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David Wax Museum – 4/26
April 26 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
In the presence of the strange digital drone of hospital machines, David Wax’s thoughts turned to 13 songs and the changes they give voice to.
After suddenly and inexplicably collapsing, Wax—half of David Wax Museum alongside wife and bandmate Suz Slezak—was headed for a heart catheterization in his hometown of Columbia, Missouri, his doctors suspecting a heart attack.
At a moment with more questions than answers, he hurriedly signed his name to a waiver—and was struck by a revelation. “Lying there on that stretcher the thing that kept running through my mind was: at least we made You Must Change Your Life,” Wax recalls. “Whatever else happened, I felt at peace because this record exists.”
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The album is an openhearted manifesto – a collection that embodies, then transcends bedrock elements of the band’s 15-year recording career. For Wax, music has guided every step he holds sacred; he’s followed its palpable power, abiding by its requisite unpredictability. After graduating at the top of his class at Harvard, he wandered off an academic path to southern Mexico, finding what he calls “a clear before/after moment in my life.” There, he studied folk music “at the feet of the masters” and internalized structures and rhythms that continue to drive the band today.
He and Slezak fell in love on their first national tour, setting in motion a future full of vivid waking dreams. Together (now with their two children in tow) they’ve logged 1,500 shows in every corner of the globe.
From the back of a pick-up truck in Nome, Alaska at a solstice parade, to a surreal moment in a tent filled with a thousand Czechs hollering along to their iconic song “Harder Before It Gets Easier,” these dreams continue to unfold for Wax and Slezak. Their latest effort encapsulates this wildly winding spirit and delivers the past-, present- and future-tense promises Wax and Slezak consider their shared purpose as musicians.
“This is one infectious band” — NPR MUSIC
To borrow lyrics from early highlight “Luanne,” the duo’s life—just like the album—is a shape-shifter, fate-twister, truth-sifter, dream-drifter, seam-ripper. In this way, the album is fit for a world tilted off its axis, colored by a collective resistance to old norms. Wax and Slezak give listeners permission to answer the whispers around and within them – Be patient / Don’t tell me that you’re unworthy—affirming and exhorting the pursuit of new ways of living.
During this season of oddly borrowed time, Slezak crafted her NPR-praised solo debut, Our Wings May Be Featherless, and initiated what she calls a “rebalancing” of her own creativity. The result—her power—is undiluted. On You Must Change Your Life, Slezak is a choir, a conscience, an instrumental trailblazer. And when she takes the lead on “Go Break Some Hearts,” she delivers a dazzling, dreamy innocence, evoking a kinder, gentler likeness of David Lynch’s iconic Twin Peaks soundtrack.
“A band that joyfully celebrates and preserves the heart of Americana music.” — WORLD CAFE
DOORS: 5:30PM SHOWTIME: 7PM
TICKET OPTIONS:
We have 3 tiers of ticket options:
Tier 1 – (YELLOW) – Most expensive tickets. Regular height tables for two around the stage and single barstools at the bar.
Tier 2 – (BLUE) – Mid-priced tickets. High and low tables for two with excellent sight lines – particularly the high tables.
Tier 3 – (LAVENDER) – Least expensive tickets. Two low tables for two (15 & 16), plus (potentially shared) high tables for single attendees (25, 26, 27)
Green squares/circles on the floor plan are bar-height tables, orange squares are regular-height tables.
