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Event
Cafe Veritas presents David Wilcox
If you're familiar with David Wilcox's music, no description is necessary. If you're not Gary Jules has a good description of why you want to be:
For most of us who are referred to as "singer-songwriters", there is more to a good song than just words, music, and performance. Each is beyond important of course but, to pummel the clich yet again, we want the whole (song) to be greater than the sum of its parts (words, music, and performance). With really good singer-songwriters, these three elements become akin almost to the three dimensions of the physical world - a well-written song performed by someone who is really feeling it becomes a real "thing". Recordings, then, are like photographs of "things". Yeah, like Pinnochio, only with feelings.
David Wilcox is just this kind of singer and songwriter, and the songs on Open Hand exemplify perfectly what can happen when the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts. The first song I heard from this collection was Winter at the Shore. The opening chords move simply and inevitably toward their resolution, like seasons. At one point before the vocal starts, it sounds as if Dave's fingers might just stop playing. But they can't. The approaching resolution is . . . inevitable, as the passing of time. The images are pregnant. "The ghost of you/ dances through/ the memories of this town". Winter in a beach town means "off season". I think most days of a life are "off season", though we rarely take pictures on those days. Songs remind us to. Eleven words in it's already a sonic photograph of a magical world -- the passing away manifest in chords, fragility in the performance, the story on the way.
ne of my favorite quotes is from Alexander Pope's An Essay On Criticism:
"True wit is nature to advantage dressed/
What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed".
That's really the gig with songwriting. You talk about experiences that folks will find familiar to their own experience, though nobody's ever talked about it before. Kinda like when Seinfeld says "did you ever notice how . . . ".
Each of us has returned to the scene of a sunny memory of a loved one to find Winter and ghosts . . . we've oft thought of it, but ne'er heard it so well expressed.
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LocationCafe Veritas
220 Winton Rd. South
Rochester, NY
United States
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| Kid Friendly: No |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: No |
| Wheelchair Accessible: No |
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