Foot Ox, the long-running experimental folk project led by Teague Cullen, returns this week with their new single “Bleached Yellow.” The track is the latest pre-release single from their upcoming album, A Lighthouse with Silver Dog Eyes, out August 11 on Ernest Jenning Record Co. (pre-order).

“Bleached Yellow” captures the sun-bleached atmosphere of Arizona, drawing on Cullen’s experience of feeling emotionally burnt out yet pulled back toward connection. Cullen says, the song aims to evoke “that feeling of Arizona, where everything’s sun-bleached and washed out. It reflects that emotional burnout you feel sometimes, but there’s also that part where, even when you’re trying to pull away from someone or keep your distance, they just kind of draw you back in, and you end up caring about them anyway, trying these different configurations—so I guess it’s kind of about my own chaos.”

“Bleached Yellow” feels like Arizona distilled into a song, sun-bleached, a little weary, but still reaching for connection. How did that landscape and emotional headspace first find their way into your music?

I’m really glad you could feel that, that’s exactly where my head was at. I grew up there, and all that stuff is pretty deep in my heart. Playing at my aunt and uncle’s cactus nursery, the dirt… it’s a beautiful landscape, but also full of contrast. The desert can be prickly, poisonous. It can feel bleak and burnt out.

So when I sit down to write, that stuff just comes out, the deep-down stuff. I think it’s always been there, and maybe I’ve just learned to embrace it more. Sometimes in Arizona, I’ll see a dilapidated shack and a dirt field and think, yeah, I want to write a song that feels just like that. It’s a little wild, a little strange. When you make your home out on the range…

This record moves between folk, punk, country, and experimental rock. Do you think of Foot Ox as having a “home genre,” or is that sense of drift part of the project’s identity?

I don’t spend much time thinking about genres, honestly. It’s more like puzzle pieces. We try something, like Jim playing pedal steel, which might be thought of as “country,” and then it’s just a question of, does it fit? I can usually feel it in my heart if it does.

You’ve described the song as capturing “emotional burnout” while also being about the pull of human connection. How do you navigate that push and pull, and does songwriting help?

I think songwriting helps with all kinds of connection, and disconnection. It can be hard to feel heard and understood. But music’s like a miracle. It’s this higher-dimensional form of communication, where you can just point and say, see? that’s how I feel.

The emotion is immediate. It doesn’t need explaining. Whether you’re making it, or just sharing a song you love with someone else, I think it heals.

A Lighthouse with Silver Dog Eyes is such a striking title. What does the “lighthouse” symbolize for you, and who (or what) are those silver-eyed dogs?

Haha… I debated whether to even explain this.

The full title is actually A Lighthouse with Silver Dog Eyes, Potosi Mountain, and the Other Half of the West. We shortened it for clarity, but it’s still printed on the vinyl.

The lighthouse… I’m kind of obsessed with old films from the 30s and 40s. They depict this version of life, or even heaven, like some unattainable goal. It’s like the finger pointing at the moon, something just out of reach, showing the way.

For me, Myrna Loy is one of those people. She’s the lighthouse. I had a dream about her once. She was looking at me, talking to me, and I realized she had my dog’s eyes. My dog had just passed away, and before he died, his eyes turned all silver. It was eerie, but kind of beautiful.

Her close friend, Carole Lombard, died in a horrific plane crash in real life on Potosi Mountain. So there’s this contrast between fantasy and brutality, dreams and harsh reality. “The other half of the west” is everything else. The broken, real stuff. And yeah, I know the title’s long, but westerns usually are.

From AJJ to Pigeon Pit, the album’s rich with collaboration. What was it like bringing friends and scene-mates into Foot Ox this time?

It was a blast. I’ve known Sean since I was about 16. I played on some AJJ stuff back then. Grant (Sad Park), Jim (Pigeon Pit), Preston, Lee… we were all on tour together in 2023. That was a magical time, and I think this record captured some of those connections.

I’m so proud of my friends, just immensely talented people. It’s special to put on a record and hear all your friends coming and going, making sounds.

The biggest collaboration was David J, who mixed the album. He really brought the whole thing to life. It wouldn’t sound like this without him. I’m honored to know him.

You came out of the Phoenix-Tempe DIY scene in the late 2000s. What do you see when you look back on that time?

Those were really special years. Changed my life. The shows were wild, a noise band, then folk, then punk, then something country… everything started blending together. Musique concrète, folk, country, punk, rock and roll, noise,  it all went into the blender.

But more than that, there was a deep sense of support. We were just kids, many of us carrying heavy trauma into adulthood. Counterculture, for real. Night and day from the dominant culture around us.

And when we found each other through the music, and believed in each other, beautiful things happened.

Stephen Steinbrink, iji, Dinners, AJJ, Roar… the list goes on. I’m proud to be part of that. And I still feel like I’m there. I just stayed at Stephen’s place in Oakland, we were playing each other new songs. It’s all just an extension of those old days. There was something in the water.

The songs move from hushed intimacy to big, sweeping arrangements. Were there moments where the songs told you they needed to grow?

Yeah, totally. I feel like this record is also about Hollywood in some way, at least as a layer. I was thinking about old movies, how they were made, reading books about that era.

I’ve never really liked string sections in the Nashville sound way, but these string parts… they’re not Nashville. They’re Hollywood cowboy westerns, at least in my head.

My friend and neighbor Harry showed up at just the right time with his cello. He used to play in the pit at a casino in Nevada in the 70s, even arranged for Glen Campbell, Roger Miller, Buck Owens. Just blew my mind.

I gave him melody lines and he turned them into string sections. And David J mixes strings better than anyone I know. When I got the mixes back, I was like… wow. It was hard to even hold onto it.

“Horseshoe” and “Bleached Yellow” give very different shades of the record. If it had a weather report or a color palette, what would it be?

The color palette is definitely the cover. My dad, Stephen Cullen, is an artist. He painted it. It’s a 2 foot by 2 foot oil painting. We thought a lot about the palette, and now I can confidently say, this is it. Muted and western, like the cover of an old thrift store paperback you buy just because it’s beautiful, even if you know you’ll never read it.

He takes commissions for oil paintings!

Stephenjcullen.com

Writing across life stages makes an album a kind of time capsule. Do you hear past versions of yourself in these songs?

Yes. It already feels nostalgic to me. These songs were written over the last five years, and those years have been full of huge changes.

It’s like turning around on a hike and seeing how far you’ve come. You remember people you love, dark times you came through. I definitely see past versions of myself in the music, the parts I disliked, the heartbreak, but it’s kind of incredible. Like… wow. We made it up the hill.

After nearly two decades of Foot Ox, what keeps you creating, and what does it feel like to release music into the world now?

Personally, I just love making music. I love my friends. Sometimes it furthers one to have somewhere to go. Collaborating on these records feels like a magical shared experience.

But when I think about the world, man, there’s a lot of darkness out there. It’s such a critical, insane time to be alive.

I’m gonna paraphrase some hippie elders here. I don’t think we can think our way out of this mess, not the usual way. There’s something deep inside you that you already know is true. And eventually, you have to decide: are you gonna listen to your heart?

How many times can you turn your head and pretend not to see? Are you gonna drop the ball on your millions of ancestors who got you here? Or are you gonna really get it on, do something meaningful?

No one can tell you what that is. But when you feel that call, when you love something, you are participating in the redemption of the human spirit. And the most beautiful things emerge from that.

So I hope everybody out there is dreaming big and following their heart. It’s a struggle sometimes. But I’m always trying to do that too.

“Life is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming.”

— Myrna Loy

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