Bill Fox is a singer-songwriter from Cleveland, Ohio known for his lo-fi folk recordings and being a ‘temperamental recluse’ and ‘crabby loner’ who shuns the spotlight. Fox originally fronted the 1980s power pop group The Mice, a band sometimes referred to as ‘The Cleveland Replacements’, whose sound heavily influenced and inspired Robert Pollard, frontman of Guided By Voices.

Without warning, Fox disbanded The Mice on the morning they were supposed to tour the US and Europe, much to the disappointment of his brother (drummer Tommy Fox), and vanished from the music scene for eight years. During this time, his sister called the police when she found him naked, covered in blood and shouting about the Antichrist.

Inspired by the band that was inspired by him, Fox began recording songs in his living room on a 4-track cassette recorder after hearing Guided By Voices' 1993 album Vampire On Titus. In 1996, his debut solo single “Bird Of The World” was released, backed with “I May Never Know”. Longtime friend Tim Rossiter helped Fox release his debut solo album Shelter From The Smoke in the following year on Cherry Pop Records and acted as his manager. CMJ New Music Monthly extolled the release, putting Fox on the cover and calling him “one of the most important artists of our day”. SpinArt Records was given Fox’s music and immediately signed him, re-releasing Shelter From The Smoke the following year with the last three tracks removed but five others added in their place. In 1998, SpinArt released his sophomore effort Transit Byzantium, consisting of songs from the same collection of home recordings that comprised his previous album.

Sire Records head Seymour Stein took interest and asked Fox to perform in his office. He reportedly called the performance ‘wonderful’ and told SpinArt head Joel Morowitz that Sire would consider releasing Fox’s next album. Rossiter’s personal life, however, began to make him less available as a manager, leaving Fox to handle business matters himself. Fox declined Sire’s request to record his third album in Nashville with session musicians, instead doing it on his own at a studio in Ohio. Fox was also scheduled to headline CMJ’s annual music festival, but simply didn’t show. The relationship with Sire fizzled and Fox disappeared from the music scene again shortly after being interviewed by California FM station KCRW in July 1998. The recording sessions for Fox’s next album were lost.

That same year, a woman heard Fox’s “My Baby Crying” on a Vermont FM station and instantly became a huge fan. A year later, she met (and later married) investigative reporter Joe Hagan and introduced him to Fox’s music. In 2007, Hagan, now a huge fan himself, set out to discover ‘Why Did Bill Fox Stop Playing Music?’. He traveled to Cleveland and spoke with Tommy Fox, Tim Rossiter, Joel Morowitz and any locals who’d had contact with Fox over the last ten years, but his requests to speak with Fox directly went unanswered. Hagan did learn, however, that Fox occasionally still picked up a guitar and performed at small gatherings when coaxed by friends, and once told a handful of people “I’d like to go out and play”.

Hagan published his findings in an article for The Believer Magazine in July 2007 and it resonated throughout the country with Fox’s cult following of devoted fans who’d also long wondered why Fox vanished into ‘a self-imposed exile’ almost ten years earlier. Despite Fox having a reaction so negative it was ‘not printable in a family newspaper’, the renewed interest in his music generated enough royalty payments to entice him into allowing Scat Records to reissue his albums.

In 2009, Fox began performing publicly again, but only in the Cleveland area. That same year, Scat Records reissued Shelter From The Storm, including the original 15 Cherry Pop tracks, the 5 added by SpinArt, and both songs on his debut single. Scat Records head Robert Griffin told Cleveland.com:

He just thinks they’re music, and God, if some of these weird people still want to buy ‘em, OK, let’s print some more up.

In 2010, Fox performed three gigs in Canada for Kelp Records' 16th anniversary concerts. That same year, Nada Surf, inspired by Hagan’s article, recorded Fox’s song “Electrocution” for inclusion on their collection of cover songs If I Had A Hi-Fi.

More music began to surface in 2011. First, a collection of Fox’s unreleased music titled Before I Went To Harvard randomly appeared. That same year, Fox allowed the creator of the montage Faces, Signs and Sentiments at Occupy Wall Street to use his unreleased song “Men Who Are Guilty of Crimes”. In 2012, Fox released his third album, a more experimental collection of songs written between 2000-2011 titled One Thought Revealed. Four years later, “How It Feels” appeared on a split 7" with Forgotten Souls Of Antiquity on Eleventh Hour Records, a label that would also reissue Before I Went To Harvard digitally and on vinyl. Those vinyl printings sold out and were fetching up to $90 on eBay, so the label later printed more.

In 2017, “Mole In The Ground”, another previously unreleased recording, appeared on the compilation Hit The Hay Volume 9. In 2019, Eleventh Hour announced a compilation in the works that will feature Fox alongside other Cleveland-area artists. In 2021, Scat reissued Transit Byzantium on vinyl and CD.