-
neumu
Thursday, December 5, 2024 
-
-
--archival-captured-cinematronic-continuity error-daily report-datastream-depth of field--
-
--drama-44.1 khz-gramophone-inquisitive-needle drops-picture book-twinklepop--
-
Neumu = Art + Music + Words
Search Neumu:  

illustration



edited by michael goldbergcontact


Vic Chesnutt Speaks His Mind

"I met Johnny Cash in 1982 when I was playing in a popular redneck cover band," said singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt during a recent phone interview, recalling his unique run-in with the late music legend. "He was filming a TV movie with Andy Griffith, and my band played their wrap party. As Johnny and Andy were leaving, June Carter was walking in between them holding them both up because they were so drunk. They were smiling and hootin' and hollerin', but what struck me most was that June Carter was hot! I know she was older than my mom but still — she was hot."

Although his reedy, high-pitched voice couldn't be more different than Cash's bellowing baritone, Chesnutt's wry, piercing lyrical abilities would have undoubtedly garnered much respect from the Man in Black. With his trademark wit and unflinching honesty, 38-year-old Chesnutt has built up a formidable canon of great folk-rock songs over the course of his eight solo albums. His most recent longplayer, Silver Lake (New West), is a musical departure of sorts for the wheelchair-bound Southern songwriter, who opted for a more expansive feel instead of his usual lo-fi approach.

"What I wanted to do was make an orchestra record with a real orchestra but, for reasons out of my control, it had to be scaled down a bit," Chesnutt said while eating a fish sandwich in Birmingham, Ala., waiting for his tour van to be fixed. There's no orchestra but, with the help of producer Mark Howard, Chesnutt enlisted a stellar set of session veterans to fill out the album's sound. The songs on Silver Lake have a loose, off-the-cuff quality, which makes sense considering the newly assembled band only had an hour to practice before recording began.

"That was just the nature of the way the session was set up," Chesnutt said. "It was like an old jazz session where you get together with the band, show them the charts and start playing it. And as soon as everybody starts nodding their heads and getting into it, that must be it."

The impromptu process suits the album well, with tracks like the slow grooving electric-guitar rocker "Stay Inside" sounding like classic Neil Young and the playful "Band Camp," with its driving marching-band beat, evoking Simon & Garfunkel at their carefree best. Other songs, like the soul-searching "In My Way, Yes" and the plaintive "Styrofoam," glide along on the strength of Chesnutt's guitar and vocals, with only subtle-yet-effective accompaniment. But whether backed by a full band or a lone slide guitar, Chesnutt's evocative lyrics and unique vocal delivery are justifiably upfront throughout.

Before recording Silver Lake, Chesnutt decided to organize many his demos into three categories — short stories, poems and slogans — and work from there. "I had about a hundred songs that I was considering for this album at the start," the prolific songwriter said. "So I had this idea to think about it like an editor would if he's going to compile a good deal of material into one book. I didn't do an album with all stories or all slogans, because I think that might be a tedious record. I wanted to give it a little spice."

Although many of Chesnutt's songs have distinct aspects commonly associated with literature and storytelling, the songwriter claims not to be "a voracious reader." Still, he said that one of the biggest influences on his songwriting is famed Austrian writer Franz Kafka.

"Kafka's 'Fragments,' which is a collection of bits of stories, made a huge influence on my songwriting," he said. "Something about the impact of a partial thing, where the ending is in question forever, where it piques your interest for a second and then it's gone. It is so musical and comical, a kind of dry, melancholy tone that makes you giggle, but you can't giggle because the tone is so somber."

The most accessible song on the album, "Band Camp," features Chesnutt at his most comical, telling of a bittersweet May-December high-school romance between the "queen of the senior class" and a "lowly freshman" connected through their marching-band duties. Playing the part of the underclassman, he sings, "Once you soaked a tampon in some serious vodka/ Wore it to school/ Second period science lab/ You fell right off your stool."

