Britny Fox formed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1985, emerging from the same fertile glam metal scene that produced Cinderella. The band was originally fronted by lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist "Dizzy" Dean Davidson, and also featured Billy Childs on bass, former Cinderella guitarist Michael Kelly Smith on lead guitar, and former Cinderella drummer Tony Destra on drums. The idea for the band's name was inspired by Davidson, who named the band in honor of a Welsh ancestor. Their sound and image drew heavily from the flashy, theatrical style of the era, and they were described on a compilation as "trashy Victorian glam," with their connections to Cinderella helping them secure a major recording contract. The band's breakthrough came with its self-titled debut album in 1988, a defining moment of the era's hair metal explosion. The band's self-titled debut album, released in 1988, was one of the most successful premieres of the 1988-89 season, selling more than one million copies and bringing more than 625,000 fans to their 130+ shows opening for Poison and Warrant. They also won Metal Edge Magazine's 1988 Reader's Choice Award for Best New Band. Their eponymous debut album reached the #31 slot on the Billboard 200 top albums chart and included headbanging classics "Girlschool" and "Long Way to Love". The lineup of Davidson, Smith, Childs, and drummer Johnny Dee carried the band through this peak period of MTV airplay and arena support slots.
Following that early success, Britny Fox underwent significant changes. After the release of the band's second album in 1989, Boys in Heat, Davidson departed and formed the band Blackeyed Susan, and was replaced by Las Vegas native Tommy Paris aka Don Jillson, formerly of the band Jillson. Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde and Poison drummer Rikki Rockett guested on the band's third album, Bite Down Hard, released in 1991, though the popularity of glam metal was on a decline around this time as grunge rose to prominence, leading the band to disband in 1992. Britny Fox would reform multiple times in the decades that followed, reuniting from 2000 to 2003 and releasing a fourth studio album, and later reforming again from 2006 to 2008, when the band toured the US and Europe in 2007 and 2008 . Throughout all these changes, bassist Billy Childs remained the only band member to be a part of each of the band's many lineups , and the group's legacy was later affirmed when in 2020, Jeff Mezydlo of Yardbarker included them in his list of "the 20 greatest hair metal bands of all time." Britny Fox continued to reform periodically in the years since, with further activity in 2015 and beyond under various configurations of members, keeping the band's name alive for new generations of hair metal fans even as the lineup around Billy Childs continued to shift. Decades after their debut shook up the Philadelphia scene and beyond, the band remains a touchstone of the late-1980s glam metal boom, remembered for its theatrical energy, its ties to Cinderella, and hits that still populate hair metal retrospectives today.
It was during one of these reunion-era tours that Wayne Dennon captured Britny Fox through his lens, photographing the band at a single show in 2008 as part of his ongoing documentation of the live music scene. That night's performance left behind 26 photographs now preserved in this archive, images that have since been viewed 20,915 times by visitors revisiting the era of big hair and bigger choruses. As with so many of the acts Wayne photographed over the years, this small but enduring collection stands as a quiet piece of concert history, a single night's work that continues to connect fans to a band that helped define a sound.
