David Wax Museum are the kind of band that confuses record store clerks. Are they filed under D, for David? Or M, for Museum? Even they weren’t quite sure—until this interview, when David himself finally settled it: “Straight from the horse’s mouth,” he said. “It’s going under D.”
Clarity achieved, they moved on to more pressing matters: playing Louisville’s WFPK Winter Wednesday, closing the night after Daniel Martin Moore’s golden-age album celebration. “And we’ve got a Louisville native in the band now,” David noted. “Our new electric guitarist, Charles Rivera—he’s from here. Lives in Brooklyn now. We gave him a pass tonight to see his family, but he’ll be onstage.”
It’s that kind of thoughtful, road-tested energy that runs through their 2015 album Guesthouse. The band had just played a stripped-down, kinetic version of the title track, which David calls “the most fun song we’ve ever played as a band.” The track mixes spiritual pondering (“The soul is a guest in the body / You gotta treat it right”) with lemon trees, corner stores, and the quiet desperation of asking for a place to crash.
But don’t call it “Mexican Americana,” or at least don’t lead with it. “I think you’ve been trying to get away from that a little bit,” I suggested.
David laughed. “Well, I don’t think it started out as, like, a conscious thing,” he said. “But yeah, that sound came from when I was living in Mexico in 2006–2007 studying folk music. And that was the freshest part when I came back. But now we’re five records in. I’m present in the American music scene. That Mexican influence is still there, just not as front-and-center.”
Which isn’t to say they’ve abandoned it—it’s still baked into the DNA of the live show, and they recorded more songs for Guesthouse than they actually released, including tracks in Spanish that didn’t make the cut. But, as David puts it, “This felt like a time to put out the strongest record—not the most ‘on-brand’ one.”
That desire to grow and not calcify into a single identity shows up in the songwriting, too. Take the back-to-back tracks “Young Man” and “Time Will Not Track Us Down,” both laced with a kind of hopeful weariness. “You okay?” I asked, mostly joking.
“We'eve never been better,” Suz Slezak laughed. But then she got serious. “We have a little girl now. We bring her on the road with us. So it has to be sustainable. It’s not just about doing something cool. It’s about: can we make this life work for the whole family?”
Parenthood didn’t make them ditch their ambitions, but it did recalibrate them. “I’ve always had this drive, this ambition. So has Suz [Slezak, his bandmate and wife]. But that ambition has to take a backseat to family.”
And still, the touring continues. “We love it,” they said. “We’ve toured with Old 97’s, Avett Brothers, Buena Vista Social Club—so we’re finding our audience. It’s a slow burn. We’re not commercial music. But stations like this, and listeners who really care… that’s who we’re making music for.”
It’s an honest reflection for a band that often finds itself re-introducing who they are with each new release. “Yeah, we’re five albums in,” David said. “But we still feel like the new guys in town sometimes. You just have to keep connecting.”
And when connection happens? Well, they sing it like they mean it. During “Singing To Me,” another track from the record, the whole performance felt like an act of personal reassurance—to themselves, to each other, to the crowd. “Hundreds of people in the crowd,” David sang, “but it don’t matter. I know this is rock and roll.”
It is. Just maybe not the kind that gets filed cleanly under any one letter.
Listen to the full interview above and then check out the video below.
