ALUMNI NEWS

Tiger Touting

Country Singer Foxx

You might not be able to tell by looking, but country music is in Foxx's veins. Underneath her refreshing gothic fashion — a unique style in country music — is a country girl sitting at her grandfather's feet.

Foxx, or Becky Lee Meadows, BJ ’91, remembers when she was a child how she spent most of the hot summer evenings sitting on the front porch of her grandparents' house in Ghent, Ky., listening to her grandfather play his guitar and sing. The songs ranged from country, i.e. Merle Haggard, George Jones, etc., to gospel. While the other grandchildren were running and playing in the front yard, Foxx sat at her grandfather's side, or at his feet, and sang with him.

“He always promised he was going to take me to the radio station,” Foxx says. Her grandfather died before he got that chance, and that is an ache she admits she still carries with her. “When I sing now, I sing for him,” she says.

Foxx's love of music followed her through her career in journalism, which, after 10 years, she realized was not satisfying her. She decided to go the University of Louisville to earn her master's degree in English, and during her studies wrote a novel, Progeny, which was published in March 2001. Her second novel, Phantasy, was published in May 2002. She also took a few courses in theatre while earning her degree.

“Theatre absolutely swept me away,” Foxx says. She embarked on a career in musical theatre and played such roles as Eva Peron in “Evita” and Rizzo in “Grease,” among others. It was after one evening performance of Evita, when Foxx was driving home from Louisville to her home in Carrollton, Ky., that she believes she heard her grandfather's voice.

“It was so unreal,” she says. “I just heard this voice say, ‘Try country.’ It had never occurred to me at that point to try country, but the next day I went into my voice lesson and said, ‘I want to try country,’ and Debbie King (Foxx's voice teacher) said, ‘I think that's a good idea.’”

It was onward and upward from there. The transformation from musical theatre to country wasn't easy, but Foxx's deep-seated roots of country were still intact, and it took only a month or so of preparation for her to be ready to test her talent. She began putting together the Foxx band, and the group was ready to perform in public in about two months. By March 2001, Foxx and the Foxx band were playing the county fair circuit in the northern Kentucky and southern Indiana areas.

In September 2001 Foxx signed with NightVixen Entertainment in Clarksville, Ind., and it was only a few months afterward that negotiations began with three Nashville record labels.

“It's all moved so fast,” Foxx says. “I feel like I've been searching my whole life and going in circles, but now I've found what I was searching for. I know this is a hard business. People are tough and the competition is tough, but I know nobody can make me stop except me. I have no intention of stopping.”

In August 2002, Foxx officially committed to Stardust Records of Nashville. Colonel Buster Doss, owner of Stardust, produced Foxx's first Nashville session on Dec. 23, 2002. “It was the best Christmas present I've ever had,” Foxx said with a smile.

Foxx's career took off by leaps and bounds after committing to Stardust — in January 2003 Colonel Doss nominated her for the 2003 Female Vocalist of the Year Award from the Tennessee Country Music Alliance. The winners will be announced at the TCMA Awards Show April 20. In addition, Foxx's single, “Get Over It,” hit the Hot Country Singles chart in Europe and remained on it for three months, and her other singles released through Stardust have taken off as well.

NightVixen Entertainment President Mikki Tatum said she plans to have Foxx's first official CD, to be titled “Get Over It,” finished by the end of 2003. NightVixen Entertainment is owned and operated by Tatum, also a professional filmmaker and the creator/director of Foxx's first music video set to Foxx's original song, “Get Over It.” Tatum finished directing Foxx's second music video, of her single, “Baby Blue Eyes,” in March. Both music videos are part of a video collage of Foxx which will include an interview with the gothic new-country singer as well as a “Behind the Scenes: The Making of the Music Video” segment. The Back Porch Country Show, a cable television show that airs in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida among other states, requested the video collage.

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Last Update: November 15, 2007