A Short, Inadequate, and Thoroughly Unsatisfying Tribute to Vic Chesnutt

If you follow music at all, you’ve probably heard by now of the death of singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt this past Christmas morning as a result of a reported suicide attempt.  If you are unfamiliar with Chesnutt’s music, you’re not alone.  Outside of a small circle of contemporaries, Vic was not the most popular of fellows with the public at-large.  He arose in the mid-nineties from the Athens, Georgia music scene, plucked out by the benevolent hand of hometowner Michael Stipe, who produced some of Vic’s early albums.  He played Terence in Billy Bob Thornton’s Sling Blade in 1996 (“I believe the ‘dot dot dot’ come between ‘medulla’ and ‘oblongata’”).  He was the subject of a 1996 tribute album called Sweet Relief II:  Gravity of the Situation, where his songs were covered by the likes of Smashing Pumpkins, Sparklehorse, Garbage, and Cracker.  Hootie and the Blowfish even made an appearance, singing the title track with Nanci Griffith of all people.

Vic released fourteen albums in his career and I’m sorry to say that I’ve only owned four of them.  I can’t really say that I was a fan of Vic’s, but I did like his music.  For some reason, listening to his songs felt like putting on a snug, old coat.  I didn’t listen to them much, but when I did there was a familiarity there.  I certainly can appreciate his songwriting and can understand why he was considered among the best.  In fact, I believe that my lack of devotion to Vic’s music has more to do with my own sonic and lyrical immaturity than any defects in his songwriting.

I’m ashamed to say that I’ve started and stopped this post about three times now.  This is as far as I’ve made it in past drafts, mainly because I know that I’m in no way qualified to write about this man’s music.  But something keeps pushing me forward, because there’s something here that needs to be said.  As I write, “Flirted With You All My Life” plays on a repeated loop.  Please, listen to the album version here before you read further.  

Kinda catchy, huh?  This is the song that will eventually catapult Vic into the stratosphere, mark my words.  Some TV show will pick it up for a melodramatic moment or some movie director will want to play it right about the time that the boy gets the girl.  Perhaps it will make it’s way into one of those commercials where someone proposes to someone else or where people run around with smiles on their faces, obviously in love.  Perhaps that will happen.

I think it is inevitable that someone somewhere will pick up on Vic’s gigantic cache of songs and turn them into a huge marketing machine.  Some time, probably years later, it will be chic to say something like “You’ve heard of Vic Chesnutt, right?  No, really?  He was this guy in a wheelchair who wrote really sad songs (insert random timeframe here) ago!”  So before that happens, I need to write something that feels real, something that in some small way reflects the pain inherent in Vic’s music and pays tribute to how genuine it was.  The best way I think I can do this is to let you hear the song the way Vic played it live.  Please, listen to it and read the lyrics below.  Read them very carefully, and remember that someday in the future these lyrics will play at the almost-end of a TV drama and it will be tied either to a hook-up or a break-up or some other relationship-y type of situation.  When that happens, drink or curse or do whatever it is you do when you’re really pissed off.  But most importantly, FEEL SOMETHING REAL!!!  Do whatever you have to do to create a real emotion, and then remember that a real man with real emotions wrote this song shortly before he took his own life.  And then remember this when you’re tempted to take life for granted.

“Flirted With You All My Life,” by Vic Chesnutt

I am a man, I am self-aware

and everywhere I go, you’re always right there with me.

I’ve flirted with you all my life, even kissed you once or twice,

and to this day I swear it was nice, but clearly I was not ready.

When you touched a friend of mine, I thought I would lose my mind,

But I found out that with time, that really, I was not ready.

Oh, death!  Oh, death! Oh, death! Really, I’m not ready.

Oh, death, you hector  me and decimate those dear to me,

And tease me with your sweet relief, you’re cruel and you are constant.

When my mom was cancer sick, she fought but then succumbed to it,

But you made her beg for it, oh Jesus, please I’m ready.

Oh, Oh, death!  Oh, death! Oh, death!  Really, I’m not ready.

RIP, Vic Chesnutt.