David Wilcox Biography

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

Wilcox was born in Mentor, Ohio; He attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH in 1976 where he started learning guitar. He later transferred to Warren Wilson College in North Carolina in 1981 and graduated in 1985.

Within two years he had released his first album, and by 1989 he had signed with a major label. Three albums later, the major label released him, but he continued to tour and release albums.

In reviews his voice is perhaps most often compared with James Taylor, though a 1994 Acoustic Guitar cover story characterized it as Taylor combined with a "husky breathiness more reminiscent of the late Nick Drake." That article also called him the "best known of the brilliant crop of singer-songwriters to emerge in the late '80s."

Wilcox plays primarily acoustic guitar, and he was one of several prominent guitarists who popularized the Olson Guitar brand in the 1990s. His fingerstyle playing, influenced by Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell, utilizes open tuning extensively, often in combination with customized capos with notches cut out to allow lower strings to ring open.

His album Out Beyond Ideas is a joint project with his wife (Nance Pettit), and a significant diversion from his prior work. It features sacred poetry set to music. The poems are from people of various religious traditions: