A small ferret of a man sat in a wheelchair surrounded by a low copse of mic stands, a pawn shop's worth of vintage amps and a gaggle of musician types—The Professor, The Stoner, The Fetching Violinist, etc. Finally, in a clear, deliberate voice, he said "OK. Here we go," Vic Chesnutt's way of saying "kick out the jams, motherfucker."
Not every alienated singer/songwriter can support an indie orchestra—upright bass, keys, drums, violin and I counted four electric guitars in addition to Chesnutt's amplified nylon string acoustic—but Chesnutt's songs are both spare and expansive enough that the ominous fuzz, thump and growl of the band never overpowered him. Lyrically, Chesnutt's is a bleak vision (sample lyric: "tears evaporate slowly/ like piss on a toilet seat.") Yeah, it ain't just God in the details or even God and the Devil but also paper plates and herpes medication and other detritus from our fallen world. Still, the music is characterized by the same flight and grace the lyrics seem to try to choke out. I'm sure it didn't hurt that the band was comprised of scene veterans known for a combination of expression and restraint, including Guy Picciotto from a band called, now am I saying this right?, Fugazi. Several times in several songs, Chesnutt ignored both his vocal mic and his tiny guitar to coolly admire his prosthetic lightning storm at work.
The details of his life (an adopted child who began writing songs at age five, confined to a wheelchair for life by a car accident in his early teens) are trotted out in nearly every review as it's near impossible to imagine a character as otherworldly yet still defiantly human as Vic Chesnutt without them. His body of work is strong enough that it alone nearly justifies the indie rock community's fascination with and fetishization of anything outsider-y or weird. And live, well, he's transcendent, uncomfortable not just in his wheelchair or clothes but trying to twitch right out of his skin, howling and crooning on and off mic, looking both fierce and defenseless, an infant one moment, an old man the next, his face warped with emotion and then suddenly reptilian, showing no emotion at all. At one point, he commented on how the sound of the cash register at the bar reminded him of an old country store. "I'll take three pounds of nails... some pig balls... and some saltpeter. What am I making? I'm making Al Qaeda!!!" It was as weird, moving, comforting and unsettling as any live show I've ever seen.
Photo by Izgi Yapici
