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Named after a Victorian children's game, WHAT TIME IS IT, MR. FOX? invents new fairy tales and steeps them in dark folk and neo-cabaret.  The blend of Brian King's supple voice and insightful lyrics with Nathan Cohen's versatile violin and "sweet sad trumpet" (Gloucester Daily Times) creates a sound they call acoustic noir. Many songs are bustling with memorable characters like a boy who turns into a cartoon or a woman who rescues herself from a tower,
while others, pure and vulnerable, "deftly explore themes of love, sexuality and identity." (Bay Windows)

Born in the seaport city of Gloucester MA, Brian King grew up with a love of the mystical. Enamoured with The Wizard of Oz, King couldn't decide who we wanted to be more, Dorothy or the Wicked Witch. It wasn't until his mother's friend loaned him a copy of Stevie Nicks' Bella Donna album, that Brian finally found the middle ground. Nicks' dramatic combination of witchy romantic rock-n-roll inspired the 10 year-old to start writing his own musical myths.  Throughout his teen years Brian fell in love with the music of Siouxsie & the Banshees, Kate Bush, and later Leonard Cohen, Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell. His diary was documented in piles of cassettes containing hours of orginal music recorded on a Tascam 4-trackin his bedroom.

In his early twenties, King began delivering his songs on stage, forming several punk and acoustic rock bands. Excited by the works of Jean Cocteau, Maya Deren, & Sandra Bernhard, he began to explore performance art and mixed media, often incorporating video and confessional comedic monologues into his performances. In 2001, King was invited to combine his talents in the Boston underground cabaret scene in musical variety shows with the Burlesque Revival Association (BRA). During the sold out shows, Brian's strong, soulful vocals won over audiences. With influences ranging from the belting blues of Bessie Smith to the unbridled passion of Patti Smith, his "haunting...chameleon-like voice."  (Metronome) can turn a sultry croon into a searing roar. These venues were the perfect stage for King to fuse his love of gritty theater with a good song, and form lasting friendships and collaborations with other artists and musicians on the fringe of Boston's rock climate. The Boston Herald praised King's soundscore for the Kelley Donovan Dancers as "mystifying."

 

In 2002, King started performing regularly with violinist and trumpeter, Nathan Cohen. Also a Gloucester native, Cohen took up violin at age of 4. He first saw Itzhak Perlman on Sesame Street when he was 2. "Get me that, he pleaded, pointing at the screen. After 2 years of persistent cajoling, his parents rented him his first fiddle. He earned his BA in music at Macalester College, where he performed in the African Music Ensemble, jazz band, traditional folk groups and choirs. A natural born bohemian, Cohen spent most of his early twenties traveling the world, immersed in musical traditions. With lengthy adventures in Turkey, Greece, Italy, Ghana, Hungary and the Central Pacific, Cohen could easily win a spot on the TV show Survivor.

 

After a year of making music together, King and Cohen decided to call their duo What Time Is It, Mr. Fox? The nature of the question, teasing with notions of time and reality, describes the band's flair for delving into various genres and eras, and a taste for Lewis Carroll and Brothers Grimm. Cohen's gift for phrasing in and out of classical, Celtic and Eastern-European traditions flesh out King's lyrical images and moody compositions. Melodic vocal and violin lines woven with syncopated piano and guitar create a rich musical tapestry." (Equal Pride). In 2004 bass player, Mike Leggio (Sugar Twins, Sukey Tawdry) began adding his acoustic double-bass to the mix. Leigh Calabrese (Beat Circus, Sob Sisters) regularly accompanies the band with her spooky singing saw, which earned her a 2004 nomination for best "other"instrumentalist in Boston's The Noise. With influences as varied as Bela Bartok and Billie Holiday to Dead Can Dance and Chaka Khan, Mr. Fox integrates folk, pop, blues, cabaret and carnival jazz, blurring boundaries at acoustic festivals, blues bars, coffee houses, colleges, goth clubs, theaters and experimental artspace lofts.

 

In October 2005, What Time Is It, Mr. Fox? released their first EP titled "Songs for the Tin Man" on their independent label Poison Peach Records. The CD is comprised of 7 songs, mostly recorded live at the legendary folk venue Club Passim in Cambridge. The EP ends with a new, haunting medley of the jazz standards "Strange Fruit" and "Summertime" The CD can be purchased at live shows and cdbaby.com and iTunes.

The band is currently recording their first full length studio CD at Thomas Eaton Recording in Newburyport MA, with Russ Lawton (Trey Anastasio) adding drums. Brian is also performing in a short stage piece titled Chrysalis set to 4 unreleased What Time Is It, Mr. Fox? tracks.  Directed by Terra Friedrichs, and also featuring Jennifer Charnley and Michael Prusak, Chrysalis explores how we can be either imprisoned or transformed by our relationships with our lovers, our creations and ourselves.

