Bio:
Neal Fox is a veteran songwriter whose career spans decades in the music business. It includes being signed to Polydor, RCA and Columbia Records, with a charted single, a Top Ten Dance Club Hit, music for hundreds of commercials, film scores, TV themes (i.e., the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather), Clio and Telly Awards, film festival and songwriting awards.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Fox began playing gigs when he was fourteen. Although he trained in classical and jazz, his songs were pop-rock with other influences. He got his first recording contract at age twenty. Then he started writing jingles and landed a Ford commercial. A move to San Diego introduced him to Ron Walz and Rick Patterson. Their music production company, Patterson, Walz & Fox, was soon composing music for all the major networks.
Locked away in his studio, Fox missed the stage and writing music solely for pleasure—which wasn’t pitching products. So he taught himself animation, bought a video camera, and came up with, Pigeonholes, a one-man multimedia show, which he staged at the world famous Stella Adler Theatre in Hollywood.
After relocating to Florida, he wrote and performed, Thank You Dan Rather. (An ironic title, since Dan Rather’s theme brought in a lot of residuals until his less than graceful exit from the network.) He also continued self-releasing CDs on his indie label, Wire Duck Records.
Over the years Fox’s music has received rave reviews, both for his lyric writing skills and for melodies that move you. Billboard called him “a rueful Randy Newman eccentric equally at home in blues, rock, pop and jazz motifs.” A reviewer for the Entertainer wrote, “Fox delivers hooky melodies that in turn thrill you and then break your heart.” It was comments like that, and the emotional response to songs such as the “Human Rights Suite,” that inspired Fox to translate a selection of his music into contemporary solo piano pieces.
