David Wilcox

David Patrick Wilcox (born March 9, 1958) is an American folk musician and singer-songwriter guitarist. He has been active in the music business since the late 1970s.

Career Wilcox was born in Mentor, Ohio, and attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1976, where he began learning guitar. He later transferred to Warren Wilson College in North Carolina in 1981 and graduated in 1985. Wilcox appeared regularly at a Black Mountain, North Carolina, nightclub called McDibbs. He has been a guest artist at guitar workshops. His lyrics are sometimes of the "probing meaning-of-life" type,

Wilcox plays acoustic guitars made by Olson Guitars. His fingerstyle playing, which is similar to Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell, extensively uses open tuning, often in combination with customized capos with notches cut out to allow lower strings to ring open. He has been featured in Performing Songwriter magazine on five occasions.

About his approach to music:

Music is about all the different kinds of feelings we can have – we can be scared, we can be angry, we can be hopeful, we can be sad. We can be all these things and have company in it. Music is sacred ground and it shouldn't be reduced to that kind of simplified demographic target-marketing.|David Wilcox, 1998 including Saint Francis of Assisi, Jalaludin Rumi, Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz, Rabia al Basri, Yehuda Halevi, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Uvavnuk, and Kabir.

During 2005 Wilcox traveled the country with his wife and teen-aged son in an Airstream trailer attached to a bio-diesel truck.

His Open Hand, produced by Seattle-based guitarist and producer Dan Phelps, was released in March 2009. Wilcox and Phelps were joined by longtime Tori Amos bassist Jon Evans and drummer James McAlister.

Wilcox is sometimes confused with Canadian rock and blues guitarist David Wilcox.

Although his albums have had diverse arrangements, Wilcox generally performs as a soloist.

Wilcox performed a benefit concert in Westfield, New Jersey for Coffee With Conscience in late spring of 2008.

He recently played a duet with James Landfair, a critically acclaimed folk musician based out of Little Rock, Arkansas, of Buddy Mondlock's song "The Kid." It was published on YouTube on February 21, 2013.

He won top honors in the 23rd Annual USA Songwriting Competition (2018) with his song "We Make The Way By Walking". He also won First Prize in the Folk category in the competition.

He has received criticism and accusations of bigotry, racism and xenophobia from those who do not appreciate the intent of his 2010 song "We Call It Freedom" which is written ironically to appear to support torture of prisoners in the war on terrorism.

In 2019 he covered "Why We Build The Wall" from Hadestown.

Critical reception A New York Times music critic wrote Wilcox has a "handful of sterling folk-pop songs, a genial voice and enough guitar virtuosity to make even his lesser material sound convincing." Another described him as a prolific songwriter and folk artist. Another wrote that he "sings with a mellow fluency that suggests a hybrid of Mr. Taylor and Kenny Rankin, but he has better enunciation than either." Critics describe his voice as having a "warm, expressive" quality One music critic wrote he was an "influential acoustic guitarist... the PBS darling of contemporary singer-songwriter folk."

Many of his songs analyze the dynamics of relationships in epigrammatic verses that are at once earnest and gently humorous. While many of Mr. Wilcox's songs have light blues inflections, occasionally they also look back in spirit to Tin Pan Alley. My Old Addiction, one of the most striking songs in his first set on Thursday, was a wry, wistful meditation on the tug of an old relationship that echoed Georgia on My Mind.|Music critic Stephen Holden in The New York Times, 1992 as well as Joni Mitchell and John Gorka.

One critic sensed Wilcox had a "boyish sensitivity" with "something to say about love, relationships and life" which is sung with "insight, humor and moments of profundity." However, the critic felt Wilcox needs to "get some excitement into his music and voice... His even-keel, generic style of singing, playing and music-writing isn't enough to keep the focus of the modern short attention span" and his songs lack "musical distinctiveness." The View From The Edge

Self-Released blaze

What Are Records? Mixtape, 1979–1982

Self-Released download only album Live at Eddie's Attic

Self-Released download only album Reverie

What Are Records?

Open Hand

What Are Records?

Airstream

What Are Records?

Vista

What Are Records?

Out Beyond Ideas

What Are Records?

with wife Nancy Pettit Into the Mystery

What Are Records?

Live Songs and Stories

What Are Records? Underneath

Vanguard

Turning Point

Koch, reissued on What Are Records?

recorded in log cabin behind his home East Asheville Hardware

Fresh Baked/Koch, reissued on What Are Records?

Big Horizon

A&M

Home Again

A&M

Mostly Live: An Authorized Bootleg

A&M

How Did You Find Me Here

A&M

sold over 100,000 copies by word of mouth Nightshift Watchman

Song of the Wood (1996 reissue by Fresh Baked/Koch)