In recent years, David Wax Museum, which mixes Americana influences with pop music and traditional Mexican folk sounds, had spent a lot of time recording a new album, “You Must Change Your Life,” that the group — the husband and wife duo of David Wax and Suz Slezak — felt was its best yet.

Then last Thanksgiving weekend, with the record being finalized following some pandemic-forced delays, Wax collapsed while visiting his parents in Missouri and was rushed to the hospital. His family feared he could die as doctors, suspecting a heart attack, prepared Wax for a heart catheterization.

But 10 months later, Wax is feeling much better, and he, Slezak, and supporting band members are back on tour, showcasing the songs from “You Must Change Your Life.” And on Aug. 13, they’ll bring them to Black Birch Vineyard in Hatfield at 6:30 p.m.

It’s been a dramatic turnaround, and Wax, for one, says he feels eternal gratitude. In a number of interviews earlier this year, he said he remembered lying on a stretcher in the hospital and thinking “At least we made You Must Change Your Life. Whatever else happened, I felt at peace because this record exists.”

He and Slezak, who grew up in Missouri and Virginia, respectively, both have Massachusetts connections — they lived in Amherst at one time — and have gigged in the Valley numerous times. (Today they live in Virginia.)

Wax graduated from Harvard University and later traveled in southern Mexico, soaking up the region’s traditional music. Slezak, a Wellesley College graduate, was playing fiddle and singing with different bands in Boston when she met Wax and the two joined forces and became life partners.

Their brand of pop-flavored indie folk has won them many critical accolades, high-profile gigs, and loyal fans over the years. The Guardian calls their music “global crossover at its best,” while NPR says “This is one infectious band.”

The new album, the band’s ninth record, has also gotten critics’ attention, notably for its pop foundations. Wax plays a fair amount of jarana, an eight-stringed Mexican version of a guitar, and Slezak adds her fiddle and the quijada, a percussion instrument made from a donkey’s jawbone. But the album has plenty of mainstream drums, keyboards, and guitars, too.

The title cut, for instance, opens with bouncy piano chords, drums, and a catchy riff on electric guitar while Wax sings about humdrum daily life: “Going through the motions / Trying to pay the bills / Nothing too fancy / Wearing shirts with less frills.” The chorus, backed by rich vocal harmonies, swirling synthesizer, and other sounds, lays out what’s needed: “You must change your life.”

This “exhilarating” album, writes No Depression, celebrates “pure pop music in all its wondrous diversity ... Whatever the initial challenges of fusing rootsy elements with more modern sounds, Wax and Slezak have long since perfected their approach.”

Local favs Lexi Weedge and J.J. Slater open the Hatfield show.

 

At the risk of bringing attention to another outdoor show during this rainy summer, the Pines Treater at Look Park will host an interesting double bill tonight (Friday, Aug. 11) starting at 7 p.m. when Americana specialist Shakey Graves comes to Florence, with indie pop band Lucius opening the show.

Graves, whose birth name is Alejandro Rose-Garcia, melds blues, folk, country, and rock in a style that points back to the days when the Austin, Texas guitarist played as a one-man band, using a suitcase modified as a drum and tambourine stand. (Shades of that Valley-based guy called The Suitcase Junket.)

After releasing his DIY solo album “Roll the Bones” in 2011, Graves got increasing attention and eventually signed with Dualtone Records, brought in some other musicians to tour with, and in 2014 scored a bunch of high-profile TV gigs on shows like “Conan” and “Late Show with David Letterman.”

It probably hasn’t hurt his career that aside from his music, Graves, under his birth name, is also an actor and has appeared in a number of films and TV series such as “Friday Night Lights.”

He’s earned credit as well for trying on different musical hats. NPR, writing about his 2018 album “Can’t Wake Up,” which had more of a rock and pop sound, said Graves made the album work “in large part due to his storytelling prowess; these songs would be welcoming, even enthralling, in any style.”

Lucius, meantime, is led by lead vocalists Jess Wolfe and and Holly Laessig, who met at Berklee College of Music in Boston in 2005.

With additional musicians on drums and guitar, the band has had a lot of success with placing its songs on TV and movie soundtracks; they’ve won notice from Rolling Stone and other publications, and Wolfe and Laessig have also toured worldwide as backup singers to Roger Waters.

 

I guess we’re pushing our luck plugging yet another outdoor show, but this one needs to be noted: On Aug. 16, local hero Roger Salloom will perform a 40th-anniversary free concert at the Pines, along with various musical friends, including the show’s opener, Jamie Kent.

It was in 1983 that Salloom, the veteran singer-songwriter, first staged a free show at Look Park, as a means of recreating the vibe he’d experienced playing with a hippie band at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco in the late 1960s.

Kent, meantime, the singer-songwriter now living in Nashville, grew up near Look Park and remembers first coming to see Salloom there as a kid.

“I grew up dancing to Roger’s tunes at his concerts for the community, and I’ll most definitely be dancing to them again this year,” he says.

The show takes place at 6:30 p.m. Rain date is Aug. 17.

More music on tap

Indie rock from Wisconsin is on tap tonight at The Drake in Amherst, beginning at 7 p.m., with DISQ (Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet) and Graham Hunt.

The roots rock/reggae band EarthKry, from Kingston, Jamaica, plays Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center in Greenfield tonight at 8 p.m.

Luthier’s Co-op in Easthampton offers a triple-header Aug. 12, beginning at 7 p.m., that features guitarist/singer/songwriter Alex Johnson, who’s been living in Japan the last four years; he’ll play with his old Valley band Colorway. Also on the bill is Ray Mason, who has a new album out, and LeFever.

Duo Mundo — José Lezcano on guitar and Rebecca Hartka on cello — will perform a selection of music by Cuban composers at North Hall in Huntington Aug. 13 at 2 p.m. It’s a free show, but donations are encouraged.

Veteran jazz saxophonist Grant Stewart will be the guest musician joining The Green Street Trio at The Drake Aug. 15 at 7:30 p.m. A jam session follows the set. Another free show, with donations “graciously accepted.”

If you’re wondering about two other upcoming shows by some big names — Watchhouse and Old Crow Medicine Show at Tree House Brewing in Deerfield — sorry, folks, they’ve sold out. And Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Aug. 22 show at the Academy of Music in Northampton had eight seats left as of Wednesday.

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