Last Christmas, Vic Chesnutt delivered on the promise of a career’s worth of haunting, darkly comic songs and took his own life. David Peisner talks to his friends and family to get the untold story of one of rock’s most curious characters.
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thank you for this article. I 1st saw vic in 1996 at sxsw. the line-up included vic, grandaddy, giant sand and peter holsapple and susan cowsill among others. it was not until 2008 that I would finally get to spent time talking to him before the show in phoenix when he was on tour with elf power.he seemed excited when I told him I was at the ’96 show and had photographed it. I promised that next time I saw him I would have copies of them to give him.
It was your article that alerted me to vic’s death. somehow I was out of the loop. I was suppose to be at that last show in austin. i don’t know if it was the weather or the fact that I didn’t deliver on my promise to have copies of photos I took of Vic in 1996 at SXSW when he was on the same bill with Grandaddy, Giant Sand, Peter Holsapple and Susan Cowsill. A promise I made to Vic when I met him in Phoenix while on tour with Elf Power.I regret it as much as retreating to my hotel for a quick nap only to end up missing Johnny Cash’s set in Telluride in 1997. I went and bought About to Choke, Silver Lake, Is the Actor Happy and Drunk. While that is perhaps 20 percent of his work, I found enough in it to declare with confidence that he was one of the greatest American songwriters of our time. And I challenge anyone to listen to those records and not come to the same conclusion.