David Wilcox

folk · americana · folk rock

David Wilcox is an American folk singer-songwriter and acoustic guitarist, born March 9, 1958 in Mentor, Ohio and based in Asheville, North Carolina. He took up the guitar in 1976 while attending Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, then transferred to Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, graduating in 1985, and built an early following through regular appearances at McDibbs, a nightclub in nearby Black Mountain. His debut album, The Nightshift Watchman, appeared in 1987, and after a set at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe he signed with A&M Records in 1989, releasing How Did You Find Me Here that year and Big Horizon in 1994 before the contract expired. He has recorded steadily since, among the titles Underneath (1999), Into the Mystery (2003), Vista (2006), Open Hand (2009), Reverie (2010), blaze (2014), The View From The Edge (2018) and My Good Friends (2023), latterly for the independent label What Are Records? Wilcox performs solo on Olson guitars, fingerpicking across a wide range of open and altered tunings with customised capos, and his concerts are built as much on spoken storytelling between songs as on the songs themselves. Critics have placed his writing between the melodic directness of James Taylor and the introspection of Nick Drake, and describe it as philosophical rather than confessional. In 2008 Acoustic Guitar magazine gave him a silver award in its readers' poll, in company with Bob Dylan, and he took top honours in the 2018 USA Songwriting Competition. He works mainly as a solo touring performer in folk clubs, listening rooms and small theatres, a circuit that includes One Longfellow Square in Portland, Maine.

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