The song "Sultan, So Mighty" is the album's epic centerpiece. In it, Chesnutt adopts the point of view of an ancient Oriental eunuch — a castrated man who guards the women's bedchamber — as he sings in a lofty falsetto, "And the Sultan so mighty/ Comes crawling to lowly me/ When he has a little problem/ With the ladies."

"I think it was initially inspired by this thing on the History Channel about the last castrato," Chesnutt explained. "They played a little piece of music and I thought it was such an amazing voice. I thought of this castrato and how they cut off his balls when he was a kid because he sang so beautifully, so he never got to jack off. I started thinking about what kind of relationship a eunuch might have with the ladies. Even though his sex drive is cut out and he can't get an erection, he might have had a more subversive relationship that the power structure wouldn't approve of."

Chesnutt sings of another unique relationship on the song "Fa-La-La," in which a hospital patient can't bear to leave his cold surroundings because he's found "the embodiment of a life force" in the form of a girl who "is running around all over the grounds of the hospital." Over grooving, Caribbean-sounding drums and guitar, Chesnutt wails, "No, I don't want to go."

Regarding the strange connections and characters found in many of his songs, the songwriter, who became partially paralyzed in a drunk-driving accident at age 18, said, "I always looked at things differently than other people. The only thing that broken neck did toward that shit was make me slower, like a turtle. Everybody else is spinning around fast around me and I'm slowly watching."

In addition to taking advantage of the few perks his disability offers — "If the cops are willing to help you out when you're drunk and not arrest you, then I'm going to play it up," the mischievous singer said — Chesnutt found new possibilities within music after the accident occurred. "When I woke up out of a coma I realized that I understood the structure of music better," he said. "I couldn't improvise as well before and I realized that suddenly, that I understood jamming — I think it might have been all that morphine."

On one of Silver Lake's most personal songs, "In My Way, Yes," Chesnutt questions his own role as a passive storyteller in troubled times when he sings, "Do you think it makes a difference?"

"I've been thinking maybe I should write more songs about kicking Bushy's ass," Chesnutt said. "I should write only songs about how he's economically railroading this country into ruin. That's what I need to do. I need to write some political songs that cause people to march in the streets and take over." — Ryan Dombal [Tuesday, October 14, 2003]


Alejandro Escovedo's Joyous Rebirth

John Vanderslice Kicks Genre

Paul Duncan's Elusive Pop

Stephen Yerkey's Wandering Songs

French Kicks Complete 'Two Thousand'

Spazzy Romanticism: Love Story In Blood Red

Brain Surgeons NYC Rock The Big Questions

Jarboe's 'Men' Charts Turbulent Emotions

Delta 5's Edgy Post-Punk Resurrected

Blitzen Trapper Spiff Things Up

Minus Five: Booze, Betrayal, Bibles and Guns

New Compilation Spotlights Forgotten Folk Guitar Heroes

Chris Brokaw's Experiment In Pop

Old And New With Death Vessel

Silver Jews: Salvation And Redemption

Jana Hunter's Beautiful Doom

Vashti Bunyan Finds Her Voice Again

Nick Castro's Turkish Folk Delight

Katrina Hits New Orleans Musicians Hard

Paula Frazer's Eerie Beauty

The National Find Emotional Balance

Death Cab For Cutie's New Album, Tour

Heavy Trash's Rockabilly Rampage

Help The Wrens Get Their Albums Released!

