“I realized that with Apple’s new software and hardware, I could explore doing animation and video myself — right from my home office,” says musician Neal Fox, who turned his live performance into a multimedia experience.
Neal Fox has been singing his own song for some 40 years. He railed against war in his college days, played with a slew of bands, toured clubs across his native New York and was a recording artist on big-name labels like Polydor, Columbia and RCA. “Finally,” says Fox with a resigned laugh, “I abandoned the major labels — or maybe they abandoned me. In any case, we split.”
Fox tried a new avenue, moving to San Diego and landing a job at what’s technically called a music production house — but commonly known as a jingle factory. (“They hate that word!” says Fox, who doesn’t hesitate to use it.) “I was making a good living,” he says, “but I hated every minute of it. Writing music for a client is just not part of my personality.”
“Why a Duck?”
Fox quit the jingle grind to get back to his true passion: writing, recording and performing his own material. Together with his wife, Naomi, he started Wire Duck Records. (The name is a wink to the line “Why a duck?” in the 1929 Marx Brothers film “The Cocoanuts.”) Forming his own label, says Fox, “allows me to release my own CDs without having to compromise on the message or the quality.”
“I would take advantage of the Mac technology to put basically anything I could think of on the stage.”
Fox was eager to return to performing, but he was keenly conscious of the obstacles. “When you’re in your 50s, getting air time on the radio is almost impossible,” he says. “So I was looking for a way to put my music out there and have some fun. That was the impetus to create a live show.”
A One-Man Show
Fox batted around some concepts with his partner, Stuart Wiener, and they came up with the idea of doing a one-man show. “The rationale was that it would cost next to nothing to produce for the stage,” says Fox. “And I said, ‘Great, but how do I do a one-man show that’s not just me on stage singing and playing my guitar and my piano — which no one will come to see?’”
The Mac, Fox soon saw, would let him add an entire dimension to his show. “I had always had an interest in drawing, painting and cartooning,” he recounts. “And I realized that with Apple’s new software and hardware, I could explore doing animation and video myself — right from my home office.” With tools like Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro, Fox could craft his performance into a dynamic multimedia experience.
Frame shot from Fox’s song “Let’s Do It Till We Get Irritated.”
Fox, like any music-biz veteran, is no stranger to risk. “I was 54 when I started this project,” he says with a shrug. “We re-mortgaged our house and said, ‘Let’s go for it!’”
No Compromise
To create the show, says Fox, “I bought a G5 and about a pound of software and started learning how to use Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro.” While he’d been a Mac user since the mid-1980s, Fox had never edited video or authored a DVD. “Luckily for me,” he says, “the programs were easy to learn. There were great manuals and tutorials. And it didn’t take long to get them up and running and to realize that my project was do-able.”
Fox wanted engaging imagery to complement every song in his show. “The idea was to perform my music live while I had these great animated visuals on the screen behind me,” he says. “I would take advantage of the Mac technology to put basically anything I could think of on the stage.
“It would be less demanding on me as a solo performer because every time we go to screen I get a little break from singing,” continues Fox. “And it would be more interesting to the audience. I mean, face it — I’m not a Robin Williams who can hold an audience in thrall without a single prop. Plus, it would cost almost nothing to produce, and we could play it in any size theater.” Most important to Fox, “I could have a ball doing everything I ever wanted to do, and not have to compromise.”
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