DAVID WILDMAN BIO

I came to Boston to work for Newbury Comics and be a rock musician, not in that order. Over the years I’ve played guitar and piano and sang lead in a number of bands bands, including Kaspar Hauser, Thinner, Savage Garden, Fire in the Boathouse and The Unfamiliars, written a whole bunch of songs, recorded with Paul Q. Kolderie (of Radiohead and Lemonheads fame) and released many recordings. I went on to write for The Boston Globe doing feature stories in the Calendar and three different columns each week: Pulse – a preview of an arts event, On The Rise – a profile on an up-an-coming band or musician that usually stretched the definition of up-and-coming as much as possible to include the most obscure forms of music going on out there, and Hot Spots – a rundown of who was doing what on the club scene.

Political Activism
During this period I did odd jobs and continued to front bands, and got involved in the anti-war movement, writing a political column in The Weekly Dig and organizing a series of concerts that culminated with an event titled Voices of Dissent that featured Howard Zinn, as well as Buffalo Tom and Letters to Cleo and sold out the downstairs of the Middle East Club in Central Square, Cambridge, but it failed to stop George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from breaking all laws and bombing the hell out of a sovereign country in the name of war profits. During the march on Boston Common I opened the festivities at the bandstand (going on right before a surly Tim Roberts) with a song I’d written titled God Damned Mistake, off a CD I’d released titled Flag Retirement. The song went on to garner solid airplay on college radio.

Weekly Dig, Journalism and Film Criticism
After leaving the Globe I was hired as the Arts Editor at The Weekly Dig, which enjoyed a renaissance under a corporate umbrella for about four years launching great writing talent like Joe Keohane, Chris Farone, Attatande Barundi, Barry Thompson, comic artist Tak Takoshima and others. I was also chief film critic at the Dig, as well as an all around journalist, pioneering the Defend Yourself column and interviewing big screen notables like Harrison Ford, David Cronenberg, Kevin Smith, Oliver Stone and Nicholas Cage, as well as comedians like Bob Saget and Richard Lewis, even my rockstar heroes David Bowie and Patti Smith. Around 2004 I was voted into the Boston Society of Film Critics, for which I helped produce the annual awards ceremonies for a number of years and performed nominated songs as well. Through 2012    I was the chief film critic for Worcester Magazine. I've also writen for The Boston Phoenix, Boston Magazine, The Herald and The Detroit Free Press. Here's a past archive of some of my reviews.

Fiction Writing
While at the Globe and later at the Weekly Dig I was working on a sprawling, ambitious novel about a mindreading cult in the Berkshires titled The Book of Enemy. After an interview I did with Chuck Pahluniuk he agreed to take a look at it, and he went on to guide me in a rewrite that focused the work, and eventually wrote me a blurb calling it “wildass awesome.” That and a positive review from Tom Perrotta helped get me signed to the Fine Print Literary Agency in Manhattan, however the book proved too strange and non-commercial to garner a deal. Since 2010 I’ve been working on my second novel: I Was Water, about a blind man and the unusual relationship he has with water throughout his life. I’ve also completed two short stories: Containment – about a NFL quarterback who comes out as gay, and The Red River Virus – about a former rockstar and his wife, and sometimes do readings around town at events such as Four Stories at the Enormous Room and Dire Reader both in Central Square, Cambridge. I'm now at work on my third as yet untitled novel.

Currently
I now make my living teaching guitar, piano and voice at Music-Go-Round in Natick (for which I also wrote the music for a series of radio commercials during the summer of 2012) and Belmont Music in Belmont.  In addition to radio commercials I've composed music for short films and plays. I regularly perform solo acoustic shows at various venues around town, including The Tavern at the End of the World, The Midway, The Plough and Stars and others, sometimes accompanied by steel guitar player John Mulrooney and cello player Nicole Equerme.