Interview: Foxlin Talks New EP “Camper” and Mental Health
April 3, 2024/
An artist with an inspiring story, Ryan Johnson, known in the music world as Foxlin, has released his EP Camper, available everywhere now. Johnson really captures what it means to create art and how that process can be immensely healing in times of darkness. He shared that alongside battling suicide ideation and Borderline Personality Disorder, Johnson also has a type of incurable cancer that truly makes him question life.
I had the great pleasure to talk with Foxlin about his new EP, mental health, songwriting, and more.
How has your year been so far? Any highlights? My year has been very productive and successful already. I just released a new EP that people seem to like, got a manager, and am touring as much as I can while working on another EP for April. I’ve already met some amazing new friends in different cities and am excited to keep making more. So far, the love that my new EP, Camper, has received is my highlight. It’s just going to get better and better.
Can you talk about the indie singer-songwriter scene in Kansas City, Missouri?
Definitely. It’s actually well saturated. It isn’t as diverse as I’d like it, but the stories and sounds we have coming out of KC gives me hometown pride. It’s a pretty tight knit community of songsters who give and bare their all.
You’ve been very open about your mental health and cancer diagnosis, how have these life events impacted your songwriting perspective/artistry?
To be honest, they gave and keep giving me material to write about. I deal with chronic mental and physical pain and though therapy and self care do wonders, songwriting is where it all happens for me. It helps me cope and analyze and gives me a voice. I was taught to bottle feelings and told to let things go instead of dealing with them. Trauma would fester and I’d end up lashing out in a BPD episode. Songwriting was the gateway to expressing myself, accepting myself, and freeing my feelings and thoughts from the cage I had learned to hold them in. When my cancer was diagnosed it was the first thing I did while high on painkillers in the hospital. I jotted down the lyrics to my song, Kill Me Now Kill Me Then, in the hospital right after getting diagnosed. It’s my go to move in times of trouble. I write. It’s also how I wrote, Inner Lycanthrope. I was stuck in a mental ward after a suicide attempt with nothing but thin hospital paper scrubs, a notebook, and a floppy pen. Songwriting is so natural for me now and I wouldn’t be alive without it.
You’ve got your new EP, Camper out now. Could you dive into how you landed on that title and the inspiration for the project?
It all started with boredom. I was bored with playing guitar the way I always do and wanted to learn something new and challenge myself. Camper is all in an alternate tuning for guitar with chords I just learned recently. Once I got some chords down, the words and melodies poured out. It was all structured around, There’s A First Time For Everything. The song is about a fight I had with an ex that I regret more than anything. It was hard to get over and writing the song helped a bit more. Once I had that song, everything else was written in two days and then the whole thing was recorded in three. Once I start a project, there’s no stopping me. I hyper focus hard! Haha. A Real State is about the last BPD episode I had. I beat the suicide drum to death (pun intended) in these states and talk about being on the road while in said episode. Sometimes reality goes right out the window and I need to reign myself back in. Sunlight is about being/existing. It’s me taking stock of myself and in a way summing myself up. It’s got a glimmer of hope in it, but in the end I always feel like I come up short. “Ya give me one whole day and I’ll waste away the sunlight” ADHD aside, I always feel like I can never reach my full potential. Give me a big project, like life, and I’ll use most of the time questioning it instead of investigating it.
What was the hardest song for you to write for this EP and why? Definitely There’s A First Time For Everything. It’s about a fight I had with an ex where I lashed out with anxiety and fear and still can’t come to terms with it or myself. With Borderline Personality Disorder, it’s sometimes hard to be consistent with moods and I do a lot of inner work to try to keep it in check, especially after that fight. The song is basically me analyzing the trauma.
Which song is your favorite to perform live and why? I’ve been playing Camper in full at the start of my live set and the response has been great! It’s my favorite part of the set. There’s A First Time For Everything is my current favorite because I get to kinda chug along on guitar and have fun with the breakdowns. I close my set with the crowd pleaser, Inner Lycanthrope. I’ve gotten every city to howl like werewolves with me at the end of my sets and it’s magical. I get to see all different kinds of people release their animalistic sides by howling along with me. Everyone always leaves smiling and humming along. It’s my calling card and every time is different and special in its own way. KC can howl, but so can some of these other cities!
What advice would you give to your younger selves or young songwriters aspiring for a career in the music industry? Keep failing and keep going. Believe in your truth and shout it to the world. It’s so vast and diverse and you belong right where you are. You can’t control everything all the time so acceptance is one of the most valuable abilities.
What does success as an artist mean to you? Success to me keeps changing, but ultimately as long as I’m doing something that benefits the world in some way it’s a win. I do this to save my own life and help save others, no matter what species. I’ll give animals a voice, I’ll give the depressed loner in the back (me) a voice. I want to save others who go through the same torment as I do. It’s so isolating and lonely and if I can give someone hope by purely relating to them then I’ve succeeded.
What are some of your goals – whether musically or otherwise – for 2024? Tour, write, and record. I’m planning on starting a Patreon and cultivating a real fan base in 2024. I’ll be traveling all year long and be releasing a ton of new music. With a manager, I’m hoping to play better venues with a demographic more designed for me. Foxlin isn’t stopping any time soon…
…unless the cancer comes back haha.
Interested in more interviews? Check them out here!
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