An intimate concert with a soul-baring songwriter. Here’s what our Executive Editor Cara McDonald is loving this month.
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When I first heard David Wilcox sing “The Language of the Heart,” I felt some kind of way. In his gentle baritone and soul-baring lyrics, I’d found a sort of musical guide to life. His music was the soundtrack of my well-lived youth, going where I had yet to go but would follow—stories of life-altering decisions, soaring or broken heartedness, strong chemistry, the moments where everything changed.
Over the years the award-winning songwriter played them in auditoriums and chautauquas, festivals and outdoor concerts, big audiences riding a collective wave of energy. But an evening of music in an intimate venue lets you connect with an artist in a way no auditorium can; when I heard David was coming to The Alluvion in Traverse City, those old feelings swept back in.
On November 12, Wilcox finds his way to Northern Michigan in a moment of life reckoning; the Asheville, North Carolina, local is touring with Michigan musician Kyle Joe just weeks after the devastation of Hurricane Helene; there are things to be said, musically, human heart to human heart.
Photo by Lynne Harty
And there’s no more deliciously secret, acoustically sublime venue in the North to do it than The Alluvion, the purpose-built space in Traverse City’s Commongrounds center. Here, the artist and audience can connect—see each other’s facial expressions, feed off each other’s vibe. The goal of the space is to offer a rich variety of local music and culture with accessible tickets, mingling and community building. Oh, and good local beer. A tiny bar services the venue, which is often arranged cabaret-style with café tables, depending on the crowd size.
I spoke to Wilcox about his tour, and he shared thoughts on his upcoming gig at The Alluvion: “I think a really good venue has a focus. Not with size, but to do with how focused the attention is. When I’m in that experience of feeling that connection, it’s like you’re given a mantel—you are not just you, you’re given a role in this community. For the sake of that, we humans, as woo woo as it sounds, we invest that person with power. We give that person … not the leader role, but they are sensing the collective heart and able to reflect it, and mix it with this beautiful, lodestar navigation, a sense of where our yearning is leading us. My perception of when it’s really good in a venue is as if there’s less of me there, and I’m connected with a source of wonder and inspiration and humor and curiosity and I give myself permission to go there because that’s what we’re needing.”
His latest album, My Good Friends, offers songs like “Dead Man’s Phone” and “The Beautiful” that feel like miniature movies pulled from both the breathtaking and bizarre moments in life—songs, as Wilcox explains, about how to sustain yourself emotionally in these times. And they are just what we need.