David Wilcox: ‘Like a conversation with a friend’

David Wilcox's songs travel.

Like a drive across America in an Airstream trailer; they offer up fascinating new places and ideas, along with time to drink in their meaning. That's no coincidence, by the way: the highly regarded singer-songwriter recently returned from two years of traveling with his wife and son in an Airstream trailer.

"I thought, these songs were conceived and born in the trailer, why not record them there?" Wilcox said not long ago from his Asheville, N.C. home. Once we were home, we brought all the studio gear out into the Airstream and it sounded great.
At his personal half-century mark, Wilcox offers a thoughtful musical perspective informed by more than two decades of touring. Even during time spent traveling with wife Nance and son Nate in their shiny, vintage-appeal trailer, the in-demand performer broke off for periodic live shows. With this, his 13th album, he again delivers what his audiences want: music that connects with their hearts and souls, while opening new doors of experience.

“There are people that expect a lot from music,” he said. “It's like a conversation with a friend where you get reminded of you who are; it wakes up what's best in your heart.”

A native of Ohio, Wilcox has based his career out of the South since the 1980s, when he emerged as a live performer in North Carolina and won the music industry's attention in Nashville. After getting a taste of the major-label ride on A&M for three releases, he then recorded for other labels like Vanguard, and now he's releasing Airstream, his fourth CD on the Colorado-based independent, What Are Records? There's more than ever to sing about for Wilcox these days.

“I think this music could serve a lot of people”, he said, “But over the years I've made my peace that my job is the depth of experience, not how far it spreads.”

Airstream makes its distinctive musical and lyrical points with a range of contemporary styles, from folk balladry to acoustic soul and reggae. All could easily have inspired full-scale arrangements, but Wilcox chose to make a recording as intimate as his one-man shows - just his versatile baritone and agile guitar work.
“We decided to make this a voice-and-guitar record; even beautiful harmonies didn't make it to the mix,” he said. “The simple arrangements just worked best for this batch of songs.”

The ability to perform solo makes possible appearances such as a recent, last-minute trip to Africa, where Wilcox performed in Sudan at the country's first national day of prayer. Concern about national and international crises led to songs such as ‘Three Brothers’, a moving, allegory of Middle East turmoil; ‘Reaper Sweepstakes’, about the universal marketing of fear; and ‘Falling for It’, a biting satire of political deception.

“I was playing at the Birchmere and stuck it in the middle of the set”, Wilcox said of ‘Falling for It’. “But people stood up and applauded. They stood up and stayed up and kept applauding. It got to the point that, 'OK, I get it.”

Other tunes, such as ‘Forever Now’, are unabashedly romantic reflections of Wilcox's own life, or artistically flexible rewrites of same.

“Look what I found: the edges are brown/The picture of us in that old boardwalk town,” he sings in ‘Forever Now’, a tale of love lost, remembered and found.
Wilcox's gift allows him to make compelling music out of experiences as common as a parent's mixed joy and alarm about a teenager's first driver's license. In ‘This Old Car’ that passage becomes a parable of independence being born.

Overall, listeners with a taste for high musical quality and songs of nuanced expression will find much to celebrate while traveling along with Wilcox's Airstream. As Wilcox's career has evolved, in appearances everywhere from seminaries to theaters, and biker bars to yoga centers, he's found an audience ready to receive his particular brand of road wisdom.

“I have always chosen to play in settings where, at the end of the night, I am more hopeful about what music can do for the heart than I was at the beginning”, he said.

VISTA-era Biography:

For David Wilcox, all roads have led him to where he wanted to be. All the songs, all the shows, all the miles, all the struggles and triumphs and breakthroughs, have brought him here, to this particular spot, to this fine VISTA. The result is a joyous, musically diverse album that fully combines his deeply observant lyrical touch with music that moves the feet as well as the soul.

Co-produced with Ben Wisch, VISTA was recorded at home and mixed in Manhattan. It has the heart of an acoustic singer-songwriter record and the soul of a band of friends that have been playing together for years. "It's the groove these songs have that sets them apart from my other recordings," says Wilcox, "this is the soundtrack of how my life feels lately."

There's a reason so many of these songs are about joy and what it means to be really alive," David says. "There's been a change in perspective, how I see the world. These songs are fun and they offer a way of seeing this life as a heartfelt adventure. My favorite songs are the ones that have been to the depths of the darkness and shine a light on the way through." The music is a reflection of a life well-lived.

