Those of you who caught the August edition of Philthy Radio, my monthly show for Y-Not Radio, heard me wish the Summer of 2025 a fine farewell with a block of summertime jams, including 2023’s “Summer Wrapped in Gold,” by David Wax Museum. The self-proclaimed “Mexo-Americana” outfit – at its core, comprised of husband/wife David Wax and Suz Slezak – are gearing up to return to Johnny Brenda’s for just about the umpteenth time next Thursday, August 28th, when they kick off a short run of dates behind last year’s Secret Creature. And I find out during a recent chat with David Wax that this might be the last time we see him and Suz with this particular project for a while. Read what else he had to tell me about recording the latest DWM full-length in a barn studio last summer with Cuddle Magic’s Alec Spiegelman, 10 years of their Guesthouse LP, and what the future holds for he and Suz.
Izzy Cihak: Your most recent album, Secret Creature, has been out for a little more than half a year now. Have you had any favorite reactions to the music so far? I feel like inviting an audience to the final session in the barn studio likely provided some immediate sense of how it was hitting people.
David Wax: Someone just wrote to say that she’s going to do her first dance at her wedding to “My Chosen One.” That’s about as good as it gets, that a listener wants to invite a song of ours into one of her seminal moments in life.
Funny enough, it was hard to get an immediate sense of folks’ reaction. We did indeed invite an audience to attend the final evening of the recording sessions and seated them encircling us in the balcony of the studio. Unfortunately, it was August, and we had to turn off the AC in the studio. So the audience was sweating it up. On top of their physical discomfort, we asked them to be as quiet as possible during the recording sessions because we were essentially making a live record. I think everyone had a beautiful experience with that bird’s eye view of a session in progress, but it was interesting to be in both performance mode and recording mode. Usually those are two very distinct ways of being for me.
Izzy: Was doing the barn record along the lines of what you were expecting, or was the point to more or less go with the flow and see what the environment offered?
David: A lot of the process was developed as a reaction or antidote to the experience of making the previous two records we cut with producer Alec Spiegelman. Both Euphoric Ouroboric and Remember My Future were pandemic-era creations, made remotely. On those records nothing was recorded simultaneously; we were never in the same room with any of the musicians. We learned so much from that process, but we were ready to try something new. Moreover, we wanted to embrace the fact that we now have a beautiful recording studio and to lean into its unique sonic signature. So we hung microphones from the top of the studio barn cupola to capture the natural reverb of the space and then proceeded to record live performances of the songs without the use of headphones and with minimal overdubs. To make this possible, we needed a quiet drummer, and Alec enlisted his frequent collaborator Jeremy Gustin, a supremely sensitive and intuitive musician. So we were all able to face each other on the main floor of the studio and perform the songs together as we would during a rehearsal or a house concert. In this way, it felt like we were truly making a document of a moment in time.
Izzy: Yeah, I knew you’d worked with Alec Spiegelman before, and I love Cuddle Magic (and have covered them in the past), and a few years ago I got to know Kristin and Cole with mmeadows (who I totally love, both as a band and people). What do you feel like Alec brings to your sound and your sessions? How would you characterize your process of working together?
David: We’ve been making music with Alec in one way or another for almost 15 years. He’s a phenomenal musician and yet his high level of musicianship doesn’t make him judgmental about others. Instead, he has this deep appreciation and understanding of everyone’s idiosyncrasies. And he has a beautiful way of validating those eccentricities. That’s made him a great collaborator, because it has let me and Suz slowly come into our own as singers and players without feeling too self-conscious about being with such a gifted player like Alec.
Alec has played many roles in the band over the years, but before making Secret Creature, he had transitioned to being the “bass player” again with his bass clarinet. And so we leaned into that particular sonic role for this project. It’s not very common for a bass clarinetist to handle the low end of a folk-rock band, but I love how it gives this record its own distinct sound.
Izzy: Do you currently have a favorite album track, whether one that you’re most proud of, one that’s especially satisfying to play live, or one that might embody a sound that you want to further explore in the near future?
David: This isn’t a released track, but it’s what first comes to mind. I was recently out in Los Angeles working on a follow-up record to You Must Change Your Life with producer Dan Molad (of Lucius). We were tracking this new song called “Bird’s Eye English,” and I felt like we were stumbling across a whole new sonic palette for me. I was singing as softly as possible while experimenting with an open D tuning on the guitar. We doubled both the vocal and the guitar to give it all a hazy halo. And then Molad came up with this amazing piano part that sounded like something a sequencer would generate. I remember thinking, “This is the coolest sounding thing I’ve ever been a part of.” That was an exhilarating feeling and explains why I’m back in the studio with Molad. His sonic sensibilities feel electrifying to me.
Izzy: You’re gearing up to return to Johnny Brenda’s, which you’ve played a lot over the years. What do you think about the venue? Any favorite memories?
David: We love Johnny Brenda’s. It’s honestly one of our favorite venues in the country. The design of the space (with the balcony so close overhead) creates a really intimate feel for the performers and the audience. We once played there for New Year’s Eve when Suz was quite pregnant with our second child. At the stroke of midnight, she lifted her dress and poured a bottle of champagne over her pregnant belly. Hard to top that!
