Vic Chesnutt

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Another Christmas has passed without Vic Chesnutt.  The  date is pertinent because Vic died on Christmas.  He took his own life, and I miss him.   I didn’t know Vic personally, I only knew him through his music.  And certainly the music lives on, but I wish Vic himself was still around, reclining in his wheelchair, somewhere, cracking wry smiles before a audience.

Vic was a darling of Athens, Georgia's music scene. Initially championed by Michael Stipe, Vic went on to make 17 albums.   Because of his health problems, he was also the subject of a Sweet Relief tribute album, a fundraising effort to assist with his medical bills.  The record included covers by Madonna, the Smashing Pumpkins and others.  Many others, Vic kept a core group of dedicated friends, in spite of his cantankerous personality.  He was mouthy but loveable.   His songs were often sad, but they were also honest, filled with imagery that was both magical and concise.  He was a small man, confined to a wheelchair after a drunken car accident, but his words, his lyrics, loomed large. 

I saw Vic in concert three times.  The third time was at the House of Blues where Vic was scheduled to open for Wilco.  It was right after Wilco’s Summer Teeth  album.  The show sold out, but then Wilco cancelled.  I was meeting my friend Sam, and we had already driven to L.A. when the news broke.  As a concession, the House of Blues allowed Vic to stay on the bill for a free show.   That second announcement, or clarification, came late, and unfortunately less than thirty people attended the free show.  It might have been twenty.  Sam and I grabbed barstools and put them on the wood floor in front of the stage.  Victoria Williams was in the crowd (she was also the subject of a Sweet Relief tribute), and she joined Vic for a song.  However, most of the set was uninspired.  The sparse crowd must have disappointed Vic.    He rambled through a few songs, missing notes and lyrics.  The short show’s only highlight was when he played a convincing version of  “Parade.”  The rambling dirge is about missed connections and misdirected relationships; it seemed perfect for the night.  Here are the first two verses:

 Where did you go after the parade
 I wandered, searching for about an hour
 then I parked it on a bench
 shifting and sulking
 those pesky little mosquitoes
 they nearly, nearly, nearly, nearly drained me

 Then a man dripping with vitalis
 said I looked like Joe Namath
 he asked me did I used to be famous
 and I said "neighbor, I'm famously late"
 and I said "neighbor, I'm famously late"

The second time I saw Vic was at The Mint, a small club/bar in Hollywood.  The audience was an odd mixture of hard-core fans, loud-mouthed drunks and starched-shirt record company executives.  Vic was at his most cantankerous; the drunks annoyed him, but it seemed like it was the record execs that really got his gall.  After a verbal exchange with an exuberant drunkard, he made a slight crack about “the suits.”  I’m sure he had an impulse to tell the execs to leave, to hand their comp tickets over to someone who actually wanted to hear his songs.  He didn’t though.  Vic was self-destructive, but he wasn’t stupid.

The first time I saw Vic in concert was the most memorable.  The show was at The Troubadour.  I didn’t know his music at the time, but I took Sam’s advice and bought tickets for Haley and me.   Haley was a new acquaintance, who was driving up from San Diego to stay with me.  I had met her a few months earlier while working on a film.  She seemed nice, kind of hip and fun, and I was happy to be seeing her again.

When Haley arrived at my house, she told me she’d been bitten by a spider and was taking Vicoden for the pain.  She seemed a bit phlegmatic, but fine.   We met Sam and some other friends in LA, had a few pre-show drinks and went to the Troubadour.  By the beginning of the show, Haley was spiraling downward.  The alcohol had synergized with the Vicoden and turned her into a mess of slurred speech and heavy eyelids.  She had the kind of buzz that Vic Chesnutt would have appreciated.

I was worried about my new acquaintance; not about her health, she was dosed up and, seemingly, in control.  It wasn’t her first time.  I was more concerned that I had lost a chance to connect with someone I wanted to like.   We had met on a film set, hit it off well, and had spent several hours in easy conversations.  No we seemed to be reeling toward a missed connection.  She was sedated, and I was “famously late.” 

Haley slept through the second half of the show.  Eventually, I didn’t care though.  As the set progressed, I realized I had made a new friend in Vic Chesnutt.   Vic sat alone on the stage, banging out simple chords on a guitar and keyboard.  His disability limited his playing to the simplest of structures, and his voice was thin and strained, but his message was brilliant, heartfelt, endearing.

Vic sparred with the crowd between songs, spurring constant shouts for song requests.   This is not an uncommon phenomenon at rock shows, but at Vic’s show the requests were varied – he had a huge body of work – and nearly constant.   Nearly every audience member, apparently, had his or her own particular favorite Vic Chesnutt song and, for the most part, Vic wasn’t going to play it.  He was rightly interested in supporting his new album The Salesman and Bernadette.  However, Vic suggested that if someone gave him a joint, or maybe a few joints, then he might play a request. No one complied, so the sparring continued.

As the set wore on, Vic delved into some of his older material including the song, “Onion Soup.”  The remorseful ballad details a lost chain of communication between old acquaintances.  Vic lost his way in the song and then stopped playing.  Frustrated, he admitted that he couldn’t remember the next verse.  There was a slight murmur in the crowd, for the first time there weren’t any shouts of song requests.   Then man stood up and shouted, “Mississippi is a mess sometimes.”   Vic nodded as if to say “Aha,” then responded, finishing the line, “…and not only when it rains.”  Then he continued singing, and maybe half the audience joined him for rest of the verse:  “How can you go back to that malarial island, cause our friendship is strained.”

To the reader this moment may sound contrived or embellished, but I was there, with friends, on a failed date with a nearly comatose woman, and the moment seemed genuine and moving.  Vic continued his set without further strain.  He even gave into the fans and played a couple requests.  I remember “Florida” was one of the requests.  I didn’t know the song then (I was a brand new fan, remember) but he had me from the first line:  “Florida, Florida, the redneck Riviera.”

As the set moved toward the end, I wondered what Vic would do about an encore.  The Troubadour stage was without a wheelchair ramp and there was no curtain to hide behind.  I thought someone would have to help Vic off the stage and then carry him back on the stage for the encore.  It seemed like it would be odd and awkward and difficult.

When Vic played his final song he thanked the crowd and wheeled away from the mic.  We all waited for someone to come to the stage, but no one did.  Vic just wheeled to the rear of the stage and stared back at us.   There was no pretense like “I’m not here.”  He was definitely there, staring at the crowd and waiting for the appropriate level of applause.  As the crowd caught on, he started to grin.  Encores are essentially a little game, and he was turning the game on its head.  He waited longer at the back of the stage.  When he felt the applause was sufficient, he wheeled back to the mic and finished the show.  It was an odd sequence of events, but as I would learn later, completely what one should expect from Vic Chesnutt.

When I heard that Vic had killed himself, I thought about the moment when he sat at the rear of the stage and stared up at the audience, cracking his mischievous smile, waiting to play yet another encore.  I wish he could have stayed in that moment – a moment without the demons of depression, a moment of pure adoration.  I think he deserved it.  I miss that smile.