Devendra Banhart, Andy Cabic Launch Label

Lydia Lunch's Noir Seductions

Bosque Brown's The Real Deal

PDX Pop Now! Fest Announces Lineup

Sarah Dougher Starts Women-Focused Label

Jennifer Gentle's Joyful Psyche

Mountain Goat Darnielle Gets Autobiographical With 'Sunset Tree'

Mia Doi Todd's Beautiful Collaboration

Return of the Gang of Four

Martha Wainwright Finds Her Voice

Brian Jonestown Massacre's Acid Joyride

Solo Disc Due From Pixies' Frank Black

Heartless Bastards' Big-Hearted Rock

Mike Watt's Midlife Journey

The Black Swans Balance Old And New

Nicolai Dunger's Swedish Blues

The Insomniacs' Hard-Edged Pop

Yo La Tengo Collection Due

Juana Molina's 'Homemade' Sound

Beans Evolves

Earlimart's Songs Of Loss

Devendra Banhart's 'Mosquito Drawings'

Negativland Rerelease 'Helter Stupid'

Alina Simone Transforms The Ordinary

Sounds From Nature: Laura Veirs

Octet's Fractured Electric Pop

Sleater-Kinney Working With Lips Producer

The Cult Of Silkworm

The Evolution Of The Concretes

Devendra Banhart's Exuberant New Songs

Catching Up With The Incredible String Band

Gram Rabbit's Desert Visions

Three Indie-Rock Stars Unite As Maritime

Remembering Johnny Ramone

Jarboe's Many Voices

Phil Elvrum's Long Hard Winter

First U.S. Release For Vashti Bunyan Album

Incredible String Band To Tour U.S.

New Music From Lydia Lunch

Le Tigre Protest The Bush War Presidency

Joel RL Phelps: Bleak Songs Rock Hard

Time Tripping With Galaxie 500

Patti Smith Wants Bush Out!

Sharron Kraus: A New Kind Of Folk Music

The Fiery Furnaces' Psychedelic Theater

Harder, Heavier Burning Brides

Sonic Youth's Ongoing Experiment

The Dt's Do It Their Way

Poster Children Cover Political Rock

Rare Thelonious Monk Recordings Due

Uneasy Pop From dios

Beck, Lips, Waits Cover Daniel Johnston

Understanding Franz Ferdinand

The Truly Amazing Joanna Newsom

Mylab's Boundary-Crossing Experiments In Sound

Have You Heard Jolie Holland Whistle?

The 'Magical Realism' Of Vetiver

The Restless, Rootsy Songs Of Eszter Balint

The Sun Sets On The Blasters

Devendra Banhart To Tour U.S.

The East/West Fusion Sounds Of Macha

Destroyer Gets Mellow For Your Blues

TV On The Radio Get Political

Sonic Youth, Modest Mouse To Play Lollapalooza 2004

New Music From The Fall

Apocalyptic Sound From The Intelligence

Fast And Rude With The Casual Dots

'Rejoicing' With Devendra Banhart

New Album, Tour From The Polyphonic Spree

Shearwater Take Wing

Sleater-Kinney To Tour East/West Coasts

Resurrecting Rocket From The Tombs

Visqueen Want To Get A Riot Goin' On

Lloyd Cole Makes A Commotion

Funkstörung's 'Cut-Up' Theory

Waiting For Mirah's C'mon Miracle

Electrelane Find Their Voice

The Television Is Still On!

Experimental Sounds From Hannah Marcus

The Ponys Play With Rayguns

Ex-Mono Men Leader Returns With The Dt's

Mountain Goats' Darnielle Adopts A More Hi-Fi Sound

Sun Kil Moon To Tour U.S., Europe

Nothin' But The Truth From The Von Bondies

Sultans Survive 'Shipwreck'

Sebadoh Reunite For Spring Tour

Xiu Xiu's 'Reality' Rock

Meet The Patients

Beth Orton, M. Ward Make Sadness Taste Sweet

Oneida's Pathway To Ecstasy

Radiohead, Pixies, Dizzee Rascal To Play Coachella

Young People Tour Behind War Prayers

Pixies Tour Dates Announced

Ani DiFranco Tells It Like It Is

Deerhoof Back For 2004 With Milkman

McLusky Set To 'Bring On The Big Guitars' Again

Pixies Reunite For U.S., European Tours

American Music Club, Decemberists To Play NoisePop 2004

Damien Rice Set To Tour U.S.

