Jon Wilcox: Montecito Journal Article

Local People: Jon Wilcox

by Steven Libowitz

It doesn't happen often, but people can be forgiven if they accuse Jon Wilcox of being too wordy. After all, the Santa Barbara native and longtime Montecito-based singer-songwriter was once a lawyer.

A talented lawyer/musician

    There was always music in his life, dating back to days in the glee club at Santa Barbara High where David Crosby was a colleague. But, that was in the '60s, and Wilcox needed to heed his social consciousness. As an undergraduate at Stanford, he prepared for a career in international relations, hoping to change the world by bringing understanding to different cultures. He didn't get into Princeton's prestigious Woodrow Wilson School though, and "settled" instead for his fallback opportunity at Stanford Law School.
    "I did really well on the verbal parts. I've always been a wordy guy," he recalls, sitting in the spacious backyard of the comfortable School House Road home he shares with wife Mary, and their children, Daniel, 10, and Megan, 6, both of whom attend Montecito Union. "But I gradually got more and more alienated," he adds.
    It was a time when it seemed that one could accomplish more with a guitar than a pen, and music was calling. After haunting the Bay Area folk club scene while still a student, Wilcox had moved south and was already working as a lawyer for VISTA when he found out he hadn't passed the bar because of a lack of preparation. He never tried again.

[Jon Wilcox in the 70s]

"Close to Home" was Jon Wicox's big 1970s album.

A '70s Songbook

    "Those times shaped people in serious ways," Wilcox recalls. "By then, I was writing lots of songs and going to the Troubadour (the famed Los Angeles folk club) five times a week. I remember seeing James Taylor four times in one week back in 1969. Everybody played there. I met Jackson Browne in a studio in L. A., but he doesn't remember."
    As the new decade approached, Wilcox drifted around the country, guitar and songbook in hand. He settled on the East Coast for a while, where he made a decent living playing the nearby clubs in the congested corridor. He also put out his first album on the Folk Legacy label. He returned to the area in the mid-'70s during the heyday for folk music in Santa Barbara. What with the Cache Valley Drifters, Peter Feldmann's groups and singer-songwriters like Alan Thornhill frequenting joints like the Bluebird Cafe, "there was good music every night of the week, either mellow rock, hippie-western stuff or hardcore traditional music," Wilcox recalls. "It was a very hip, happening place."
    Wilcox eased into the scene, finding plenty of gigs while still continuing to travel and play on the road. He made his second record, "Close To Home," which Feldmann engineered and featured such Santa Barbara stalwarts as David West, Stan Tysell and Rick Epping as guests. Then, he got married, and while his new wife had didn't want him gone so often. They settled into a more domestic life in Thousand Oaks. Wilcox secured his teaching credentials and became a fulltime teacher after his first daughter arrived in 1981, with his music pushed way off to a back burner, or off the stove entirely.

From John Denver to Jon Wilcox

    The workaday life was the status quo until multi-instrumentalist Danny Wheetman arrived back in his life. After seven years playing in John Denver's band, his marriage dissolved. Wheetman quit the group, showed up one morning on Wilcox's doorstep, and stayed for several months. Naturally, the two began to play music and sing together.
    "That got my juices going again," Wilcox says. "Before that, I'd been a singer-songwriter type, doing everything solo, but this was part of being in a band. Making vocal harmony music was an extreme joy."
    Wilcox secured a gig at the 1988 Strawberry Music Festival, and he and Wheetman out together a four-part harmony, folk-gospel oriented band called Marley's Ghost for the date. The warm welcome was a shot in the arm for the nascent group, which has put out five albums and managed to stay together for the past 12 years (in the process, long outlasting Wilcox's marriage).
    "It was great guns for the first three years," Wilcox says. "great music, good times and we could usually find a place to play where we could make enough money. But then things started to wane because Danny had a theater career going on Broadway."

The Rincon Ramblers

    During one of the hiatuses, Wilcox formed the Rincon Ramblers, a sort of supergroup of Santa Barbara area musicians. (They appear frequently at SOhO and other local spots.) But he also found himself frequently spending time at Sage Arts, a recording studio in Washington State, where his new wife Mary -- who he'd met at Strawberry -- was the business manager.
    "It's a world-class studio and whenever musicians we knew were in the area we'd invite them over and go in the studio and do some tracks," Wilcox says.
    Eventually, he'd accumulated. quite a collection of tapes, and while Wilcox returned to Montecito, Sage Arts producer Daniel Protheroe enhanced the demos in his absences.
    "Over the years, it got pretty good," Wilcox says. "I realized I should be putting it out."
    When none of the folk-oriented labels bit, Wilcox decided to put it out himself, after recording a few extra tracks at Jim Messina's Gateway Studio in Carpinteria.
    Like. his earlier efforts, the new CD, "Still Life," is a compendium of Wilcox's eclectic musical tastes, from traditional folk, to folk-rock, Celtic music, Scottish tunes, reggae, a spoof of George Jones and a dead-on Dylan tribute.
    "It's making friends, opening doors....and confounding some people," Wilcox admits. "The traditionalists say it's not really folk, and the songwriters say it's just reggae and haunting rock 'n' roll. I guess it's just who I am."
    The record has led to a few high profile gigs, including another solo date at Strawberry last fall. Still, Wilcox doesn't harbor dreams of selling millions. "I had a brief flirtation with the major labels back in the '70s," Wilcox says. "But it's such a crap shoot. Who can explain why Phil Collins is a star, or why Rod Stewart is the 17th largest selling record-selling artist of all time."

Chooses happiness over fame

Jon at home in Montecito, a family man who sings and plays with the best of them

    If he had to take a guess, Wilcox attributes his low profile to shortage of a "chutzpah." - "My lack of a lust for fame and exposure have really limited me," he says. "I didn't have either the confidence or the thirst."
    The problem, Wilcox says, is that his creative focus in music-making is closer to the source -- the writing of the songs.
    "I have a deep well inside of me and I love digging in and seeing what's there and what comes out When I do tap it, it's really thrilling. My personality was such that I thought the world would discover me, but of course that doesn't happen."
    Still and all, it's a pretty good life, he says, waving his arms at a moonlit back yard as the sounds of his wife and kids horsing around emanates from the living room. And he remembers a time not that long ago when he was cavorting in the pool at the Coral Casino, where his mother maintained a long-standing membership.
    Wilcox says. "I had my son and daughter in my arms and we were spinning around and around, looking out at the beach and the ocean. I remember thinking,. 'It's a beautiful day, the sun is shining, my belly is full, the ocean is right there and my kids are happy and healthy.' That was a peak experience."

These days, Wilcox can frequently be found back at his old grounds on the beach in front of the Miramar Hotel -- often with Daniel and Megan -- playing in the surf or running along the beach.
"We're like a pack of wild dogs running free," Wilcox says. "You get all winded out and it's beyond all rational judgement. It's just fun."

Montecito Journal
29 June12 July, 2000
Copyright 2000 Montecito Journal

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