SMALLER HOUSE - BIGGER LIFE

David and wife Nance Pettit are on a two year journey, traveling with their 13 year-old son Nathan in a 28 foot Airstream trailer pulled by their bio diesel truck. "The idea was to show Nathan the country, but we've kept going longer than we expected because it's been such a wonderful experience," he says. "Nate's home-schooling lessons are drawn from where we go and who we meet. We don't know what each day will bring or where the path will lead, and the part we love best is following where we are led."

There has been a similiar awakening in his performances. "The gigs feel so much better because my reasons for doing what i do have become clearer," he explains. "I tune into what's unique about each night, each room of people in front of me. It feels like I'm getting out of the way and letting the music through."

"Music is sacred ground," David says. "It's a place where you have to tell the truth about what you've been through, who you are, and where you're going. I love how a good song can show you the world through someone else's eyes in three minutes." The life that VISTA shows us is down to earth and still dares to dream. It is inspired by travel and true love and a lifetime of loving music and following the longing of the heart until finally arriving at the vista."

"Out Beyond Ideas" Biography
After a total of 12 albums released between them, 11 for David (4 on A&M Records, 3 on Koch Records, 2 on Vanguard Records, and 2 on What Are Records?), and 1 for Nance, 1995’s Skin and Water, (Fresh Baked Records), it seemed somewhat inevitable that eventually they would do one together.

But they tell the story best:

“This is the blossom. It’s what all your music has been leading toward.” These words surprised us, but we couldn’t deny the way these poems seemed to mysteriously bloom into music. When we sang them for our friend Rich Hordinski who had produced David’s most recent CD, he said that he would love to work on this next one. We said that we didn’t have any plans to record the poems, they were just an offshoot of our love of singing together.

Someone had given us a collection of mystic poetry for Christmas, and in the evenings by the fire when our son was in bed, we had fun finding melody and chords that seemed to open up the meaning of these ancient poems. The arrangements evolved through singing them together round and round as we switched harmonies. The way they came to life was remarkable.

As the months went by, we had more and more poems ready to sing for friends. It became our private musings with the mystics in the midst of our busy day-to-day living. The process always surprises us, as if by climbing into these poems, they begin to show us the way they want to be written. Now they are beginning to show us how they want to be recorded.

Friends kept asking when could they hear it on CD? They offered to help. Great musicians offered to play on it, including drummer Bill Kreutzman of the Grateful Dead. Wow, this is clearly bigger than us. We got a strong feeling that this should not be for profit. These poems would live longer than we would, as they had already outlived forty generations before us. We imagined that the work these poems do in the world is measured not in units sold, but in centuries, and with that perspective, we wanted to donate our time and money and creativity to help that work.

These poems are from many traditions, including poems of Saint Francis of Assisi , Sufi Mystics Jalaludin Rumi and Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz, Rabia of Basra and poems from Jewish Mystical Poets Judiah Halevi and Solomon ibn Gabriol Uvavnuk, an Netsilik Inuit, Tukarum from India, and the Zen poets Dogen Kigen and Wu-men Hui-K’ai. As we sang the poetry of Jewish, Sufi, Christian, Hindu and Zen Buddhist mystics, we heard a common voice in their direct experiences with God. The language was very intimate, passionate, and present tense, using fresh images from everyday life. In a world where there is so much pain and hatred between these religious groups, these poems spoke of a shared experience of a LOVE bigger than all that.

The words of many poets go together well and the recording speaks with one voice. We wanted this collection to support a greater understanding of our common ground as humans seeking the divine, so we looked for an organization with a matching purpose to receive the proceeds. Our partner / beneficiary organization is Center for International Development and Conflict Management based out of the University of Maryland which works with local partners in vulnerable, high-risk countries around the world to help them build a sustainable, just and inclusive peace. Finding common ground across cultural, religious, ethnic and political divides, allows partners to collaborate to address human needs and promote constructive change. www.cidcm.umd.edu

Both Nance and David are taking a detour from their recent lives as a result of selling their home, many of their belongings and hitting the road with their 12 year old son, Nathan, for 18 months of travel in their Airstream trailer, pulled by their biodiesel truck, which has been modified to use waste vegetable oil as fuel. While traveling they plan to seek a new place to make a home upon the end of their travels; at which time Nance will return to her most recent vocation, accupuncture (www.nancepettit.com). She has had a wide range of previous vocations, such as psychotherapy, massage/body work, kayak instucting, river guiding and the aforementioned music efforts.

During their travels, they will be performing these mystic poems at select shows around the country to spread the word on this project. David will continue to tour as before doing solo shows comprised of music from his past releases as well as songs from an upcoming new release as well.