David Wilcox

David Patrick Wilcox (born March 9, 1958 ) is an American folk musician and singer-songwriter guitarist.

Wilcox was born in Mentor, Ohio, and attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1976, where he began learning guitar.

He has been active in the music business since the late 1980s.

Wilcox also appeared on the cover of Acoustic Guitar, which described him as James Taylor combined with the "husky breathiness more reminiscent of the late Nick Drake" and said he was the "best known of the brilliant crop of singer-songwriters to emerge in the late 1980s."

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.

His debut album The Nightshift Watchman was released in 1987 on Jerry Read Smith's label, Song of the Woods, and was reissued in 1996.

He began touring regularly.

After performing at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, he signed with A&M Records in 1989.

He made several albums with this label.

His albums were described by one Rolling Stone critic as "unjustly neglected".

He was based in Asheville, North Carolina in the 1990s, in Washington, D.C., and Maryland in 1999–2000, and again in Asheville in 2009.

After his contract with A&M expired in 1994, Wilcox continued to write songs, tour and release albums.

In 1994, he performed at Carnegie Hall with thirty other singer-songwriters in a showcase event.

In the next decade, Wilcox continued to release albums, including Into the Mystery in 2003.

He has been a guest artist at guitar workshops.

His lyrics are sometimes of the "probing meaning-of-life" type, as well as "thought-provoking".

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."

"The song has to offer something universal. I want songs that people can understand the first time... I write songs with layers in them, so they stay interesting over the years."

His 2005 album Out Beyond Ideas was a joint project with his wife Nance Pettit, described as a significant diversion from prior work, featuring sacred poetry set to music from different religious traditions, 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.

He named one of his albums Airstream.

His album Vista was released in April 2006.

In 2008 Wilcox was honored with a silver award along with Bob Dylan, in Acoustic Guitar's singer-songwriter category.

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."

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.

He has released 16 albums.

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.

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.

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