Audio By Carbonatix
David Wilcox–known for his adventurous guitar tunings and sensitive-guy song stylings–seeks to take listeners to a higher plane not just musically, but personally. “I don’t mean to sound presumptuous, but there is some music that just kind of says, `We won’t solve these problems, but we can anesthetize,'” he notes. “And I think that my music looks for a solution that’s better in the long run.”
Indeed, whether you find Wilcox’s songwriting inspiring or insipid, there’s little doubt about the artist’s sincerity or his willingness to make public his most personal experiences. For example, he reveals that the brazenly confessional tune “Covert War” (addressed to parents who taught him “not to kick under the table–kick under your breath instead”) was never intended for public release. But he adds that, to his surprise, “It was the start of a lot of conversations that really made things a lot better” in his own family. In the hope that it might do other people some good, too, he included this moving selection on last year’s Home Again album.
While a conversation with Wilcox is apt to be peppered with phrases such as “harvest of joy,” he chuckles at the suggestion that his music is built upon a self-help agenda. “I think when it comes to doing `inside’ work, it’s no magic words that somebody gives you,” he says. “It’s just a matter of if you take the time and you have that focus, you can go in and heal stuff that takes up a lot of space in your heart.”
That’s pretty heady stuff for a rather sheepish-looking guy who admits that he was “invisible” during the years he attended a Mentor, Ohio, high school, and never thought much about music until he enrolled at tiny Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina. In fact, even after he borrowed an acoustic guitar from a friend and learned to master open tunings, he concedes, “I never sang. I just loved to play Joni Mitchell songs and get them exactly right, so that someone else could sing.” Since finding his own lilting, increasingly James Taylor-esque voice, Wilcox’s career began a slow, steady climb that brought him from college-town clubs to Nashville, and eventually to an A&M Records deal. Still, Wilcox recalls, it took a few gentle nudges from a boss at his day job in a cycle shop to convince him to pursue music full-time.
The most recent fruit of this decision is Wilcox’s just-released third album, Big Horizon. To the vocalist’s credit, the recording shows him progressing beyond the need for emotional escape and spiritual healing that dominated his previous discs. It also proves that he’s at his best when he doesn’t try too hard. The song “Block Dog,” for one, addresses this newlywed’s fears about getting married with a sense of playfulness that’s sure to set his fans’ Reebok-clad toes tapping. Wilcox says that because Horizon’s themes are lighter than those on Home Again, his most recent live performances have been a bit easier on him and his audiences, not to mention those intimates whose lives he previously laid bare in verse.
While songs featuring heavy topics such as the search for meaning in the universe and the addictive power of interpersonal relationships also get a workout on the latest disc, Wilcox’s best work in this area can be found on his first album, How Did You Find Me Here. The record’s “Eye of a Hurricane,” in which Wilcox uncharacteristically uses the third person in his account of a friend’s death in a motorcycle accident, has become a contemporary folk-pop classic. This may be the best song Wilcox will ever write, so perhaps comparisons are unfair. But while the new material is impressive, it isn’t at this level.
Nevertheless, Wilcox reports that his record label is very happy with the early response to Horizon, especially in this area. Thanks largely to radio support from Boulder’s KBCO-FM/97.3, he says, the album was the number-one seller in Denver during its first week of release. And if Wilcox’s past tours are any indication, the only performers who’ll be spending more time in Colorado than him already live here.
“I feel like it’s good for people,” Wilcox concludes about his music. “It sounds like a silly commercial for something to eat: `Tastes great, and it’s great for you.’ But I think that’s the truth.”
David Wilcox, with Kevin Montgomery. 9 p.m. Friday, March 18, Boulder Theater, 2032 14th Street, Boulder, $16, 290-TIXS; 9 p.m. Saturday, March 19, Ogden Theatre, 935 East Colfax, $16, 290-TIXS or 830-2525.
