One Foot on the Path, One Foot in the Wilderness
Steve Rabey
July 1, 1999
Whatever path David Wilcox has chosen, he seems destined not to have been mainstream. He had planned on being a plumber, and even considered attending seminary for a spell, but instead, a twenty-seven-year-old Wilcox followed his heart and set out on an idiosyncratic musical career that has drawn praises from critics and a growing legion of loyal fans. "I just go where the music leads, and that's what I have pretty much done my whole life," says Wilcox, now forty-two, during two interviews, one before a concert at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the other while riding in a van with manager Tom Simonson between club gigs in Atlanta and Chattanooga.Many listeners compare Wilcox to James Taylor, the fifty-something godfather of the sensitive singer-songwriter school, and there are certainly times when Wilcox's soft, rich voice and crisp, subtle acoustic guitar do sound like Taylor's. But conversations with Wilcox are more like wild and unpredictable trips around a playground with a precocious and irrepressible child. Gracious and enthusiastic, Wilcox's mind darts through topics in a cavalcade of words and images. He is happy yet disturbed, an artist willing to risk and also willing to face his own music. But don't dare call Wilcox's work "Christian music" unless you're ready for the inevitable. "Christian music is all about marketing something, aiming at a demographic, and making that comfortable for them," says Wilcox, warming up to rant against the constricting cocoons of contemporary Christian music, religious broadcasting, and other precincts of the evangelical subcultural ghetto. "When you look at Christian music, it is being used to sell advertising (on Christian radio stations). If you're marketing something ...
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