Vic Chesnutt, "Supernatural" Singer/Songwriter, Dies at 42

DECEMBER 29, 2009 TAGS: MUSIC, DEATH ADD A COMMENT

Vic Chesnutt’s music tended towards the melancholy. The Athens, Georgia singer/songwriter carved out his own version of southern gothic, fusing elements of the supernatural, the dank material of his existence and a cynical sense of humor. Chesnutt, confined to a wheelchair since the age of 18, made spare, haunting music, often with only a guitar and his plaintive voice.

Chesnutt died on Christmas day at the age of 42 after slipping into a coma a week earlier from overdosing on muscle relaxants. He battled depression his whole life and often spoke of his close relationship with the idea of death in his music. Chesnutt's gift was to address these issues without seeming maudlin or self-obsessed.

R.E.M. frontman and fellow Athens native Michael Stipe discovered Chesnutt in 1991 and produced his first two albums. While Vic Chesnutt never attained a widespread following, he commanded a committed fan base, not least among which were a crew of other musicians. In 1996 members of R.E.M. and the rock groups The Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage released a album of Vic Chesnutt covers titled Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation. Sweet Relief is a charity to which Chestnutt contributed often.

Stipe said of his friend during an interview with NPR on Saturday:

He was able to bring levity to very dark emotions and feelings, and he had a humor that was really quite unusual.

The Guardian postulates that the inadequacies of the United States' system of health coverage hastened Chesnutt's apparent suicide:

At the risk of turning a personal tragedy into a political issue, it's hard not to draw lines between the details of Chesnutt's passing with the shortcomings of the current US healthcare system. While insured, Chesnutt reportedly owed $70,000 in unpaid medical bills and had recently been served with a lawsuit by a Georgia hospital. On the Constellation Records homepage, Jem Cohen, a filmmaker and producer of Chesnutt's North Star Deserter vented his spleen at the United States' "broken health care system depriving so many of the help they need to stay around and stay sane, and a society that never balks at providing more money for more wars but fights tooth and nail against decent care for its citizens. Vic's death, just so you all know, did not come at the end of some cliché downward spiral. He was battling deep depression but also at the peak of his powers, and with the help of friends and family he was in the middle of a desperate search for help. The system failed to provide it."