Sometimes all you need is Good Friends

Have you ever encountered a song that spoke to your soul and made you feel like it moved you differently? Deeply? That intangible magic is within David Wilcox’s music. Wilcox is an American folk singer-songwriter known for his ability to craft deeply personal yet universally relatable songs. On the website, you’ll find “Musical Medicine,” with pieces that can help heal emotional wounds and music that celebrates life’s beauty and encourages living in the present moment. In his latest release, My Good Friends Wilcox gets deeply vulnerable about the trials of time that led him to where he is today and the shaping and molding that these friends did.

“These songs grew out of conversations with friends, and they hold ideas that I like to have around. There are songs like PRIVILEGE and MY GOOD FRIENDS that remind me of how lucky I have been, and there are songs that are humbling for different reasons,” says David. “Songs like JOLT and CALLING IT BRAVE function like the rumble strip at the edge of the highway. And there are songs like TREE and JUST A TRACE OF LIGHT that offer a bigger perspective and a respite from the worry. And then there are story songs like DEAD MAN’S PHONE, THIS IS HOW IT ENDS, and LOST MAN that create a whole movie in my imagination. These songs have been good friends too. “

David has a practice of writing music. It is a way he connects and pulls himself through particular emotions, much like meditation. David explains his relationship with creating a song, “I think that’s a great word for it, although it doesn’t look like meditation, and it doesn’t sound like meditation, but I think it works in the same way. And for me, I’ll start by finding some musical thing that stirs my heart, and I’ll just be kind of playing that little chord progression or playing a particular melody and sort of exploring what it stirs up in me. Sometimes, I ask the question, if this were the soundtrack to a scene, what’s the scene?”

The music on Good Friends captures that. The ten song release has a delightful little diddy kind of feel. It takes you through scenes that even if the topics are heavy, the outcomes are you know, delightful feeling. David Wilcox compares his songwriting process to going to the eye doctor and trying different lenses. He judges his lyrics and music based on how they make him feel emotionally. Once he has an idea of the feeling, he thinks about the characters in the song and what their issue is to make it easier to write the story.

David says that by always judging by the emotion of it, the song comes out with an emotional integrity, an emotional sort of alignment, “And then sometimes I’ll get this idea of, I know what it feels like, but how do I tell the story? And then I’ll have to think, now, who’s the character? And the crucial question is in the song, who is speaking to whom and why?”

In fact, the way Wilcox feels about every tune on My Good Friends proves this is indeed a fan-requested labor of love. “I am grateful for the community that sustains me – my good friends,” he says. “These are the kind of friends that get you through difficult times. The kind of friends that you go to for a fresh perspective when the future looks grim. These songs grew out of conversations with friends, and they hold ideas that I like to have around.” If you want to know more about this album check out My Good Friends – The Guided Tour, a Spotify exclusive launch featuring commentary tracks for each of the songs.

See David perform on Saturday, January 27, 2024

8:00 PM 9:30 PM

Information and tickets: http://www.mccabes.com/concerts and 310-828-4497. Not available or in the area?

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