As a long time admirer of Vic Chesnutt, I was pleased to finally get the chance to see the man himself at the Bronson Club near Ravenna.
Chesnutt was paralysed from the waist down by a car accident at 18 and his early albums were stark Lo-Fi works documenting a man on the edge of despair who wasn’t long for this world. One album from 1996 was even ominously entitled ‘About To Choke’.
Michael Stipe produced his first two albums in 1990 and 1991 half expecting them to be appreciated posthumously but instead they proved to be life savers.
For thankfully, Chesnutt, now 44, has continued to defy the grim reaper – facing and embracing his demons partly, I suspect, out of sheer bloody mindedness.
What I’ve always liked about his music is the sense of depth that lies behind songs that at their best have a poetic resonance coupled with an almost childlike precision. My favourite album of his remains ‘Is The Actor Happy?’ from 1995 which I would urge anyone unfamiliar with his work to track down immediately.
Dave Goodman expressed it well in his Modern Twang entry, describing the way “Chesnutt crafts songs that battle life’s slings and arrows with a surprising amount of humor (twisted to be sure) and beauty that touch and move the listener“.
When he writes autobiographically, he never strays into self pity about his physical disability but it’s not hard to detect the anger behind lines like “Little Fucker needs a wide berth – Little Fucker more trouble than he’s worth“
Chesnutt seems to draw sustenance from performing not as a tortured solo act but by a series of collaborations with acts like ‘Giant Sand’, ‘Sparklehorse’, ‘Lambchop’ and, the noteworthy ‘North Star Deserter’ where he was backed by members of radical post-rockers Silver Mt Zion and Godspeed You Black Emperor.
Apparently, these collaborations come about quite spontaneously, Chesnutt has said that he tends to work with anyone who asks – happy to bring the solitary act of composition into a social setting.
His latest admirers are Elf Power, a wholesome pop band originally from Athens, Georgia who sound like how 1960s Psychedelia might have turned out if the only stimulant was herbal tea. They are linked to the Elephant 6 family alongside bands like Neutral Milk Hotel and Oliver Tremor Control.
I didn’t really know their material at all – my first impression was that they sing about rain a lot. They played a lively, well received 45 minute and returned after a short break to be the backing band to Chesnutt.
On stage, Vic Chesnutt has a mischievous glint in his eye and sings with a full blooded glee like his life depends on it.
Not surprisingly, the show at the Bronson was dominated by material from the Chesnutt/ Elf Power album from last year (Dark Developments) but he closed with a poignant solo rendering of ‘Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child’, a band take of ‘Independence Day’, a song his first solo album ‘Little’ , and a version of REM’s ‘Everybody Hurts’ which he introduces as a song from the ‘home boys’. The last two are reminders of the debt we owe to Stipe in helping to keep the little fucker alive.