The Frames Accept Your Love

Punk Rock's A-Frames To Re-Record Third Album

Finally! Mission Of Burma Record New Album

A Solo Detour For Ladybug Transistor's Sasha Bell

Return Of The Old 97's

Spending The Night With Damien Rice

Tindersticks Reissues Due This Spring

The Evolution Of 'A Silver Mt. Zion'

Neil Young Rocks Australia With 'Greendale'

Poster Children Back In Action

'The Great Cat Power Disaster Of 2003'

Chicks On Speed's Subversive Strategies

Oranger At A Crossroad

Peaches On Tour And In Control

Jawbreaker's Complete Dear You Sessions To Be Released

Belle & Sebastian + Trevor Horn = Sunny Pop Nirvana

Von Bondies' Pawn Shoppe Heart

Descendents Are Back!

Modest Mouse Touring; Album Due in 2004

London Suede Take A (Permanent?) Break

Saul Williams Wants You To Think For Yourself

The 'Zen' Sound Of Calexico

Elliott Smith Dead AT 34

Debut Due From Mark Kozelek's Sun Kil Moon

The Hunches: Music That'll 'Fucking Live Forever'

Vic Chesnutt Speaks His Mind

90 Day Men Cancel Tour

Keith Jarrett, Cecil Taylor Highlight SF Jazz Festival

For My Morning Jacket, It's The Music That Matters

EP Due From The Polyphonic Spree

Bright Eyes, Neva Dinova Collaborate On EP

The Rise & Fall & Rise Of Ben Lee

Catching Up With Cheerfully Defiant Tricky

Hanging Around With The Polyphonic Spree

Sophomore Album Due From The Shins

Noise Rock From Iceland's Singapore Sling

Death Cab To Tour U.S.

Rufus Wainwright's Want One Is 'Family Affair'

Death Cab's Transatlanticism On The Way

Heartfelt Rock From Sweden's Last Days Of April

The Minus 5 Get Down With Wilco

Tywanna Jo Baskette's Southern-Gothic Rock

Xiu Xiu's Stewart Takes On 'Gay-bashing'

Portishead Producer Resurfaces Behind New Diva

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Wire, Primal Scream On Buddyhead Comp

Yeah Yeah Yeahs To Tour West Coast

Sonic Youth, Erase Errata Kick Off 'Buddy Series'

The Locust Are One Scary Band

Damien Rice In The 'Here And Now'

Remembering Karp's Scott Jernigan

ATP-NY Postponed 'Til At Least 2004

The Soul Of Chris Lee

Gits' Frenching The Bully To See Re-Release

Stephen Malkmus Is In Control

Superchunk To Release Rarities Set; Teenage Girls To Swoon As A Result

Summer Touring For The Gossip

Babbling On About Deerhoof

Irish Song Poet Damien Rice's O Released In U.S.

Chatting With ATP's Barry Hogan

Former Digable Planets Frontman Surfaces With Cherrywine

ATP L.A. Festival Rescheduled For Fall

Freakwater's Janet Bean Takes A Solo Turn

Lee's 'Cool Rock'

Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs Highlight YES NEW YORK

Mark Romanek's 'Hurt' Revives Johnny Cash's Career

The Rapture's Post-Punk, Post-Dance Sound

R.E.M., Wilco, Modest Mouse Highlight Bumbershoot Fest

Set Fires To Flames' Sleep-Deprivation Sound

Southern Gothic Past Shadows Verbena's La Musica Negra

The Subtle Evolution Of Yo La Tengo

Spring Tour For Jolie Holland (Plus A Live Album)

Liz Phair Still Pushing The Limits

Gold Chains Wants You To Dance And Think

Young People's War Prayers On The Way



peruse archival
 



-
-snippetcontactsnippetcontributorssnippetvisionsnippethelpsnippetcopyrightsnippetlegalsnippetterms of usesnippetThis site is Copyright © 2003 Insider One LLC
-