{"id":2908,"date":"2021-06-28T01:15:10","date_gmt":"2021-06-28T01:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dailykemp.com\/?p=2908"},"modified":"2022-11-18T16:31:28","modified_gmt":"2022-11-18T16:31:28","slug":"vic-chesnutt-famous-by-association","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailykemp.com\/2021\/06\/28\/vic-chesnutt-famous-by-association\/","title":{"rendered":"Vic Chesnutt: Famous By Association"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In 1996, seven years after I wrote my first profile of the late Vic Chesnutt for <\/em>Option<\/a> magazine, I reconnected with the singer-songwriter for this <\/em>Rolling Stone feature. That year, a who’s who of contemporary rockers and pop stars, including Madonna, recorded several of Vic’s songs for a compilation album aimed at raising awareness of the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund<\/a>, which provides financial assistance to musicians facing illness, disability, or age-related problems. It was the second in a series of albums put out by the organization, which had been set up in 1993 initially to help singer-songwriter Victoria Williams after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. For the story, I flew down to Athens, Georgia, to meet with Vic and his wife, Tina. During our first day of interviews, we sat and chatted in the couple’s living room, and then, later in the evening, retired to their screened-in front porch, where we smoked cigarettes and watched lightning crack against the sky and fireflies flicker in a vacant lot across the street. The following day, Vic and Tina rode with me down to Zebulon, the small town in rural Pike County where Vic grew up.<\/em> Thirteen years later, on Christmas Day, Chesnutt died from a drug overdose, leaving his prodigious catalog of some of the most idiosyncratic and literary songs of our times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vic Chesnutt joins his rock & roll heroes in the spotlight<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By Mark Kemp, Rolling Stone, September 9, 1996<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

WHEN VIC CHESNUTT HEARD that Madonna would be singing one of his songs on the Sweet Relief II<\/a><\/em> benefit compilation, he wasn’t so much elated as he was dubious. \u201cI thought, \u2018No way!\u2019\u201d the 31-year-old singer-songwriter says, scrunching up his bony shoulders like a little boy and smiling mischievously. \u201cThat won\u2019t happen.\u201d Chesnutt, a two-day shadow on his face, leans forward in his ragged wheelchair and reaches for another Camel Light. He\u2019s parked in the living room of his Athens, Georgia, home on a stormy summer afternoon, wearing baggy beige pants, a coffee-stained long-sleeved T-shirt, and a baseball cap emblazoned with \u201cEastern Airlines\u201d \u2014 the company for which his father worked for 20 years as a baggage handler until deregulation left him jobless in the early \u201880s. \u201cIt\u2019s weird,\u201d Chesnutt continues in his thick Georgia drawl. \u201cI don\u2019t know how people are gonna respond to this. I mean, Madonna<\/em>? Doing one of my<\/em> songs?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vic Chesnutt (Photo by Danny Clinch; opening photo by Tristan Loper)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The Material Girl is not the only name with marquee value on Sweet Relief II<\/em>, which is subtitled Gravity of the Situation: The Songs of Vic Chesnutt<\/em>. A laundry list of big-name modern-rock acts, including R.E.M, Hootie and the Blowfish, Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage, and the Sweet Relief organization\u2019s original beneficiary, Victoria Williams, also appear on the album, interpreting such idiosyncratic Chesnutt songs as \u201cSponge,\u201d<\/a> \u201cGravity of the Situation,\u201d<\/a> \u201cSad Peter Pan,\u201d<\/a> \u201cKick My Ass,\u201d<\/a> and \u201cGod Is Good.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sweet Relief was founded in 1993 to help raise money for the medical bills Williams had accumulated after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis; as a musician, she had no health benefits. In the three years since, the organization has set up a fund for other uninsured musicians, and though Chesnutt is not in need of financial assistance, he understands the trauma of a sudden tragedy: In 1983, a car crash left him partially paralyzed from the neck down. \u201cIt\u2019s an important cause,\u201d Chesnutt says, \u201cand I\u2019m honored they chose my songs for this project and that these great, great people are singin\u2019 em.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Madonna duets with her brother-in-law, the folk singer Joe Henry, on a version of Chesnutt\u2019s \u201cGuilty by Association,\u201d<\/a> a moody song about the price one pays for living in the shadows of a famous person. Chesnutt knows a lot about that. Eight years ago, his buddy Michael Stipe dragged him away from a regular Tuesday night gig at the 40 Watt Club, in Athens, to record Chesnutt\u2019s debut, Little<\/a><\/em>, a demo-quality document of the singer\u2019s eccentric, highly personal, and very Southern story-songs performed over simple acoustic-guitar accompaniment. But three albums later, the sweet yet surly songwriter still spends too much of his time answering the question: \u201cWhat\u2019s Michael like?