David Wax Museum, “one of Boston’s hottest new bands” (The Boston Globe), fuses exuberant Mexican roots music with homegrown country, folk and rock to create a unique Mexo-Americana sound. With Latin rhythms, call-and-response hollering, accordion pumping and donkey jawbone rattling, they have won over audiences across the country. After making a splash at this year’s Newport Folk Festival, NPR’s All Songs Considered featured their performance as one of the highlights of the festival. They have toured nationally with The Avett Brothers and the Old 97’s and shared the stage with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Ben Kweller, The Low Anthem and Nathaniel Rateliff. David Wax Museum receives consistent play on XM Sirius Radio's Acoustic Coffeehouse; The Boston Globe selected the band’s album Carpenter Bird for its top 10 local albums of 2009; and NPR recently featured them on a segment about Mexico-centric indie rock. A new album produced by Sam Kassirer (Josh Ritter, Langhorne Slim, Erin McKeown) will be released in February 2011. David Wax's circuitous journey from mid-Missouri to the back roads of Mexico inspires David Wax Museum’s lively blend of traditional Mexican and American folk music. While attending Deep Springs College, an unconventional school that doubles as a cattle ranch, David spent summers working in rural Mexico with the American Friends Service Committee. He finished his degree at Harvard University before heading back to the Mexican countryside to study folk music on a year-long fellowship. There he began blending Midwestern folk with the instruments, rhythms, lyrical themes, and song structures of son mexicano. Homeschooled on a farm in rural Virginia, Suz Slezak was raised within a strong music community. With a background in old time, Irish and classical genres, Suz helps anchor David Wax Museum firmly in American roots music with her fiddling and harmony vocals. She graduated from Wellesley College, traveled around the world on a Watson Fellowship to study textiles, and then found herself back in Boston where she met David Wax, just back from his Mexican travels. He convinced her to track down a donkey jawbone, a traditional percussion instrument from Veracruz, and join his band. Since 2007, David and Suz have formed the core of the band. In addition to consistently selling out historic venues such as Boston's Club Passim and touring with national acts, David Wax Museum has been causing a ruckus in living rooms and backyards throughout the country. In these unique settings, the band's fiery and heart-wrenching shows have created an undeniable buzz and a devoted following. David Wax Museum draws on a talented crop of musicians for recording and touring: David’s cousin Jordan Wax (People's Republic of Klezmerica) on accordion and piano, Mike Roberts (Wooden Dinosaur) on upright bass and electric guitar, Greg Glassman (The Sacred Shakers) on drum kit and requinto, Jiro Kokubu on mandolin and dobro, Alec Spiegleman (Cuddle Magic) on baritone sax and clarinet, Brian O'Neill on percussion and Sam D’Agostino on upright bass and tenor sax.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_MS12842
