Singer-songwriter Vic Chestnutt talks to Scott Kara about his life as an eternal musical outsider
For someone who counts Michael Stipe of REM as a friend and musical confidante, and whose songs have been covered by the likes of Madonna and Smashing Pumpkins, Vic Chestnutt is happy to remain a lonesome drifter in the music world.
"I just kinda do what I do," says the twisted folk rock singer/songwriter who has been a paraplegic since a car accident when he was 18. More on how that accident ended up being a musical revelation later.
"I kinda fell into music in the first place and that's kind of the way I do my career. I don't have a management company, I've been on a million different labels, and I just kind of fall into stuff. I'm a great faller-into-er."
In a career spanning 25 years and 12 solo albums, Chestnutt finally makes his first visit to New Zealand this week to play three shows, including the Kings Arms on July 4.
"I've been a lot of places so it's kind of a black mark on my career that I haven't been there before," he says in his deadpan drawl on the phone from his home in Athens, Georgia.
You have to forgive the self-admitted hermit ("I can go weeks without even going outside") and "gruff old grouch" for his tardiness considering his confession that he's not very ambitious.
"I'm not a great self-promoter, I'm not a great businessman, and I know my music's not for everybody. Often," he chuckles conspiratorially, "people who don't know my music, if they hear it, it drives them insane and they can't stand it. I've played many shows where people come to see me because of my association with one of my collaborators and they are shocked at how horrible they think I am."
His music is an odd beast. It's often too noisy and distorted to be folk, and too rock 'n' roll to be country or Americana, but it makes for intriguing listening.
"I'm a kind of arty dude. But I'm also rough around the edges and often the content of my music is very dark, but humorous too. It's idiosyncratic and it mirrors my personality very closely."
One minute he's lambasting on brash, straightforward songs like Little F***** and We Are Mean, and the next he's singing beautifully about a bird falling from the sky, "the kid with the aubergine eyes" and rain hammering down on his "metal porch roof".
"I'm inspired by my dreams, and images outside, events that happen, real-life personality, love, loss, death, fiction, non-fiction, and I am an observer of people and listener and my ears are always wide open. I'm always on the lookout for inspiration. I'm always mulling it over.
"A couple of days ago I saw this mockingbird taking on a crow and it was over a box of fast food someone had dropped in a parking lot. To me that made my heart skip a beat because it was so beautiful. Maybe I won't sing a song about a crow and mockingbird fighting over garbage but it inspires me and makes me want to create. It was comical, horrible and disgusting, but it was also moving and touching in another way."
His music has changed a lot over the years, but possibly the most dramatic change came after the car accident that broke his neck. He was already a good musician, and had written songs since he was 5 years old, but during his four-month convalescence he had lots of time to think.
"It was forced contemplation. And I didn't realise it when it was happening but I found I understood music better, I had put the puzzle pieces together a lot more about the mathematical nature of music, even though I'd been into music all my life.
"It was a mathematical understanding of music that I really didn't have before. It was thrilling. And it was kind of like a confirmation for ruining my life," he chuckles.
"But I was just lucky music was my interest before I broke my neck and I was lucky I gained some insight into the thing I love ."
In the mid-80s he moved from the country ("You had to drive down three dirt roads to get to my place") to Athens, the hometown of REM. He started playing shows around town and made a fan of Stipe, who ended up producing his first two albums. Then, in the mid-90s, "my fingers stopped working as good". He lost the ability to strum as well as he had in the past, and was forced to relearn how to play the guitar and alter his style.
But if his most recent albums, 2008's Dark Developments and the excellent 2007 release North Star Deserter, are anything to go by, it's working just fine.
"Oh yeah, it works," he laughs.
To sum up Chestnutt's humble nature, he gives full credit to his friend and documentary filmmaker Jem Cohen for the creation of North Star Deserter.
"It's really his record," he laughs. "He hated my last two albums [Silver Lake (2003) and Ghetto Bells (2005)] so he wanted to make what he thought was the perfect Vic Chestnutt record."
Chestnutt helped Cohen out by giving him 40 songs to choose from, then Cohen went about picking 12 songs, selecting the players to play on the album (including Fugazi's Guy Picciotto and Bruce Cawdron from post-rock experimentalists Godspeed You! Black Emperor), and even the recording location in Montreal.
And Chestnutt is adamant the album is one of his most focused yet. "I love it. And it's his record as much as it is mine."
LOWDOWN
Who: Vic Chestnutt, folk rock singer/songwriter from Athens, Georgia.
When and where: San Francisco Bath House, Wellington, July 3; Kings Arms, Auckland, July 4.
Essential albums: Drunk (1993); About To Choke (1996); Silver Lake (2003); North Star Deserter (2007).