\u201d Though each of Chesnutt\u2019s three records on the tiny indie label Texas Hotel \u2014 West of Rome<\/a>, Drunk<\/a><\/em> and last year’s Is the Actor Happy?<\/em> <\/a>\u2014 has been championed by critics and revered by some of the biggest names in rock & roll, the songwriter still remains largely unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sweet Relief II<\/em> should change that. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what to expect on this record,\u201d Chesnutt says. \u201cI thought there might be a major cringe factor, but nothing on it really makes me cringe. And some of \u2018em I really love.\u201d Like Mary Margaret O\u2019Hara\u2019s arty rendition of \u201cFlorida\u201d<\/a> (a state that Chesnutt refers to in the song as \u201cthe redneck Riviera\u201d) or Kristin Hersh\u2019s personalized take on the rich lyrical details of \u201cPanic Pure,\u201d<\/a> which includes the line, \u201cMy earliest memory is of holding a sparkler high up to the darkest sky\u2026\/I shook it with an urgency that I never, ever will be able to repeat.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A wheelchair ramp in front of Chesnutt\u2019s small, violet-paneled home, which is just five minutes from the University of Georgia campus, leads to a screened-in porch where he and his wife, Tina, sit at night, smoking cigarettes and watching fireflies flicker like Christmas lights in a vacant lot across the road. Inside the house, paintings by folk artists such as the Rev. Howard Finster and Jill Carnes share wall space with a few pieces by Vic and Tina. A cluster of family photographs \u2014 including one old black-and-white snapshot of Chesnutt\u2019s guitar-playing grandfather performing with a country-swing band at a rural Moose lodge \u2014 sits on the mantel next to the living-room window. Outside, Chesnutt\u2019s faded black Dodge touring van is parked at the curb, the word \u201csophisticated\u201d crudely spray-painted across its side and a bumper sticker on the back that reads, \u201cI\u2019M JUST RAISIN\u2019 HELL ON MY WAY TO HEAVEN.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The little morality tales of Chesnutt, whose parents were born-again Christians, detail the trials and tribulations of growing up in the rural South. He conveys them with odd phrasing and vocal quirks, <\/em>putting accents on the wrong syllables, stretching out words like at-ti-tude<\/em> and ree<\/em>–moved<\/em> and turning one-syllable words like can’t, you, is<\/em>, and I<\/em> into two. \u201cMy songs are very personal in a way,\u201d says Chesnutt, whose rambling, stream-of-Southernness conversational style veers from one thought to the next like an endless William Faulkner sentence. \u201cIt seems to me that it would be hard for someone else to sing \u2018em, even the ones that aren\u2019t about my day-to-day life, even if they\u2019re those kinda songs that come out of my imagination \u2014 y\u2019know, like fictional amalgamations of the world around me. Sometimes it just seems like it\u2019d be hard for somebody else to figure.\u201d He smiles. \u201cBut these people managed to do it. There\u2019s some great stuff on that record.\u201d If it had been up to Chesnutt, he\u2019d have chosen a few other artists to sing on the album, such as his Georgia friends Jack Logan, Smoke and the Dashboard Saviors, as well as Giant Sand, Lambchop, and Bob Mould. \u201cBut this record is not for me,\u201d he insists. \u201cIt\u2019s for something much bigger. And that\u2019s my only concern.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe so. But now that Chesnutt has signed with Capitol Records and is working on his first album for the label, due out in November, the exposure that bands like R.E.M. and Hootie and the Blowfish will bring to his songs \u2014 which can go from total joy to utter despair, often in the space of one line \u2014 may be just what it takes for his music to earn the kind of record sales that he\u2019s long deserved. \u201cI never used to think I had any big place in the music business,\u201d Chesnutt says, scratching the back of his neck with his feeble fingers. \u201cAnd I\u2019m not the kind of person who goes around chasin\u2019 stuff like that. It\u2019s embarrassing.\u201d Still, when his contract with Texas Hotel came up for renewal last year, Chesnutt told the label that he needed to move on. \u201cIt was crushing,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I had to do it. I just had to come to grips with the fact that a lot of people besides indie rockers like my music. I would be a fool to fight it. It was hard, though. It was like moving out of the house for the first time. I wanted my parents there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After adopting Vic in 1965, James Chesnutt (holding his new son) and his wife, Miriam, moved the family from Florida to Pike County, Georgia, where Vic and his sister, Lorinda, grew up.