Vic Chesnutt – Skitter on Take-off

Ahhh… the South. Its rich, yet more often than not, dubious history is impossible for any Southerner to escape. It follows you around, thick and oppressive, like the summer air. It drips from the pages of its literary giants who valiantly push against it, only to succumb to its smothering heft after an epic battle. American literature would never have seen nor heard the likes of William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Walker Percy, John Kennedy Toole, or Flannery O’Connor without the dense influence of its regional whipping boy. The fuel for such prosaic madness can only be found in the tumultuous land south of the Mason-Dixon line.

As for music, whether its the blues of Robert Johnson, the folk of Jimmie Rogers, the country of Johnny Cash, the rock of Elvis Presley, the brainy pop of REM, or the chaotic rap rock of Outkast, there is a deep and dirty libidinal drive, infused with an almost nihilistic impulse, that can only originate in the South. Once you think about it, the very foundation of rock music, and the entire international industry that is pop music (the entertainment-industrial complex) is Southern slavery. The oppression of slavery led to spirituals, then to the blues and country, then to rock, which has led us to the countless forms that exist today.

Step into the breach between Southern literature and music, and you’ll find Vic Chesnutt there – happy as a clam, domiciled in a shotgun shack by a swamp, living on alligator meat and large doses of angry observation. I can see him out on an old wooden deck that stretches into the swamp, in his wheelchair (the result of an automobile accident at the age of 18), chopping up fish and gators, whistling.

Chesnutt has been producing some of the most insightful forays into the land of folk-punk-brain pop since the early 1990s. His 1995 LP, Is the Actor Happy?, is a densely arranged meditation on love, food, friendship, and language. Like most of his work, Actor lopes along, inducing images of misty green Georgia Forests and crawdads on the line. One could imagine that Chesnutt writes his songs while sitting outside his swamp home. They conjure pictures of pastoral idealism. It is an ideal of the South – languid and warm-hearted – but, oh, the turmoil underneath!

Though a Bostonian, Jonathan Richman, produced Skitter on Take-off, Vic Chesnutt’s Southern pastoral lilt is not lost. Richman’s strategy from the beginning was to produce a sparse album, keeping the instrumentation limited to one or two guitars, with Tommy Larkin’s minimalist drum kit appearing on just one or two cuts. The strategy is brilliant with a huge pay-off: Chesnutt is rawer and stronger than ever. For those not familiar with the raspy, quavering vocal style of Chesnutt, this album could be off-putting as it was for this longtime fan, at first. Having Chesnutt’s vocals so far out in front of this small mix is stark to say the least. But it grows on you, quickly and aggressively.

As Chesnutt screams “I don’t have to be with your asshole anymore! I don’t have to be with your bullshit anymore!” on “My New Life,” one cannot help thinking that the song has more than one meaning. Sure, he’s free from a bad friend on the surface, but beneath, maybe he’s finally realized that he’s free to be himself as an artist. He seems finally to be breathing freely in his greener pastures.

Related posts:

1. Vic Chesnutt- Flirted With You All My Life
2. Vic Chesnutt- Chain
3. Vic Chesnutt – At The Cut
4. Vic Chesnutt
5. Drive-by Truckers – The Fine Print

Tagged as: Athens, Folk, Pop

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