"...that inimitable Southern way, which finds its
aesthetic not in what is pleasing or obvious
but in the miserable thing that -- indirect,
out of focus -- is distinguished by its overwhelming
authenticity."
It
struck me then as a great description for what Vic Chesnutt does,
and I have been holding onto the quote for half a decade so I could
use it in an article about miserable, authentic, beautiful Vic Chesnutt.
Vic Chesnutt may have crossed your radar at
some point, especially if you listen to non-radio sometimes. He's
come up to the surface of the mainstream more than once, especially
in the mid-90's when he played a small role in Sling Blade,
released his slickest music to date (Is The Actor Happy?) and had
a tribute CD in the form of the Sweet Relief fundraising albums (the
fund being a charity that would help out artists who were sick and
lacked funds for medical bills.
A
couple of years after that, critics drooled over the album Chesnutt
recorded with alt-country big band Lambchop. The label seemed to support
it, It looked like it was selling, but it wasn't really. Similar things
would happen later with Silver Lake, which made year-end best lists
in 2004. So he pops up, but he's a musician's musician, a critics'
darling, and a cult act, and that's no terrible fate.
He's got a fan base like Jonathan Richman: his fans love him.
To watch a Vic Chesnutt show is almost as interesting for the crowds
that gaze and sing along: they're hypnotized. Chesnutt sings like
a sickly songbird with an abundance of soul, and weaves such a web
of music and feeling that he could drop his guitar (not an unlikely
possibility) and the audience wouldn't notice.
Here's the scoop. Click the covers to read my ramblings about each
record.
In
1988, Michael Stipe convinced a reticent Athens singer to please
record the songs that he'd been playing around town, lest they be
lost. He took Vic Chesnutt into the studio and recorded the raw, haunting
Little.
He continued this project a couple of years later, producing the slightly
expanded sound and more mature writing of 
Chesnutt's
classic West of Rome, his early
best. The recording process for West
of Rome was captured in a half-hour documentary called Speed Racer,
directed by Peter Sillen, which aired on PBS.
Pushed
and pulled thusly into the recording business, Chesnutt quickly began
to include the recording process as a part of his palette. For his
third LP, also released by the tiny and elusive Texas Hotel Records,
he and some pals holed up in a house and got fucked up. The record,
Drunk,
is raw, occasionally abrasive, and contains more great songs than
you'd imagine a record like that could.
Chesnutt's collaborative records began next,
with
Brute: Nine High a Pallet,
a collaboration with most of Widespread Panic, Chesnutt as singer
and providing the songs.
Is the
Actor Happy? followed that same year (1995) and was more generally
accessible and polished than any of his previous albums. I don't 
know
why it was not a bigger record -- of all of them, this seemed to have
the best shot at getting on the radio. It didn't, but people were
listening; the second of two Sweet Relief records featured
bands like Soul Asylum and Garbage and REM covering Vic Chesnutt's
songs in 1996.
For
whatever reason, none of the Sweet Relief hullabaloo drew much attention
to his own release of that year, About
To Choke.Genre-bending, headphone-friendly,
dark and powerful, it features some of Chesnutt's best work. It's
possible that the benefit record overshadowed it. Either way, it's
a must-hear and my favourite.
His
next three albums of new material would be collaborations: In 1998,
the fickle eye of the big media shone on Chesnutt again as he released
The Salesman and Bernadette,
featuring alt-country very-large Lambchop as his band. Chesnutt continued
to advance his songwriting and widen his palette, and Lambchop created
a languid sound for the new songs. 
In 1999, he collaborated with two musician
friends and Jack Logan associates, Kelly and Nikki Keneipp. The couple
wrote the music for an album's worth of songs and turned Chesnutt
loose on them; they performed the music together as "Vic Chesnutt
and Mr. and Mrs. Keneipp." The album was called Merriment
and featured a clean, clear sound and an accompaniment of woodwinds
and plenty of piano. With Chesnutt tales about sickly zoos and funereal
odes to humour, it makes for a strange record, but it works.
Then
came a package of unreleased older tunes recorded and produced by
an almost completely solo Chesnutt, Left
To His Own Devices. The album is slightly
hodge-podgy (fair enough) and sometimes really fucking weird. It seems
notable that of all the really catchy tunes on this album (Deadline,
Cash), it is My Last Act which Chesnutt still plays on
tour - a song about committing suicide by drinking a mixture of tequila
and pureed Daddy-Long-Leg spiders. Its an incredible record, but maybe
(as Tom W. said), "...not... for everyone."
A
second album with Brute, called Cobalt, boasted a longtime
concert favourite (Everybody Can Change) and a decently rocking Adirondacks,
but was overall surprisingly slick rock and was frankly boring. Enough
said. Everybody gets to fuck up.
Silver
Lake, a widely reported, very professional effort, followed
shortly after, in 2003. Recorded with big name session players in
a big wooden house, Silver Lake boasts the tightest playing
on a Chesnutt record yet, and a warm, rich sound. I found it a little
hollow for just that reason. Call me crazy.
In 2004, New West Records, the first label
since Texas Hotel to take a long-term interest in the artist, bought
the rights to and rereleased his first four records with "bonus"
tracks (which I generally think is a shitty
move, as it screws up the vibe of the record). I couldn't buy
them in good conscience as they were only available as imports in
Canada, and I'd already spent import-prices finding the Texas Hotel
releases back in the day. I wrote and asked for review copies so I
could include them in this and the label didn't even write back, so
... fuck them. There are extra songs on each. I can tell you no more.
In
2005 Chesnutt released Ghetto Bells,
and it's a little truer to form; still pretty sleek, which is likely
a function of the digital recording process, but it has a much more
organic atmosphere. Bill Frissell and Van Dyke Parks lend legendary
chops, and Tina Chesnutt and Liz Durrett surround the man with talented
family.
There are plenty of live bootlegs flying around
out there in trade-ya land, and Vic live is a true treat, even badly
recorded. And as I mentioned in one of the articles, you can find
free MP3's offered on www.vicchesnutt.com
of his midnight protools noodlings. You
can also see Vic play some pretty tunes at NPR's
site with RealAudio, as well. Stuff's out there to find. Have fun.
Welcome to Vic Chesnutt: a Career
Overview.
by jep, Bad MonkeyX, 2005.
