Dan Wilson, a local Grammy award-winning singer and songwriter, helped open the 2008 Push Conference on Sunday evening by playing six songs. He successfully entertained the audience with good music and humorous stories.

Wilson has been a cult hero of American smart pop music since the late 1980s. He was a guitarist with the bands Trip Shakespeare and Semisonic. While a member of the band Semisonic the group earned a platinum album. In 2001, he moved on to a solo career where he focused on songwriting and studio work. He produced albums and wrote songs for many artists, as well as the song “Not ready to make nice,” with the Dixie Chicks that earned him the Grammy for “Song of the Year” in 2007. Also in 2007 he released his first solo album, Free Life.

The first song Wilson played on the guitar was “Easy Silence” written with the Dixie Chicks. It was about the search for peace, in a very personal sense.

Wilson moved to the piano for his third song, “All Kinds”, which is about the realization that if you didn’t live your life the way you did, who would be the person you could have become.

Wilson played the song “Closing time”, one of Semisonic’s hits. Most people think this song is a bar song, but it is really a song that he disguised about having his daughter and being “bounced from the womb”. He gave the audience an annotated version of the song, explaining the areas he masked so it wouldn’t sound like he was singing about his daughter; he got many laughs during the performance.

“It’s interesting to see how plainly something can be hidden,” He said.

Wilson ended his performance with a song asking the questions “Whatcha gonna spend your free life on? Who we gonna end up being?” Both are important questions for the future.