Folk troubadour and 10-year Charlottesville resident David Wax befriended a fellow aspiring musician while studying at Harvard University. The students had a lot in common, Wax recalls, also having met briefly during high school trips to Washington, D.C., where they pursued their passion for politics.
The two friends did not go on to found the successful pop-Americana duo known as David Wax Museum.
Instead, Pete Buttigieg would abandon his musical aspirations and turn to public service, first acting as mayor of a midsize Midwestern city, then launching a splashy presidential bid, followed by an appointment as President Joe Biden’s Secretary of Transportation.
Wax ventured in a different direction, leaving behind his political aspirations and launching a journeyman music career.
After college, Wax won a fellowship that took him to southern Mexico to study its storied folk music tradition. He returned to the Boston area in 2007 with a deepened understanding of the traditional sounds, and a penchant for songwriting.
That’s when Wax met yet another aspiring musician, Suz Slezak, who would have a far more profound impact on his career. The pair launched a band, David Wax Museum, as a vehicle for Wax’s Latin-infused take on American folk.
Wax and Slezak fell in love on their first national tour in 2008. Today, they have two kids, more than 1,500 live shows to their credit, and an eighth album, You Must Change Your Life, that came out on May 5.
“We recorded it several years ago. A big part of this record has been waiting,” Slezak says. “So much of us changes day-to-day and month-to-month, and who we were when we made it was not who we are now, but … I can’t get tired of things that are rich and fun and danceable.”
The outcome has been hard won for Slezak, originally from Free Union, and Wax, of Missouri. The couple has steadily produced albums since forming David Wax Museum, the first in 2008 and six more over the next 11 years. They received national attention in 2010, winning a spot in the Newport Folk Festival, and critics acclaimed the band’s 2011 album Everything Is Saved and 2012’s Knock Knock Get Up. In 2015, Wax and Slezak came back with Guesthouse, which reached nine on the Billboard Heatseakers chart and 20 on the Billboard Americana/Folk Albums chart.
Along the way, David Wax Museum appeared on “CBS This Morning” and in an NPR Tiny Desk Concert, wrote songs for television, and shared stages with the The Avett Brothers, Old 97’s, Buena Vista Social Club, Guster, Josh Ritter, and The Wood Brothers. In 2018, the band played the wedding of Wax’s old college friend, Buttigieg.
Wax and Slezak settled in Charlottesville when they were pregnant with their first child in 2013. They’ve been residents ever since, and while touring as a band with young children in tow isn’t without difficulties, the biggest family crisis came just last year.
Late in 2022, Wax suffered what he’s described in statements as “a sudden and inexplicable collapse.” He doesn’t offer many details on the incident, largely because he still doesn’t have many. He was rushed to a hospital in his hometown of Columbia, Missouri, and given a cardiac catheterization to assess his condition. The culprit turned out not to be a heart attack, which doctors initially suspected.
“It’s still a little bit of a medical mystery,” Wax says. “I’ve been seeing just about every doctor in the UVA medical system and at Martha Jefferson. But I’m feeling good now.”
Wax has been given the green light to go back on tour with David Wax Museum. He and Slezak have been ramping up their efforts since February 26, when they opened for Los Lobos at The Paramount Theater.
“In my mind, it represents the culmination of a sound I’ve been chasing after for 15 years,” Wax says. “We were finally mature enough—or developed enough. We had the right team, the perfect producer. Everything had to come together for every song to hit in the right way.”
Produced by Dan Molad, who plays drums alongside Dirty Projectors singer Maia Friedman in Coco, and has produced records for the likes of JD McPherson, You Must Change Your Life transitions seamlessly from quirky pop anthems like the album’s title track to more traditional Museum canvases like “Luanne,” its first single. Indeed, the toe-tapping doesn’t stop much during the record’s 13-song tracklist.
Onstage, Wax says he’s been “walking on eggshells” for three months after his collapse, but David Wax Museum is emotionally recharged by You Must Change Your Life. As he lay in his hospital bed, Wax says he “felt at peace because this record exists.” Slezak agrees, saying waiting through the pandemic to release the new album now feels like the correct decision.
“I have to trust that this record is coming out at the right moment. Hopefully, this all means something,” she says. “I never listen to our older records, but I find myself listening to this one all the time. I feel like the messaging of the record and the way it makes us feel just never gets old.”