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Symposium With
Vic Chesnutt
by Gavin Foster
With the zeal of a born-again Christian awaiting his first Billy Graham revival meeting, I eagerly anticipated the post-Thanksgiving recital by the richly talented Athenian songsmith Vic Chesnutt at S.F.'s strangely appropriate Noe Valley Ministry. Neither excessive BASS surcharges, nor an hour's wait in the frigid rain, nor the discomfort of a beer-swollen bladder would distract this faithful follower from a moment of Mr. Chesnutt's brilliant, and at moments, riotously funny solo performance. Mocking the solemnity of a classical soloist announcing the evenings repertoire, Vic proceeded to play, in order, as best as he could recall with some prompting from the audience, much of the gorgeous suite of songs that comprise the loosely conceptual tale on his newest release, "The Salesman and Bernadette." Stripped of their lushly eccentric arrangements (supplied on the album courtesy of Kurt Wagner's eclectically constituted Lambchop ensemble) Vic's sparely-strummed nylon-string renditions starkly conveyed the polar expressions of wry humor and heartbreaking melancholy that are the essence of his genius. Despite the presence of several hundred people, Vic managed to create the feeling that he was casually giving an impromptu living room recital. Indeed, without awkwardness or any apparent self-consciousness, he would stop and re-attempt particular passages he'd flubbed the first time through, or pause and vigorously shake his guitar, cursing the faulty cord jack...
Vic- A great crowd tonight, I thought.
Ink Blot- It was packed! It was a great show.
Vic -It's a good sound in here, you know. I could get loud and get quiet and it didn't get too loud.
Yeah, your voice could really expand and resonate in the room.
Vic -It was quite fun. My voice was in good shape tonight and I'm not sure why. Sometimes it's not, you know...it's different every night really.
You have a real strong voice, I noticed.
Vic -Oh, thanks. It's gotten stronger over the years. I guess I've just gotten more...
Do you smoke at all?
Vic -Yeah, I've been smoking. I quit for about 4 months, but then I started again when I was on tour in Europe. Everybody smokes and it was just, you know, half-weed and half-cigarrette, which I love. My favorite thing in the world is half-weed/half-tobacco and so...
Nicotine is an incredible stimulant.
Vic -It's really...evil. Nicotine is bad, bad, bad.
It's something I try to avoid.
Vic -Yeah, it's awful. I hate it. I can't believe I never smoked until I was like 22 or something like that, and then I just started.
Some vocalists it seems to me...like I've heard Dylan when he wasn't smoking and he sounds like Kermit the Frog. He sounds absurd. He needs that gravel in his voice.
Vic -Right. I like it better when I'm not smoking. Like for those 4 months when I wasn't smoking it was really great. But the jones got me...
(a brief discussion of next couple of shows on West coast tour ensues...)
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I'm from Tampa - your song "Florida" is an insult! (laughing)
Vic -Well...yeah, I can sing it because I was born in Florida.
Where were you born?
Vic -Jacksonville. My whole family is from Live Oak - it's in north Florida. So I've got a really deep love for Florida. Florida weighs huge on my imagination. I spent a lot of time there to see my families. All the time in the summers, out of school - I spent alot of time there, so I felt like I had an intimate knowledge of Florida.
You talk about the South a lot, like in "Betty Lonely"...
Vic -Yeah, now "Betty Lonely" is totally a Florida love song...a love song for Florida. I was thinking kind of like the "salt flats," the whole thing...the moss hanging from the trees.
Yeah, it's porches and moss.
Vic -Yeah, the wildlife...I don't know. North Florida, even though it's kind of a shit...well, you know, the people are rednecks - as red as they can be. But they have raped Florida in a major way, just completely...by digging canals and draining the wetlands. It's a fascinating history Florida has...like the turn of the century cattle farms...I'm completely tied to it in my imagination...
Do you have a personal notion of "ultimate reality?"
Vic -Alternate reality?
Ultimate reality, or the lack thereof.
Vic -Oh. The big thing.
Many of your songs are about that, I sense.
Vic -Yes. Alot of them lay it on the line pretty much...you know, my philosophies. (Vic burps and apologizes) It's hard to...it does put you on the spot, that...
Sorry. It's kind of a broad question...
Vic -It's tough, I mean I guess I'm kind of an atheist dude, you know. I don't believe in "THE MAN." I forget what I believe in, really - my ideas of ultimate reality. But like you said, there are clues all through my songs. I have to find some quotes from those, I think. Songs on my new record like "Blanket Over the Head" lay it on the line pretty good. And songs on my last one like "Myrtle." That's a good one that talks about a little bit of my beliefs. Of course there's songs on my first record like "Speed Racer" - beltin' it all out.
When I first moved to Athens I had this little project where I'd bring a card table downtown - I had made up these signs that I hung from the front of it that said "NO GOD EXISTS" and I made up all these little broadsides like "BAN THE BOOK." And I'd hand out these things to people and it got me in alot of trouble. The cops would come...they couldn't tell me to leave...and it was funny how many hipsters would come up and yell at me - my acid dealer one day came up to me...I thought she was gonna kill me! She was like, "How dare you say that!"... One day I thought they were gonna riot. There was like 10 people and I thought they were physically gonna kill me... So I quit doin' it after that. It scared me. But I did it a bunch of times...
What inspired that? Are you kind of an evangelist?
Vic -Well, I was a lot younger then, that was 15 years ago. I was like 21 years old and I just thought, "Wow, this is..." I just thought maybe I could reach somebody. Back then I was just young and enthusiastic and evangelical and I wanted to help people. I really just wanted to help people...
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What is your personal favorite brand of beer or liquor?
Vic -Well I love Pepe Lopez. It's a cheap tequila. I drank a fifth of that a day for about 5 years. For a long time that was my drink of choice.
