From the Chrysalis: Fox Drickey Makes Immersive Show Based on Music, Podcasting and Theater

Fox Drickey has been on a personal journey of sorts the past couple of years. She used to be called Kris, but last year changed her name to Fox after making a pilgrimage to Central America to study music and medicine. She also lived in a camper in Black Forest, a Census-designated place in rural El Paso County. During that time, she wrote a short story, The Tugboat vs. the Tidal Wave, about an ensouled tugboat going up against a sentient tidal wave. She’s telling the tale through a four-episode podcast, Honeycomb Liminal Radio, which launched earlier this month. And on Saturday, April 2, she’s hosting an immersive show called Metamorphosis at Enigma Bazaar that combines theater, art and her music to tell the final chapter.

Drickey is happy that the show has finally come together, as she struggled to put all the seemingly disparate elements together into a cohesive whole. It dawned on her during the creative process that she had already written the narrative for the event with her short story, which is in part an allegory about massive changes that can sweep over us like a tidal wave. But she wasn't sure how to release The Tugboat vs. the Tidal Wave. It’s not exactly fun to give people a reading assignment, so she produced a podcast that expands the boundaries of the medium. The first chapter unfolds almost like a children’s story, albeit one that might scare children.

The immersive show will include a “Rainbow Chorus” that helps move the story forward with a "playground kindergarten theater vibe," she says, adding that it is also reminiscent of the chorus from ancient Greek theater used to break the fourth wall and explain the characters’ inner thoughts to the audience. She notes that she chose Enigma Bazaar as the venue for its surreal qualities and designed the show around the space. The word “immersive” gets tossed around a lot these days, but Drickey says it’s hard not to use it in this context.

“Before people come to the show, they are listening to the podcast, so they are prepped for this world, which is a little more fluid and a little more bizarre,” she says. "When they step into the Enigma, there is going to be a threshold experience where they step through a rainbow curtain into an alternate world.”

Drickey was a tad hoarse during a phone interview on a Monday afternoon in early March. She’d played a house show in Denver over the weekend. It was her first outing under her new first name, Fox, and with her new band, Fox & the Babes. The sore throat was worth it, however.

“It was so incredible,” she says. “It felt kind of like an old-school Denver house show. The scene has kind of changed and morphed and grown. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a crowded house packed full of people.”

Performing presented a bit of a challenge. Drickey’s gotten rusty when it comes to modulating the adrenaline that floods her veins when she performs, and she was jittery. She adds that she played a stripped-down set of material to ease herself back into the fold.

“We’re usually doing a lot of drums on synthesizers,” she says. “But it was just me on electric guitar and the Babes on vocals. It was really special. There was a lot of energy in the room.”

It was her first show in quite some time. She’s been through some changes. But who hasn’t these past couple of years?

Drickey, who went to high school in Denver and has come and gone from Colorado in the subsequent years, left the country for the jungles of Central America in January 2020. It wasn’t the best time to travel abroad, as the COVID pandemic began to wrap its claws around the world shortly after she departed. Drickey soon found herself coming home to personal uncertainty, both spiritual and financial.

“I had to land back in the U.S. as lockdown was happening without a home or plan. I was in a pretty disoriented state," she recalls. "For me, there was this sort of rolling avalanche of chaos that came from that experience.”

Drickey adds that the upheaval made her ponder climate change and the forces of capitalism, among other heavy topics. On a more personal note, she experienced an “arc of heartbreak” because of her newfound housing and job insecurity. Everything felt uprooted and disrupted.

“I went through this really profound journey where it felt like my old life had died,” she says. “I knew there was a new life coming, but it hadn’t happened yet. Everything was just disassembled and chaotic for those two years.”

She says she felt a "latency" between herself and her old name, Kris. When people called her by name, it took her a few seconds to associate with it. She eventually set out for a place called the School of Lost Borders, a California-based entity that offers "transformational experiences for those seeking growth, insight, and restoration," according to its website. In August 2021, Drickey attended the school's campus near Buena Vista, where she fasted for four days and performed a sort of funeral for her old self. She also received her new name, Fox, which she says was initially a terrifying experience. She didn’t want to change her name or announce it publicly. She was between worlds.

When she finally acknowledged her new name a month later, she says, “I felt super self-conscious, but I also knew that’s what I had to do. As soon as it was spoken out loud, it was like my old name just blew away. I was able to feel like my body again, and also start integrating back into my world again after a significant period of limbo.”

Drickey notes that her metamorphosis also carried a gender component.

“I had a moment where I was at a queer dance party, and I felt any kind of solidity around my identity as a woman evaporate,” she says. “I feel very gender-expansive, and I’m leaning into that with this name change. I’m leaving behind a lot of cultural programming.”

Drickey’s April show has already sold out. She is talking with her considerably large cast of characters and collaborators about whether another performance is possible. Metamorphosis will also serve as a belated release party for State Change, her solo EP that came out in early 2021.

“I released it, but it doesn't feel fully released,” she says. “The release of that EP kind of initiated this period of my life where I went into a chrysalis, essentially. Everything dissolved. I wrote a bunch more music and lived in a camper.”

Drickey, who spent ten years playing in Chimney Choir, which she describes as “genre-imploding” theater, assembled musicians from numerous Denver bands — Retrofette, Dandu, Covenhoven, the Whimsy of Things, Ghost Tapes, Other Black, Dragondeer, etc. — to populate the Babes. She sees her upcoming, visually stimulating show as one that will break down the traditional line between audience and performer.

In retrospect, Drickey doesn’t find her story all that unique or special. Conversations with people around her have revealed that nearly everyone has been through some kind of intensive internal rearrangement of late — a spiritual chiropractic adjustment, if you will. It’s just the way the world has been the past few years.

“That’s what the Metamorphosis show is about, and that’s why it’s coming together,” she says. “It’s the final chapter in the Tugboat series, but it’s also the final chapter for me in the story and evolution of my own metamorphosis.”

Metamorphosis, Saturday, April 2, Enigma Bazaar, 4923 West 38th Avenue, SOLD OUT. Find the State Change EP on Bandcamp, and The Tugboat vs. the Tidal Wave on Drickey’s Patreon page. Episodes of Honeycomb Liminal Radio debut weekly and are available on Spotify.