6 FEBRUARY (7:30 pm): DAVID WAX & SUZ SLEZAK

7 February event at the Alexander Black House: tix available at http://artfullawyergallery.org/monkey-house-collaboration

David Wax and Suz Slezak visited Monkey House and Blacksburg on February 6 and 7!    Doors opened at 7:00; suggest eddonation: $10/15 per person.

Watch a video of the two of them. 

To kick off 2015, Monkey House Concerts partnered with the Artful Lawyer for two nights of music and fun.  Friday night was the first concert of 2015 at Monkey House with David and Suz.  Saturday night brought the entire band (David Wax Museum) to the Alexander Black House -- with catering from Cabo Fish Taco.

Their music has a vitality and uniqueness stemming from David's time living in Mexico.  

A review in the New Yorker said the bands--

“Kicks up a cloud of excitement with its high-energy border-crossing sensibility.”  

A review in Time explained they are a -- 

“Joyful Mexo-Americana fusion, with virtuosic musical skill and virtuous harmonies.” 

Wax told Weekend All Things Considered guest host Linda Wertheimer that the idea for David Wax Museum can be traced back to his days at Harvard University, where he studied Mexican history as an undergraduate. Harvard later gave him a fellowship to live in Mexico and study its music, which he started to use as the basis for original songs.



"It came together pretty naturally for me," he says. "Often, I would take songs that I was learning in Spanish, and I was still kind of having trouble with the words, so I would just make up my own words in English."

Slezak says she knows comparatively little about Mexican folk, but sees a lot of parallels between it and the old-time music she grew up singing and playing outside Charlottesville, Va.

"It's always a real communal activity," Slezak says. "People kind of chime in singing, the songs are very simple [and] very repetitive, and the rhythms are kind of the most important part - almost more important than the melody."

Tickets for Saturday's event at the Alexander Black House are available now at

http://artfullawyergallery.org/monkey-house-collaboration