A Good Time Was Had By All

With North Star Deserter, Vic Chesnutt Works Well With Others

originally published October 17, 2007

It'd be easy for Vic Chesnutt to take it easy. He's an internationally acclaimed songwriter who's adored by the rough-and-tumble indie set and also celebrated by polite-society music mags like Paste. Chesnutt, who turns 42 next month, could settle into a career based on nostalgia, appearing every so often to play the hits. He could. But he doesn't.

The singer who's able to draw more meaning out of one or two vowels than most amateurs can out of entire bodies of work continues to challenge himself, collaborating with creative musicians like Canada's Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Athens' own Elf Power and more. He left the safe Americana label New West earlier this year to release his newest album North Star Deserter on the risk-taking rock label Constellation Records. It's a challenging album that veers from intimate, hushed acoustic numbers, where Chesnutt's left to his own devices, to full-on apocalyptic rockers with the full band creating a mighty squall.

The song "Warm," written in 1985, dates back to Chesnutt's days playing with the Skiffle Group and almost appeared on his debut album Little, while "Marathon" - "One of my favorite songs on the record," says Chesnutt - came about only a day before the North Star Deserter recording sessions started. "So it's the complete span of my adult life, basically. All the way from when I first moved to Athens to last winter."

The Album

To create the sound of North Star Deserter, Chesnutt relied on the instincts of filmmaker and longtime friend Jem Cohen, best known for his Fugazi documentary Instrument and the portrait of Atlanta musician Benjamin in Benjamin Smoke. Cohen acted as creative director for the album; he assembled all the musicians; decided who would play on the album and in what arrangements and at what studio. He chose which of Chesnutt's songs to record, he handled the album artwork and the liner notes as well.

"I love him! He's brilliant! His films are amazing!" says Chesnutt. "And beyond his films - because I know him personally even more now even though I've seen his films millions of times - he's a poet. He talks with an everyday street language that's like a poet. He's very emotional and very cerebral. It's great fun to talk to him and he's always insightful about the world. And he's a huge fan of my music! I knew he wanted to remedy what 'sucked' about my last few albums. He hated all my last records, he hated them so much, and so he was gonna fix 'em."

In early 2006, Chesnutt flew up to Montreal, Canada, to record the album. Among his collaborators were Fugazi guitarist Guy Piccioto and the members of post-rock heavyweight bands Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band. "I saw Godspeed play at the 40 Watt and that was one of my favorite shows ever. Jem turned me on to their music years ago, and I loved their records, and also the Silver Mt. Zion records. I was really excited to meet them and didn't really think they'd want to play with me. I showed up in Montreal and fell in love with all of them. They all made me feel at home right as I got off the plane, so I didn't feel so sheepish anymore. I also felt like we had a kinship about politics, art, how we saw things, music. It was a whirlwind love affair."

North Star Deserter is pure Vic Chesnutt, with moments of piquancy and pugnacious humor poking through, but most of the album reflects the aesthetic of Cohen's films: moody and a little ominous, contemplative, deeply personal, emotional and reflective of a unique sort of fractured beauty.

"I look at this record like this: Jem is like an editor at a publishing house, right?" says Chesnutt. "And I'm like a writer who writes little works, small poems or something. And so he went through my manuscripts - he's known all the things I've written in the past, having seen me play stuff live that's never been recorded - and picked out the kind of pieces that he wanted to present in what might be a 'collected works' edition. So he had great oversight in shaping the mood and tone of North Star Deserter… He's also very much like a director who decided to dramatize some of my short screenplays so he picked the scenes he wanted to do and he cast the musicians to play their little part on each song, or in each scene. It was kinda like that. So I really didn't have much to do with shaping the tone… except for the fact that I write these kind of songs. I also write other kinds of songs, which he omitted." Chesnutt calls Cohen - unavailable for interview for this piece - the John Cassavetes of the project, referencing the director's looser style of choosing actors based on their artistic idiosyncrasies and allowing them a great deal of leeway with character interpretation.

And so if Cohen's the North Star Deserter director and Chesnutt plays the lead role, is the actor happy with the end result? "Hell, yes. It's what turns Jem's crank about my music the most. This is Jem's idea of what makes my work good," says Chesnutt. "And I agree, I think it is my best album for that fact. I'd put it up there with Little or West of Rome, and if somebody wanted an introduction to Vic Chesnutt, I'd give 'em this one right after those."

The Show

This week's 40 Watt performance is a collaborative affair that Chesnutt's referring to as "Three on the Tree." Rather than rely on Canadians this time around, Chesnutt's looking a little closer to home. Athens' own Liz Durrett opens the show (she is Chesnutt's niece), and the local darlings of Ham1 both perform a set of their own material and act as the backing band for both Durrett and Chesnutt.

The gang has been shooting out of Athens on brief regional jaunts over the past several weekends, and Ham1 main man Jim Willingham reports that the shows have been going swimmingly. "I think it's an ideal setting for Vic's stuff," he says. "Sometimes we get a little loud and do some sections of noisy rock that are really up our alley."

This group effort snowballed from a gig at the 40 Watt last year; Durrett asked Ham1 to back her up when she played at the club's Christmas party, and she added her talents to some of the band's songs.

"It was just so much fun, it was one of our best shows," says Willingham. Durrett and Ham1 played a few more shows together. "We had the summer off since most of us are teachers, so we decided to go out on the road since we were kind of inexperienced with touring, and we asked Liz to come out with us and kinda Wonder Twin our powers."

Chesnutt was at that 40 Watt Christmas party as well, and was impressed with the interplay between Durrett and Ham1. "They sounded great, real good," he says. "They really brought out the best in each other." Chesnutt ended up playing a show in Ham1 trombonist-bassist Chris Sugiuchi's back yard accompanied by Sugiuchi and Ham1 drummer Eric Harris (formerly of Olivia Tremor Control). "Eric and Chris and Vic had become buddies from living on the same street and talking about cars," says Willingham.

The disparate elements came together late this past summer when Chesnutt expressed an interest in playing more shows, and the Chesnutt/ Durrett/ Ham1 combo evolved.

"Everything came together beautifully," says Willingham. "I think it's a little more of a traditional Vic lineup. Brushed drum and regular drums with Eric's sort-of-sloppy jazz style. I'm playing acoustic guitar, but with distortion and vibrato. It's an antique-y sound that works well, a little '50s sound with Liz's textured guitar… It's kind of regal and cool sounding."

This week's show also serves as a release party for Ham1's sophomore album The Captain's Table.

And More!

Over the summer, Elf Power and Chesnutt collaborated on a full album; Chesnutt wrote all the songs and handles all the main vocals.

"The tracks were all recorded live, all of us playing at once," he says. The album was recorded entirely in the attic of Chesnutt's home in the Cobbham neighborhood. "I've still got some backing vocals to record I think, but other than that, yeah, it's almost done. … it sounds really good. I think the sound is incredible." Tentative plans are for the album to see a release next year on the Orange Twin label, and Chesnutt says he'd like for that to happen, though nothing's decided yet.

And there are still plans for Speed Racer: Welcome to the World of Vic Chesnutt, the long-out-of-print 1992 short documentary directed by Jem Cohen collaborator Peter Sillen, to see a release on DVD. "It's coming along," says Chesnutt. "Should be some cool stuff on there, hopefully."

Chris Hassiotis

WHO: Vic Chesnutt, Liz Durrett, Ham1
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Thursday, October 18
HOW MUCH: $6