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been two years since Chesnutt\u2019s mama died and about seven since his daddy passed away, both from cancer. Their absence has had a deep effect on the songwriter, who often reminisces about his childhood growing up in Zebulon, one of those blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-it towns that dot the rolling hills of central Georgia like pepper on scrambled eggs. The day after my first visit with Vic and Tina, the couple decide to drive the 120-mile journey back to Zebulon for a little resolution; other than taking care of business after his mother died, Chesnutt hasn\u2019t been back to his hometown since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t make me go in there,\u201d Chesnutt pleads, sitting in the back seat of my rental car on a small strip of road between the century-old Pike County courthouse and a row of buildings that contain the local newspaper and a beauty shop called Hair by Di. Chesnutt\u2019s mother used to work at the salon, and as he stares into its window, he shudders at his most recent memories of the place. \u201cIt would be too traumatic,\u201d he says, his voice softening. \u201cDiane, the woman who owns it, is really great. But I can\u2019t see her. It would hurt too much.\u201d Later, in the parking lot of the Zebulon Dairy Queen, Chesnutt talks about how hard it was watching both parents fade away within such a short time. \u201cThey call it Cancerland,\u201d he says of the town. \u201cI don\u2019t know whatcaused \u2018em to get it, but it seems pretty weird, don\u2019t ya think?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James and Miriam Chesnutt adopted Vic in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1965, and moved him and his baby sister to Georgia five years later. James, who loaded airplanes, and Miriam, a clerk for the immigration department, both worked in Atlanta and made the 50-mile trek there daily while Chesnutt\u2019s granny watched the kids. He spent much of his childhood hunting and fishing in the woods around the family\u2019s modest ranch-style home, which was nestled into a hill next to a small pond down a winding dirt road outside of town. \u201cI spent a lot of time by myself,\u201d Chesnutt says with a shrug as we drive by the house. \u201cI didn\u2019t care \u2014 I had my dogs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At elementary school, Chesnutt was ridiculed by his fellow students and constantly got into fistfights. \u201cI was a fat little kid,\u201d he says. I didn\u2019t have but one friend for years.\u201d He preferred life at home, where he would listen to the country music his parents played on the radio; he especially liked it when his grandfather came over with his guitar. \u201cWhen I was a tiny, little baby, he\u2019d open that guitar case, man, and I\u2019d be crawling my ass over there to watch him play it,\u201d Chesnutt remembers. At 16, he got his own guitar, and his grandfather taught him a few chords. But by then, his life had been saved by rock & roll. \u201cI\u2019d started being good, and I wasn\u2019t fat anymore,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I wanted to listen to the rock music all the good redneck kids who beat me up were listening to. I’d buy 8-tracks of Styx and Kiss, and shit like that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vic had lost his childhood weight and gained confidence by the time he graduated from high school. But he was a heavy drinker, and soon, a car crash would change his life forever. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By his senior year at Pike County High, Chesnutt was known as the class clown and had become so popular among the students that he was voted class president and landed the role of the Tin Man in the school\u2019s production of The Wizard of Oz<\/em>. Regardless, Chesnutt still hated everything about school except for band class and its teacher. \u201cIt was just stupid,\u201d he recalls. \u201cEverybody there was just stupid. The stoner crowd was rednecks, and I fucking hated them. They were dumbasses, and they were racists. They were sick.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chesnutt got a lot of thinking done while getting stoned and riding around in his \u201868 Buick Le Sabre. He\u2019d drive for miles down the dirt roads and through the old peach groves and kudzu-covered woodland; those drives have inspired songs like \u201cBug,\u201d on West of Rome<\/em>, with its line about \u201ca front porch filled with greasy, greasy grannies.\u201d \u201cThat line comes from an old saying around here,\u201d Chesnutt explains. \u201cIt\u2019s what kids say to be mean to each other: \u201cYour greasy granny!\u2019 It\u2019s like, \u201cYo mama!\u2019 But I use it as a term of endearment. It came from me driving down these country roads and looking onto front porches and seeing all these greasy, greasy grannies sitting out there in the hot sun, wearing the same thing they\u2019d slept in, sweatin\u2019 like crazy \u2014 just sitting out there being greasy. I love \u2018em. I love \u2018em the most. I miss my<\/em> greasy granny.\u201d In fact, it was Chesnutt\u2019s granny who inspired the song\u2019s refrain, \u201cWhen the bug hits\/That\u2019s the time to scratch it,\u201d a comment she\u2019d made to him about acting immediately on his creative impulses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n