![]() In fact, a full third of our shows have been in the living rooms and backyards of fans around the country. Playing in so many different types of venues is actually one of the ways we've made a living as folk musicians since 2009, when I quit my job to go on the road full-time. With a backdrop of perfect New England foliage, we spent two chilly days from dawn to dusk singing our hearts out in a variety of locales: the back of the truck, downtown Boston, on and off the Red Line train, a grass maze, an old stately barn, and busy street corners in Harvard Square. "It was barely 40 degrees when we climbed into the back of the red pickup truck, teeth chattering, to film our first music video. Here, they talk about those influences and how they put this video together: ![]() Band members David Wax and Suz Slezak are inspired by the folk music of Mexico. This video features "Born With a Broken Heart," from the band's third album, Everything Is Saved. (There's a good story behind "Chuchumbe," a traditional song once banned by the Catholic Church in Mexico.) I even spotted some early Waxheads: two young women who'd also been at the Clearwater show and who seemed to know every word of every song from this band with no record-label promotion."Born With A Broken Heart" from Anthem Multimedia on Vimeo. Perhaps not ideal circumstances for a show, but the band was happy to be back in the Northeast after their recent van tour of Canada and cut through it all with songs that jumped from the raucous to the plaintive to the blasphemous. Just hours earlier, a man had waved a gun at window washers from his 11th floor apartment, sending police cars flocking to the street just behind the stage where the David Wax Museum was now playing. Upper-class parents looking for some free entertainment - no matter who or what-to take the kids to. I caught them again last week 40 miles down state at Madison Square Park in Manhattan. Front-porch music brought to the town center or Sunday picnic. When they step off the stage and wander among the crowd to sing an unamplified rendition of "Carpenter Bird," sure it's a bit of a performing gimmick, but it turns into a transcendent moment, taking us back to an earlier time either real or imagined. They are neither disaffected nor affected. It will be easy for some to dismiss the ethnomusicologist ventures of two students from elite, New England private schools, but this is an act that evokes sincerity in what they do and how they do it. What strikes you most about Wax and Slezak is the pure joy that emanates from their playing. Undeterred and clearly grateful for the opportunity, the Museum carved out a communal space for themselves and the few dozen who'd trucked over to see them. ![]() ![]() They played the smallest of the festival's stages late on Saturday as the booming sounds of the Felice Brothers from across the grounds threatened to drown them out. I first saw the band in June at the Clearwater Festival on the banks of the Hudson River. They enlist supporting musicians including Jordan Wax (David's cousin), Mike Roberts, Jiro Kokubu, and Greg Glassman to provide a full complement of percussion, bass, brass, and wind. Slezak provides the vocal response to Wax's call while adding mixing the Old Tyme sounds of her fiddle with another jarocho instrument, the quijada - literally, the jawbone of an ass. Wax is the lyricist, lead vocalist, and plays a mean jarana - a ukelele-sized eight-string instrument common to son jarocho. After having spent summers working in rural Mexico as part of a Quaker organization, Wax spent a graduate fellowship year in Veracruz studying some of the regional musical styles or sons ("sounds") of Mexico, including the local son jarocho, an up-tempo, syncopated form-the song "La Bamba" originally arose out of this tradition - along with the son traditions of Huasteco and Calentano that he also works into his music. He and Slezak met in the Boston area while he was attending Harvard and she Wellesley. They play what Wax has dubbed "Mexo-American" folk music, applying an alt-country spin on traditional Mexican music. The David Wax Museum consists of two permanent members: David Wax, a native of Columbia, Missouri, and Suz Slezak from Free Union, Virginia. ![]()
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