 

PAST SHOWS INCLUDE:

 

What Time Is It, 'Tin Man'?
WHAT TIME IS IT, MR. FOX? ON HOW GROWING UP GAY IN A STRAIGHT WORLD INFORMS NEW EP; CATCH THE ACT IN CAMBRIDGE, MASS. NOV. 27


While Brian King was growing up exposed to all sorts of rock and roll, Nate Cohen was busy learning to play the violin. After seeing Itzhak Perlman play on "Sesame Street" when he was two, Cohen went on a mission. When he turned four, his parents gave in. Now together in a curious entity called What Time Is It, Mr. Fox?, King and Cohen have found a unique way to educate one another while making some compelling music en route. The duo is now in the process of trying to finish their first full-length studio disc.

King describes himself as being inspired by Kate Bush, Jean Genet, Jean Cocteau, Laura Nyro, Annie Lennox, and Joni Mitchell, to name a few. Of Cohen, he says, "Nate has an amazing lack of pop music knowledge. But in contrast, he brings a filmic quality to our work, hence the idea of calling it 'acoustic-noir.' I don't like such definitions, and I don't subscribe to them, but we're living in a culture built on sub-categories."

Cohen got off to a shaky start with his violin, but perseverance eventually landed him in the Cape Ann Symphony and the Gordon College Symphony. Then David Alpher - founder of the Rockport Chamber Music Festival - took Cohen under his wing. By his junior year of college he'd played in a smorgasbord of ethnic musical configurations, and decided to study abroad, having finally given up trying to resist a major in music.

"I had absorbed this cultural idea that one can't make a living as a musician. Hogwash!," he says. "After my second year, I was having so much fun with my music classes that I decided to go that route despite my fear of eternal poverty. It turns out that poverty isn't so bad if you've got music."

The duo's new partially-live EP is a emotional powerhouse built with six tracks that combine folk music with finely sanded elements of cabaret and pop, but it seems like all the handy descriptors just don't do it proper justice - "Songs for the Tin Man" isn't like anything you've heard before. They even throw an entirely new spin on Holiday's "Strange Fruit" which sends shivers. King, the duo's lyricist and piano man, explains a bit about the psychology of the collection, the title track from which explores the dark corners of alienation that we sometimes fold ourselves into during the wee hours of the morning - specifically while trying to reckon with one's own shortcomings in the face of a gay culture built on impossible ideals of physical beauty. There's even a borrowed refrain from Joni Mitchell's "See You Sometime" woven into the song's fabric. And boy, does it ache.

"The way the story goes, the Tin Man isn't validated as an emotional being until he gets his heart," he explains. "Interestingly, it seems like it's okay for gay women to write empowering songs that can cross over to a larger audience, but it's different for men. It's like 'woman stronger ? good,' but 'man - vulnerable ? ooo bad.' Then again, I have straight friends enamored of Rufus Wainwright, Magnetic Fields, and Antony & The Johnsons - so I think maybe this is finally changing. I recently read 'The Velvet Rage,' by Alan Downs - it's about the recurring issues gay men bring to therapy, which inevitably trace back to the painful process of growing up gay in a world where nothing is defined for you - as a gay man in a straight world, you have no context in which to understand yourself. And looking at it in retrospect, I see every one of those issues play out somehow in the songs on this EP."

Cohen and King make good use of their musical differences in What Time Is It Mr. Fox?, the name for which is taken from a Victorian children's game. Of Cohen, King says, "Nate's sense of a riff comes from his classical understanding; it develops as the music progresses. In pop music, riffs get endlessly repeated. But Nate's really good at helping us make the music I hear in my head actually happen, and it's why I wanted to work with him in the first place."

Cohen's take is equally complimentary, right down to the juxtaposition of the duo's differing sexualities.

"Brian is open to such a huge range of ideas. He can perform a piece as a funk song, and then rewrite it as a lullaby. Intuition is the driving force behind his performances, while I rely on theory sometimes to steer me through a new song. Yet it's Brian's sensibilities that encourage me to stop and ask, "Wait, is this really what this song needs?" Though we're both prima donnas at heart, we believe in letting a song be what it's going to be, to help it explore its own potential. There is a lot of gender ambiguity in the songs we do, but it's also important to put that perspective out there to the general public because it normalizes gay experiences in an accessible format. While many of Brian's songs come from specific experiences growing up gay, the songs transcend that. Lots of people come approach us after shows, and the songs touch them no matter what their background. Here are distinctly gay experiences that people can relate to, regardless of their orientation."

What Time Is It Mr. Fox? plays on Sunday, Nov. 27, with Incus, at Zeitgeist Gallery, Inman Square, Cambridge, Mass. Show is at 9:30 p.m., tickets are $8. Call 617-876-6060 for more information.