Izzy: You’re actually kicking off this upcoming run of dates at Johnny Brenda’s. What can be expected of the live show on this tour? I have to admit, it was a few appearances ago at Johnny Brenda’s the last time I saw you.
David: We’ve been performing mostly as a quartet these days with Sam D’Agostino on upright bass and Rob Dunnenberger on drums. After the bigger, more bombastic versions of the band (with horns and electric guitar), we’ve been trying to refocus on the acoustic core of the project, making sure the vocals and harmonies really come through and that Suz can fully express all her dynamism on fiddle and accordion. Suz and I really refocused on the core duo at the heart of the band and then have rebuilt the band with that at the center. I think it’s created a show that is more inviting, dynamic, and warm.
Izzy: Not to detract from the new music, but I just realized Guesthouse is gearing up to turn 10 this coming October. What your thoughts are on the collection a decade later? I just realized it’s your highest charting release.
David: I’ve been reflecting on how fertile that period was for us as a band (with cousin Jordan Wax, Greg Glassman, and Philip Mayer) and how expansive that recording session was. We ended up deciding to save some of the songs for a B-sides record, Electric Artifacts, and a Spanish EP, A La Rumba Rumba. I’ve recently been toying with the idea of digitally releasing the complete Guesthouse sessions with all of those songs included. It felt somewhat arbitrary to decide which songs in the batch would be Guesthouse, and I feel like the record as such doesn’t authentically capture what took place during those sessions in Woodstock, New York. That said, I’m thrilled that the album has had staying power (especially thanks to “Guesthouse” and “Every Time Katie”). The producer, Josh Kaufman, and engineer, D. James Goodwin, are two powerhouses, and I feel like we caught them at a perfect moment in their career. For the last ten years, they’ve been crushing it with one great record after another.
Izzy: Do you have any particularly vivid memories of that album cycle, whether writing, recording, or touring and promoting it?
David: I feel awash in memories from that period, but one particularly poignant one — I was in a bike accident and so was laid up on the couch. I started riffing on this traditional son jarocho song, “El Buscapies,” on the jarana. At the time, we were just getting settled into life in Suz’s hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, with our infant child, and I was reflecting on the path not taken, the one that would have involved a move to Los Angeles. I started singing “Can I stay in your guesthouse?” and Suz walked in the room and told me I was onto something, to keep going. If Suz hadn’t said anything, I might have thought it was just a throwaway line. It was the final song written for the record, and I was still tweaking the lyrics and the band was still developing the arrangement up until the last minute with that song.
Izzy: I apologize for another question about an older track, but I’ll be promoting the Johnny Brenda’s show on the August edition of Philthy Radio, my monthly show for Y-Not Radio, and spinning “Summer Wrapped In Gold” during a block of “summertime jams” from artists I know and or love who will be coming through town soon (It’s between “August” by Rilo Kiley and “Summer Girl” by HAIM.), so I’m curious how that song originally came about, and also how you currently feel about it?
David: I love that song and appreciate the question. “Summer Wrapped in Gold” explores the tensions around falling in love with a culture that is not your own and trying to find a way to translate that experience back into your own world. I was in dialogue with Euphoria (a gorgeous book by Lily King about the anthropologist Margaret Mead) and Los Pasos Perdidos by the great Cuban pioneer of magical realism Alejo Carpentier, whose narrator travels to an indigenous Venezuelan village to study their old instruments, falls in love with a woman there, and then tries to find a village again after renouncing his urban life. But Carpentier’s protagonist can never retrace his steps and find the village again. Appropriately, “Summer Wrapped in Gold” is based on a centuries-old song “La Indita” about indigenous women, and I wanted the song itself (not just the lyrics) to be a commentary on this struggle. We took the traditional Mexican bass lines of the tuba and reimagining them for electric bass and baritone sax, threw a keychain full of keys into the grand piano to create the off-kilter jangle throughout the song, and then stacked these magnificent counter-melody backing vocals reminiscent of Sufjan Stevens to color the choruses, even after the lyrics cut out on the last chorus. There are lyrical references throughout to son jarocho, as the singer (a hybrid of myself and the composer in Los Pasos Perdidos) tries to reconcile the sounds in his head that remain from his journey with the push and pull of modern life.
Izzy: You don’t have a ton of upcoming live dates, but what do you have planned for the near future, after these dates wrap? Is there anything you’re especially excited about?
David: Our focus of late has been turned towards a new band of ours that we started with our dear friends Daniel and Lauren Goans (of Lowland Hum). Seven years ago, the four of us developed an immersive musical experience called Golden Hour in which the audience is blindfolded, and the performers move throughout the space. We recently wrote and recorded a record of songs for Golden Hour and, through that process, realized we were becoming a proper band. After 18 years of focusing on the David Wax Museum, it’s been a welcome change to turn our energy in the direction of this new collaboration.
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**Listen for “Summer Wrapped in Gold” on the latest edition of Philthy Radio, now streaming.
