The Liturgy of Mystery: David Wilcox at the Fitzgerald, St. Paul, MN

It’s hard to find a publicity photo of David Wilcox where he’s not pictured with his beloved Olson acoustic guitar. However, for the last two years, Olson has been semi-retired at a friend’s house, while Rainsong the Carbon Fiber Composite Acoustic Guitar has had to be the understudy. Rainsong’s appearance at St. Paul, Minnesota’s Fitzgerald Theater in November was immediately obvious.

Five songs into Wilcox’s set he simply had to level with us: “Olson has heart and soul, and this carbon fiber guitar has no heart and soul.” Rainsong then chose to go out of tune obstinately, which then elicited an apology from Wilcox. From there, Olson was still missed, but Rainsong proved to be up to the task.

Of course, Rainsong was working with great material.

From this wonderful body of work, Wilcox ends up selecting songs partly based on the feeling from the crowd. As soon as Wilcox walked on stage, you could tell it was his crowd to work with, an almost rowdy crowd (for a folk show). Talking with Wilcox on the phone the next day, he remarked how there was this “surprising energy” which meant he could do some “really fun songs.” “A time of celebration” and a “fun ride” were his other ways of describing what it was like in the Fitzgerald that night. With that, he launched into an extended version of “Start with the Ending,” including more and new stories from what he had been doing on previous tours.

The second song of the night was “Get On” from the new album, Vista. The guitar line doesn’t wander off too far into dreamy space before the chorus gets us on that train, bouncy shocks, a groove, and yet, because of its philosophical contemplations, the song appropriately doesn’t end on a resolving chord.

That unresolved chord might be an analogy for Wilcox’s theology which clearly remains Christian without demarcating it from other worldviews. A new song, “Three Brothers,” talks about a hope for peace in Jerusalem, merging that cities seemingly disparate faiths—Islam, Judaism, and Christian. It’s a song for the horizontal, this world peace among three faiths, but it might be a tough sell in many Christian contexts because it doesn’t mark out Christianity as the one truth.

Wilcox said in our conversation that he is Christian, but he thinks about his music as “a start of the journey.” “My openness about respecting everyone on their path is a tricky thing. If you find someone on the bottom, then you journey together.”

That invitation to journey certainly comes through in Wilcox’s live show. At times, I could almost see a liturgical order happening like how the Christian Church has traditionally ordered a worship service to follow a flow of theological ideas.

Yet, with Wilcox as “worship leader,” the liturgy is for those ready to journey; it’s not just the club. Those ready to journey are those ready to set aside their preconceived notions and see how the spiritual interacts with their souls. As Wilcox said, “A spiritual path without surrendering is like scuba diving without getting your hair wet.” Wilcox urged us to dive.

Liturgically, the service opened with “Start with the Ending,” what my denomination might call the “As We Gather” meditation point—a time to reflect on just what it means to come before God. In fact, even as that song reflects on the need to lay everything on the table at the beginning of a relationship, so that corresponds to the idea that worship begins in realizing that we die first in baptism, raised to life in Christ.

“Waffle House,” an old favorite on which Wilcox really played up the border tango tune, acts like a passing of the peace, seeing the fellowship we have amid the congregation of people who all have their struggles and needs. Then with “The Hard Part” (Vista) comes a reading from Song of Songs, God’s love song to His people, moving with that groove clip in the chorus. Wilcox said before he played the song, “This is a ferocious love song. This songs works on the horizontal [between two people], but I love to imagine it on the vertical coming from that big love. Hear it how it serves.”

What comes through this liturgical service of sorts is a greater sense of the mystery than perhaps most Sunday morning services allow. Even as opener Justin Roth (see below) and Peter Mayer really explore the ideas of mystery, the universe, and the mystical, Wilcox delves into these unknowns with a different kind of knowing. He’s being led on a journey, he’s not providing all of the answers, he’s not even pretending to have all of the answers, but there is a “big love,” a Creator behind the vista, a Someone who finds us (“How Did You Find Me Here”).

Wilcox closed the evening with a three-song encore. Returning to stage with another wild-eyed laughter that seemed even more surprised and enthusiastic on that evening, Wilcox’s guitar picked up on the initial energy in the Fitzgerald for “Eye of the Hurricane.” He followed this with “Rusty Old American Dream” and then closed with the Pierce Pettis co-write, “Great Big World.” These were the closing hymns, the fuel for the journey, the benediction and prayer sending us along to see the light.

Justin Roth
While a hometown boy, Justin Roth had never played the Fitzgerald and apparently had never been invited to be an opener for a more major artist like Wilcox. I last saw Roth opening for John Gorka in Cedarburg, and while Roth did not add any new originals to his set, he nevertheless set the stage well for Wilcox while also thrilling the audience with his guitar skills.

“Fatima’s Waltz” is a fingerboard instrumental with an Irish air. On “Savior,” Roth uses his right hand to strum as if playing the bone (an Irish drum) while his left hand adds guitar body rim shots.

With “Shine,” Roth is reaching for Peter Mayer’s way of being enamored with the natural world and cosmology. This makes sense seeing as how Roth said he wrote this song as he discovered the music community growing around him in Minneapolis. Although, considering that much of that community has been around longer than Roth, perhaps it is better to say that the music community that was there for Roth to grow into.

And he is—growing into that music community. Perhaps with his next recording effort, we may see Roth take another step towards widening his body of work and reach into the singer-songwriter world. For now, it was a pleasure to see his excitement on being on that beautiful Fitzgerald stage talking about being an usher there just nine years earlier. Making up his own verb, Roth said, “I don’t think I ushed enough times to know how good it is to stand in this place.”

Thanks to David Wilcox, What Are Records, and Justin Roth for the review CD.