![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/david_wilcox.jpg\")
Photo by Lynne Harty<\/p><\/div>\n
The Cleveland-born Wilcox easily acclimated to the Asheville area. His debut album, The Nightshift Watchman,<\/i> was released in 1987, two years after his graduation. He landed a deal with A&M soon thereafter. And even those early recordings display the ways in which Wilcox absorbed the character of his adopted home. \u201cSubtle aspects of your personality are brought out by different locations,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd for me, there\u2019s something about this<\/i> land: the friendliness of these mountains. There is something about my psyche that just sort of feels at home in these hills,\u201d Wilcox concludes. That easygoing and warm character is a foundational quality of Wilcox’s primarily acoustic-based music, and it’s on brilliant display on the 13 songs of The View from the Edge<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Wilcox was a regular performer at McDibbs in Black Mountain up until its closing in 1992. That scene \u201cmade it possible for me to be a musician,\u201d he says. He saw and heard many other musicians come through town. \u201cIt was great to be inspired by a lot of different performers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilcox got to know and become friends with McDibbs owner David Peele. \u201cI offered myself as a last-minute call [whenever] somebody couldn’t make it,\u201d he recalls. \u201cIf they wanted somebody to fill in, I would run over and start playing my guitar.\u201d<\/p>\n
The singer-guitarist began to develop a following, and leveraged that into a plan. \u201cMcDibbs used to be open Wednesday through Saturday,\u201d Wilcox says. \u201cI asked David, ‘What if you opened on Tuesday, and made it super-cheap?’\u201d His idea was to use Tuesday nights as a platform to practice onstage while further refining his performance chops. <\/p>\n
Peele liked the idea, but didn’t care for the low-cost angle. He had a better idea. \u201cSo we made this big sign that said, ‘Unconditional Money-back Guarantee,\u201d Wilcox recalls with a laugh. And the gambit worked: in all the time that Wilcox played those Tuesday nights at McDibbs, only one customer ever asked for a refund. And when Peele held out his hand with the cash, the customer laughed and waved him off. \u201cI just wanted to see if you’d do it,\u201d he told the music house owner.<\/p>\n
Wilcox’s music would continue to flourish in the welcoming atmosphere of Western North Carolina, and his songs continue to draw some of their character from the local vibe. He compares Asheville to the so-called Music City of Nashville, Tenn.: \u201cHere, it’s totally the opposite of a town where there’s a ‘music industry,’\u201d he says. \u201cYou’re not here for that. You’re here to play for the people.\u201d He says that means that the music and performance must be \u201cmore personal and accountable to the people who come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilcox says that when he’s onstage locally, he enjoys \u201cbeing immersed in the energy of that particular night. I let the music be shaped by that.\u201d He says there’s something special about playing his original music for a local audience. \u201cWhen I’m done playing and I’m packing up my guitar,\u201d he says, \u201cI always feel like it was worth it in terms of: ‘Do I feel better about music in general? Do I feel better about what’s possible when I am brave with other humans?’<\/p>\n
\u201cI just get more optimistic after a good gig in Asheville,\u201d Wilcox says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
David Wilcox didn’t start his life in Western North Carolina, but once the singer-songwriter discovered the region, he knew he had found his home. Thirty-seven years and twenty-plus albums later, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14797,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,39,41,49,51],"tags":[237,3473],"class_list":["post-14796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-folk","category-indie","category-interview","category-new-release","category-pop","tag-asheville","tag-david-wilcox","cat-30-id","cat-39-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14798,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14796\/revisions\/14798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}