sound!

After that it’s details, details, details. I will want to understand why something works (or doesn’t). But it all starts at that first listen for essence for me.

Dave: I thought and talked a lot about “world building” in the studio while we were making Omen.

As a band, we wanted each song to have its own internal specificity and be rigorous about expressing it. Maybe that means some of the songs might strike a certain kind of person as overproduced, or that the album as a whole isn’t as cohesive as it might have been had we not actively tried to push the songs in different directions so much.

But we decided early to trust that the process—especially having Mitch (Easter) producing with us, and Greg (Calbi) mastering—would bring things to some point of cohesion by the end. And it did. So when I listen to the album now, I’m no longer hearing the component parts, which is a relief.

As far as one’s “personal sound,” I’m still deciding if I think that’s something one should define for one’s self, or even necessarily aim for.