David Wilcox scores big in show for Indy Acoustic Cafe Series

Until last Saturday, it had been almost 10 months since I'd attended a concert in the long-running Indy Acoustic Cafe Series. I'd missed all the shows in the fall portion of the current season, and because series coordinator Mark Butterfield was bringing back David Wilcox this month -- Wilcox's first visit to the series in three years -- I decided to try and make it.

Wilcox delivered a great show to a sellout audience at the Wheeler Arts Community in Fountain Square, offering a mix of fun, quirky and serious tunes that had the audience warming to him increasingly with each song. It helped that he set up many of the songs with back stories, and many of the anecdotes were laced with life-experience humor.

He introduced one of those songs -- a serious reflection on fatherhood based on his relationship with his own father -- with a humorous story involving his then-very-young son Nate (now a college student) and the boy's fascination with a toy light saber. Wilcox animated Nate's motions, using his forearm to slice the air, delighting the crowd (see second and third pictures below).

In one of his promotional emails before the show, Butterfield had said this would be Wilcox's last visit to the series. He didn't explain how he knew that, or if Wilcox had told him he wouldn't be back, but after Saturday's show, I don't see how Wilcox could avoid Indy in the future unless he simply stops doing tours.

A full gallery of pictures from the show can be found at my SmugMug site.