David Wilcox Reflects on Wife's Death in Virginia Interview

David Wilcox spoke about his wife’s death last year after a recent performance in Virginia, turning a public interview into a direct look at how he is handling loss through music. The folk singer and songwriter has been making music since the 1980s, and the conversation placed that long run of introspective writing beside the most personal subject he has addressed in it.

Scott Tong in Virginia

Scott Tong spoke with Wilcox after the Virginia performance, where the exchange centered on grief, songwriting, and the way he uses music to work through what changed for him last year. Wilcox’s most recent album, The Way I Tell the Story, fits that framing closely: his songs chronicle life, and this time the life event is his wife’s death.

The Way I Tell the Story

Wilcox has been making music since the 1980s, which gives this interview weight beyond a single tour stop or one new song cycle. An artist with that kind of span usually earns attention for catalog and craft; here, the attention comes from seeing how he applies that craft to private loss without separating the two.

The friction in the story is built into the material itself. Wilcox is not talking around the grief or dressing it up as a generic artistic theme; he is discussing the death directly and tying the response to music, which puts the listener inside the process rather than outside it.

Last Year

Last year is the hinge in the piece, because that is when Wilcox’s wife died and the emotional center of the interview shifted. For readers following his work, the practical takeaway is simple: his new material and his public remarks now sit in the same frame, and The Way I Tell the Story reads less like a title than a working method.