See you around, Vic

Just a heads-up: After reading this a few times, it sounds a little lofty at the start. Bear with me, it calms down a bit.

I think there’s an inherent sadness that comes with being a southerner, a burden unique to the American south. It can be one of the most beautiful places in the world, though it must carry with it a past of unforgivable crimes. All too often, those sins and attitudes are still present here today. For all that, you will find some of the kindest people in the world here and a history that contains much to be proud of as well.

This place creates an atmosphere that gives rise to artists that channel this spirit, this dichotomy of beauty and terror, of pride and shame. Twain and Faulkner loom above them all, but the hits keep on coming: Flannery O’Connor, Larry Brown, Eudora Welty, Truman Capote, John Seawright…and those are just a few of the writers. The music is another beast entirely.

Athens, Georgia is a special place, one that perfectly captures the duality of the southern thing.* A place with a vibrant, thriving arts scene, a place also overrun with the mentality that college football rules all. For some of us, there is room for both points of view. Athens is where I started the road to becoming who I am now: a somewhat mumbly fellow who’s handy to have around on trivia night.

The music in Athens affected me as no other art has. R.E.M. was a force in my life before I even moved there, but once I was in my new town, the floodgates opened. There was music being made all around me, not to mention acts from all over the world playing every night of the week. Of the local artists, one name was mentioned with special reverence: Vic Chesnutt.

I knew the name before I moved there, having seen the documentary Speed Racer: The Lives of Vic Chesnutt on PBS. But once in Athens, I finally had access to the music being made. (Kids, the Internet was still a new beast in those days and you couldn’t just hear about an album and own it 30 seconds later.) I bought my first Vic Chesnutt album from Big Shot Records (now School Kids Records). I always gravitated to Big Shot. I didn’t feel cool enough to shop at Wuxtry. Still don’t, really.

Is the Actor Happy? exploded across my brain, in a way that only an album of mid-tempo folk-country-rock songs can. I’d never heard anything quite like Vic’s voice—the voice of a child who had already developed a taste for liquor. Someone smarter than me once wrote hat the cadence of his speech made him sound like someone who learned English after growing up speaking Gaelic. That’s about right.

I’d never heard songs like Vic’s before—he captured the south that I knew. He had the gift for sense of place that Springsteen has, but applied toward the places I had been around all my life. Country music as I knew it then never did that—this was the time when country pop was all the rage, and I hadn’t yet explored beyond what I could hear on the radio. Vic’s songs told the story of the sadness and greatness of my world. He mentioned people by name that I had never met, but had known all my life.

Those first five albums changed my life. I inhaled them, and they helped start me down the road to who I was going to be. I can hazily remember being drunk on rum, with “Where Were You” on repeat after getting dumped by my girlfriend. My roommate wisely stayed in his room that night. That opening to “Isadora Duncan”—who the hell had ever heard a sound that mournful before, not to mention the knockout “I can’t believe you own this attitude” refrain? Smiling on the bus to class as “Latent/Blatant” played. Then his debut on Capitol—just insane that he was on a major label. You could tell even he thought it was nuts when he titled the album About to Choke. Listen to “Disintegrate” and tell me how much you think he choked.

After I left Athens, I kept buying Vic’s new albums, but they never hit me as hard as the first ones did. I was already on my road and didn’t need the map like I used to. Still, there was always at least one song that reminded me of why I’d fallen under the spell of his music in the first place. He’d capture some piece of human experience I had never considered,** and I was 19 again for a while. His albums were always a place I could turn and learn something.

Vic tried to kill himself on Christmas Eve and died Christmas Day. He’d tried it several times before, but there was no coming back this time. As an outsider, I have to assume that a lifetime spent in a broken body and battling the bottle finally caught up with him, and he had to have a way out. You have to wonder what he would have given us if he’d been whole, if he had the same abilities that so many of us never give a second thought. You can play the “What if?” game all day long and never score.

I’m writing this while sitting in Manuel’s Tavern, a landmark that carries its own place in southern history. You can kind of feel the years wash over you while you’re in here (It should be noted that most of the time when I’m in here I’m not thinking about its cultural significance. I’m drinking beer*** and thinking of dumb ways to make my friends laugh.) I think about the stories that Vic might have told about the people sitting around me right now. I think about how terrifying and heartbreaking that Christmas Day between when he took the pills and when he died must have been for his family. I think about where I was 15 years ago when I first his music and where I am now.

Thanks, Vic. Somewhere, rabbits are cooking breakfast. You’re probably with them, getting ready to tell another story, while we all go about our lives writing our own.



*Phrase stolen with great affection from the Drive-By Truckers.

**I rewrote that sentence several times and it never came out any less pretentious. The same goes for the first couple of paragraphs. My apologies.

***Though I’m drinking coffee while I write this. I think even Bukowski said he couldn’t write when he was drinking.