Vic Chesnutt

Prolific, profound, and ever full of potty-mouthed piss-and-vinegar - Vic Chesnutt is Prometheus in a wheelchair with a battered guitar – a freak-folk trailblazer, spilling his heart and soul and spleen into the microphone, with a sly drawl, dripping humid, Southern gothic imagery in calamitous, sometimes comic songs worthy of a Greek tragedy.

Vic was born in 1964 in Jacksonville, FL and was raised in Zebulon, GA. He loved music from an early age and, in fact, started writing songs when he was only five years old. He played trumpet in a high school cover band. As he got older and began buying records, his first favorites were Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and The Beatles. After a car accident in 1983 that left him partially paralyzed and the recuperation period that followed, Vic came to "a whole new understanding of music.” The first results were what he describes as “vacuous pop songs” But when he discovered a book called The Norton Anthology Of Modern Poetry (“its footnotes were eureka!”) Vic had, for the first time, what he describes as that “art feeling.” It was then that his songs began to take on adult form. In the middle 80s, Vic moved to Athens, GA to study English. He formed a group called The La Di Das and began playing the clubs around town. In 1988 he quit the band and started playing solo shows, including a summer-long residency at The 40 Watt. It was then that Michael Stipe saw Vic, repeatedly, and was moved to invite him into a recording studio. They recorded the songs that became his debut album, Little and Vic’s career effectively began. Vic has made 10 albums to date as well as 2 albums in collaboration with Widespread Panic under the name ‘Brute.’ He was the subject of a documentary in 1992 entitled “Speed Racer” directed by noted indie filmmaker Peter Sillen. In 1995 he had bit part in Billy Bob Thornton’s film Slingblade. In 1996, Columbia Records put together Sweet Relief II: Gravity Of The Situation - The Songs of Vic Chesnutt, a benefit album to assist musicians with medical and financial hardship. It featured Vic’s songs covered by the likes of Madonna, Smashing Pumpkins, Soul Asylum, Garbage & R.E.M. In 2000, The Georgia House Of Representatives passed a resolution, honoring Vic for his “off-beat musical genius and other purposes.” In 2001 he wrote and performed the music for “Josiah Meigs and Me,” a puppet play done at St. Anne’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. In January of 2004, Vic participated in the Randy Newman Tribute at UCLA’s Royce Hall along with Victoria Williams, Bill Frisell, Rip Torn and many others. In June of this year, he was invited to share the bill with Rickie Lee Jones for two concerts at the prestigious Century Of Song Festival in Essen, Germany. Over the last few years he has also been speaking on songwriting and creative writing at Berklee School Of Music, Brown University and The University Of Georgia. Vic continues to tour extensively all over the world and has shared stages with the likes of R.E.M., Laura Nyro, Patti Smith, Lou Reed, John Cale, Mo Tucker, The Jayhawks, Allen Toussaint, P.J. Harvey, Wilco, Billy Swan, Giant Sand, Calexico and The Sadies.

Though Michael Stipe had been a fan of Vic Chesnutt since the late '80s, producing his first two full-lengths, it took the Sweet Relief Two tribute album to make a star of him in mid-1996. The album featured artists such as Madonna, Hootie & the Blowfish, Smashing Pumpkins and R.E.M. covering the songs of Chesnutt, a paraplegic who was injured in a car accident when he was 18. The singer/songwriter began playing contemporary acoustic folk around Athens, GA soon after his injury. A show at the 40 Watt Club brought him to the attention of Stipe, who helped with production on 1990's Little and 1991's West of Rome, both on Texas Hotel Records. A documentary video of Chesnutt's life called Speed Racer was produced and directed by Peter Sillen in 1991, and has aired on PBS. Chesnutt's third album Drunk followed in late 1993, but the release of his fourth album was delayed by Chesnutt's membership in Brute, a project with members of Widespread Panic including David A. Schools, Michael Houser, Todd Nance, John Hermann, Johnny Hickman, David Lowery and John Keane. After Sweet Relief Two was released in July 1996, Capitol signed Chesnutt and released About to Choke, his major-label debut, in the fall of that year. The Salesman and Bernadette followed in 1998 on Capricorn and featured Lambchop as his backing band. The record's poor sales led him to be dropped by that label, but Chesnutt continued to record, cutting an album with Kelly and Nikki Keneipp called Roses for the Butt of All Our Merriment that was issued in 2000. That same year, he teamed up with longtime friend and admirer Kristin Hersh for a series of U.S. tour dates. The following year, Chesnutt issued Left to His Own Devices, a collection of rarities, outtakes, and demos. In 2003, Chesnutt struck a deal with the roots rock-oriented New West label, who released his album Silver Lake in 2003. Ghetto Bells, which features contributions from jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and multi-instrumentalist Van Dyke Parks, followed in 2005. The following year, Chesnutt recorded North Star Deserter in Montreal. It was released on Constellation Records in 2007. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide