Vic Chesnutt experiences moments of epiphany like you and I eat breakfast. Here's one from
1993, and a chance encounter with the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg when the two were performing at the same club.
"He'd read about me in the Los Angeles Times, and says to me, 'You broke your neck
in a drunk driving car accident,'" Chesnutt says. "And I said, 'Yes.'
Yeah, those words could be Chesnutt's, if he weren't so eloquent in his own
right. Joining Jonathan Richman Friday at the Bug Jar, Chesnutt is one of those virtually invisible singer-songwriters who
nevertheless is hailed as a national treasure by his bigger-name peers: Richman, Madonna, Smashing Pumpkins, Rickie Lee Jones,
the Cowboy Junkies, Bob Mould, Bill Frisell, Van Dyke Parks, Wim Winders. He loves the southern intellectuals, now-dead writer
acquaintances such as James Dickey and Larry Brown. "I'm super good at falling into things," Chesnutt says. "Wandering
through the universe and bumping into people."
R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe was once such collision, taking it upon
himself to add another one of those moments of epiphany at Chesnutt's house one day. In a fit of anger at Chesnutt's taste
for abuse of substances, both controlled and uncontrolled, Stipe dumped him from his wheelchair. "That helped wake me
up, that was a little wake-up call, for sure," Chesnutt says. "Another piece in the war of attrition against my
self-destructive tendencies."
Chesnutt is an outspoken advocate for medical marijuana. "I do use it for pain
management, sometimes, after I've had surgery, or for nausea control," says Chesnutt, who remains a wheelchair-bound
paraplegic since his car accident at age 18. "But really, I love it. It's a beautiful thing. Human beings have been doing
it for thousands of years."
He's all for
recreational use, despite a startling admission: "One of my greatest regrets is, I think it damaged my brain.
"I
had fun and all and the giggles as a teenager, and great insight into the world as a teenager. But I'm sure it affected my
brain chemistry.
"It's a heavy psychoactive, just like
alcohol is putting poison in your brain. Pot ain't for everybody. Some people are lunatics when they're high. There's a negative,
sitting there smoking pot, watching the world going by, not going out to see friends, not taking care of my friends.
"But I don't think that's the story of my creative life," Chesnutt insists. "Unlike a lot of creative
artists, where that is the lens they see the world through, my self-destructive nature was more as performance handicap. My
interaction with the world onstage.
"I may write songs when I was drunk or high or whatever, and for some people,
that's all they see themselves as. But that is not all I was interested in aesthetically. My songs are dark, but they're not
about liquor or drugs."
How many songs has he written while high?
"Forty-five percent written while
stoned?" Chesnutt muses. "Fifty percent, maybe? All of my songs are touched by weed, whether I'm playing them stoned,
sitting around thinking about them stoned. They're all edited by weed. It's a useful tool for writers. Sure, you can get hit
by a car, it makes you a dumbass, it gives you tunnel vision. But sometimes, that's what writers need."
His wandering
the universe, bumping into people, has led to a 1992 half-hour PBS documentary, Speed Racer: Welcome to the World of Vic
Chesnutt, and a brief appearance in the film Sling Blade as a member of Dwight Yoakam's band. He lives in Athens,
Ga., with his wife Tina and the Labradoodle Rocket, who loves for Chesnutt to throw the possum for him. "My life is just
like everyone else's, just a little slower," he says.
This, it becomes painfully obvious, is the true lens for
his music. "All of my songs are maybe informed by my underdog status," Chesnutt admits. Perhaps this drew Richman
to Chesnutt. "Jonathan likes my political songs," Chesnutt says. "He is a truly Bohemian eccentric."
Richman, creator of classics like "I Was Dancing in a Lesbian Bar," writes rock songs with almost a childlike
naiveté, to great effect. "Jonathan's the light, and I'm the dark," Chesnutt says. It's an odd pairing, but
one they've put to work, with Richman producing Chesnutt's soon-to-be-released next album, Skitter on Takeoff.
"You know how a duck will bounce across the water as he's taking off?" Chesnutt says. "I do soar. It just
takes me a while to get up."