Straight?
Vic -Yep. Outta the bottle. I never drank like "liquor drinks" too much except for shots of... But tequila is my favorite drink of course. I quit drinking a few years ago... But I drank alot - I drank a really lot. It ruined my...it completely destroyed my liver...
I drink beer...
Vic -I never liked beer at all...except for Guinness! Guinness...yeah Guinness...
It's nectar!
Vic -Guinness is a whole meal of course. It is. I love Guinness..I spent 2 weeks in Ireland a few years back and I didn't eat any solid food for 2 weeks.
It's high in iron at least...That kind of anticipates a question of mine. This is totally from left field but...I was curious about your ancestral background and if it means anything to you...
Vic -Well, I was adopted so my entire gene pool is completely lost. I have no idea what I am you know...it must be Irish though. I mean f#ck, I've gotta be...gotta be...
Scotch-Irish from the south-east maybe...
Vic -Probably...I've always wondered. I wish I knew, but I don't wanna know enough to pursue it. Some people, like as soon as they turn 18 - adoptees - they wanna know. I never did really. I figure my folks probably, you know, o.d'd on heroin...probably...I don't know.
On About to Choke you wrote that the album might seem a little obsessed with the notion that "through death, life is nourished." I wonder, does the new album, The Salesman and Bernadette, represent any particular philosophic or aesthetic obsession?
Vic -Well, the new record is kind of a fictional story about this "salesman" character and his relationship with this "Bernadette" character. It's kind of like that. It's all kind of fictional...kind of a horny little tale...horny, funny little tale...I tried to build it as a fictional story of this "salesman" character...it's all about him...
Where does he come from? Is he anyone in particular?
Vic -Well, it was inspired by Kurt...Kurt from Lambchop...I was kind of thinking of Kurt when I made up the character. He's not a salesman but he was doing a promotional tour in Europe all by himself. I was just thinking about him traveling around by himself and then it kind of parallels what I do too - traveling all the time... When I thought of him I wrote that song "Duty Free"...called it "The Salesman Song" at the time, and then I moved from there and kind of put the record together like that...
If you could go back in time to any particular period of history what time would you visit?
Vic -That is really tough because there are so many I like...there's Paris before the first world war of course, you know...that was a pretty excitin' time...they were all pretty wacked out, pretty excitin', pretty fun and heavy... There's the 1830s in America...in Florida...when Andrew Jackson went down there and massacred the Indians, you know, I wish I could be around then to kill Andrew Jackson...to try to change the course of history would be nice... I wish I could go back in Mayan times and just check that out...see what the hell was going on...watch 'em drainin' the blood from all the people would be excitin'... That would be beautiful...
(more random chit chat about Cleopatra, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," and eating dinner with Mark Twain...)
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I wanted to ask you about a specific song, just one out of all I could ask about. "Independence Day." Were there any particular circumstances that inspired that song?
Vic -It's pretty simple, you know, the circumstances surrounding it...it's kind of embarrasing, you know, when you kind of puncture the balloon, but I was driving down - I was in Athens - I drove downtown and it was on 4th of July. I drove by the 40 Watt Club or something, there was all these people out there, and I just couldn't go in for some reason. I was depressed or something, so I went home and I started writing this song and it was a kind of...I just thought: "Well, here I am, alone on Independence Day." It was just kind of ironic...and symbolic...
It seems like a personal epiphany in some ways...
Vic -Oh, it was.
The way the lyrics are stated it seems like you came to some kind of conclusion on that day.
Vic -Right. Exactly. That's kind of what it was, you know. "Alone on Independence Day..." I was really young then, when I first wrote it. I was a young guy...and I was like, "Oh here I am...independent on Independence Day"...and also, you know, at the time independence was a huge rallying cry when I was in the hospital after I broke my neck...independence was a, you know, that was what all the nurses were yelling at you...and that was kind of part of it too...the part about...thinking I would never... At the time I couldn't get it goin' on with a certain lady, you know, that kind of thing...
Like one of those situations when you attempt to express your feelings towards someone and they don't take you seriously...
Vic -Right...it's just: (Vic assumes the tone of the "certain lady") "Ohh...you're funny" (Vic as himself): "Look, I'm not jokin' over here...this is serious shit!"
(At this point in the interview, the lovely Tina Chesnutt sticks here head into the room to quickly confer with Vic about loading out.)
Well, I should probably let you go. I enjoyed the show immensely.
Vic -Wow! Well thanks a lot. I was nervous at first because I wasn't nervous, you know, and I thought: "Oh no, am I too caj (slang for casual)?"...and I hope it's comin' across...'cause I didn't want to just flippantly blow through it...
The crowd was eatin' it up! When you came out people were laughing hysterically when you played that piece on the piano and everyone was breathlessly hanging on every note wondering "Which song could this be?" And then, after a couple of phrases you stopped and said: "I'm just dickin' around." That set the tone for the evening. When people were yelling out requests, I was the one calling for "Only One of Many."
Vic -I used to play it a lot when that record (the album Drunk) first came out. I played it every show. I've got this record with her on it - with Stevie Smith on it..."You are only one of many and a small account if any"...I got the melody from her. She was a heavy one for me for some reason.
She was kind of a throwback, was she not? Like in her approach to poetry. Wasn't it kind of antiquated for the time?
Vic -Well, you know, she did these kind of nursery rhyme things but with heavy, heavy subject matter. Funny and heavy at the same time...I really love that...I figure we had a similar philosophy or something, you know, she and I. You know, kind of a dark...dark humor.
Check out our review of Vic Chesnutt's
The Salesman and Bernadette
click, baby!
Copyright© 1998, 1999 Big Shot Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved.
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