“Enter Vic Chesnutt”

from the old Wolfeyes site.
Wheelchair Doesn’t Stop Bohemian Musician ………..by Tom Kerr

Vic Chesnutt just doesn’t get it. He’s seen the media reports of functional electrical stimulation (FES) and can’t understand why a person with a lower extremity disability would go to those lengths for a chance to walk again.

“Walking is not the be-all and end-all of humanity,” says Chesnutt, one of America’s most well-known pop composers. “I don’t understand why people feel that having electrodes and cranes to help you stay mobile is more human than sitting in a wheelchair. If they find cure for spinal cord injury that’s great, but people with disabilities and the general public as a whole have to realize that just because we are sitting doesn’t mean that we are subhuman.”

Left with quadriplegia following a car wreck in 1983, Chesnutt has grown to accept the fact that he’ll never walk again unaided. He says that the disability is simply a part of who he is, but is just “about as important as my height or my hair color.” It is this attitude about the injury, which almost ended his life, that has allowed Chesnutt to become one of the foremost singer/songwriters of our time. His work has been performed by such big names as R.E.M., Madonna, Smashing Pumpkins, Hootie and the Blowfish, Indigo Girls and Soul Asylum.

Chesnutt’s small-town Southern roots, literary skills and the country/blues guitar know-how he learned from his grandfather combine to create his unique style. His bitersweet tales of personal desperation and the splendor of life’s intricacies have attracted a growing number of fans and performers to his music. Part of that influence comes from the challenges he faced following his spinal cord injury, but most of the pain evident in the lyrics correlates to the depression that has haunted him even before the accident.

“Depression is an ongoing struggle,” he said. “I often deal with it in my music. I don’t usually pin-point it as much, but wrap it into several layers of metaphor.”

The depression, combined with his substance abuse, led friends to believe that Chesnutt was trying to kill himself when his car ran off the road inot a ditch 16 years ago. He was driving drunk, and the injury caused a C-6 level fracture. He was 18 at the time, had just dropped out of college and was performing at nightclubs around Athens, GA. Chesnutt spent a month in the ICU, his neck and head in traction, every breath controlled by a ventilator, unable to talk from a tracheotomy. As his health returned, Chesnutt was transferred to Shepard Center in Atlanta for rehabilitation. There he received intensive occupational and physical thereapy. While the work was hard, Chesnutt said that he enjoyed his time in rehab.

“I loved my therapists, and I thought that rehab was really exciting,” he said. “I felt that when I was there i was really working toward an end. It was great to be in that environment, and the therapists had a good sense of humor.”

Outpatient OT and PT helped Chesnutt regain the strength in his hands to play guitar. He still has residual paralysis in his left arm and right hand, but can finger cords with his left hand, and with a guitar pick superglued to a glove or wrist cuff on his right hand, strums the strings using wrist motion.

A year following the accident, sensation in his legs returned, and Chesnutt learned to use a walker to ambulate. Still, the 33-year-old prefers to use his manual wheelchair instead. He also can perform his ADL easily and drive a car without hand controls.

Chesnutt says that overcoming the stigma associated with disability is sometimes a problem in dealing with the general public, but once he’s on stage most people see him as another performer. “When I started to perform again in Athens, people accepted me with open arms and they didn’t really notice so much that i was in a wheelchair,” he said. “I think part of it had to do with the kind of circles that I ran in. We wer sort of the bohemian types, so the more different you were, the cooler you were. I guess I was born to be a bohemian layabout.”

Chesnutt’s big break in the music business occurred 10 years ago when he met Michael Stipe, the lead singer for R.E.M. “He took me into the studio, and I met up with a friend of his who had a record label in California,” he recalled. “That’s where I met a lot of people in the music business and entertainment industry.” Two years later in 1990, Chesnutt released his debut album, Little. Three more albums quickly followed, and Chesnutt began to tour the world.

Despite his success, Chesnutt continued to use drugs and alcohol, and his depression continued. While audiences appreciated his music, neither they nor his associates appreciated his irritability and unreliability. The musician recalls one time in his life when he was so drunk that he couldn’t write for two months. The substance abuse also made it more difficult for him to get around, and it affected his performance. “I think it was my nature– I enjoyed these altered mental states,” he said. “It was a really self-destructive time because it affected my music and my life.”

Working through his depression was extremely difficult for Chesnutt.

“I was a little depressed by my injury, of course,” he said. “But sometimes the injury was a distraction from my depression. The new day-to-day challenges helped me forget about my other problems.” The years of substance abuse took its toll until Chesnutt took the time to examine how the bottle and drugs were ruining his life. “There just came a point that I get sick of doing drugs and alcohol,” he said. “When I was alone in this crazy wold, I didn’t have a good view of myself. So my wife, Tina, began to hold a mirror up to me and show me how desperate I really was.”

With a clearer view of his future, Chesnutt hasn’t touched drugs or alcohol for the past three years, though he says it’s a challenge he has to deal with every day of his life.

Chesnutt has spent the last few years enjoying his success. He spends at least six months a year touring the United States and Europe and plays to large crowds at each of his venues. In 1996 he was asked to contribute some of his songs to be used on an album for the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, a not-for-profit organization which provides financial assistance to musicians who are facing medical hardship. The organization was developed in 1992 to benefit Victoria Williams, a friend of Chesnutt, who was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The album featured artists covering Williams’ songs as part of an effort to raise funds to cover her medical costs.

“A large portion of the proceeds goes into a fund,” he said. “Sweet Relief has a lot of purposes aside from offering assistance for medical bills. It helps take care of elderly musicians and helps performers with drug and alcohol rehab.”

Chesnutt says that Sweet Relief is a godsend for many musicians. “Most of the people who are in the music industry have no medical health care at all,” he said. “I’m lucky, because I was able to get medical insurance a few years ago, but there are a lot of people out there who are one step away from a tragic accident or illness, and they have no medical insurance to cover them.”

_Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation_ was a huge success, but Chesnutt’s performing career is bringin him further fame. He has just completed his latest record, a rock-and-roll novella called _The Salesman and Bernadette_. Though his is no longer with Capital [note: the author does not know the difference between Capital and Capitol] Records, Chesnutt has received many offers from other labels and plans to sign with one soon.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to enjoy his tunes, you probably saw Chesnutt on the big screen in the 1997 Oscar winning _Sling Blade_. Though the movie wasn’t much of a stretch for Chesnutt (he plays a songwriter/musician), there is a poignant scene when Chesnutt, seated in his wheelchair, is angrily pushed into a door by another actor/musician, Dwight Yoakam.

“When most people approach me abou the movie, they tell me how they hated Dwight Yoakam when he threw me into the door,” Chesnutt said. “But in reality, Dwight had more or a problem with the scene than I did…it scared the jeebies out of him. The first time he really slammed me hard, and at first it sacred me to death, but then we began to laugh so hard that we ruined the scene. We had to do that scene four times.”

Chesnutt was approached for the role by Billy Bob Thorton, the screenwriter and lead actor in Sling Blade, who had seen Chesnutt in a doctumentary titled _Speed Racer: Welcom to the World of Vic Chesnutt_. “That documentary was made by Peter Sillen in 1991 and was shown at the Sundance Film Festival and PBS stations all across the country,” Chesnutt said. “Billy Bob had seen me in that, and ended up writing me in as a part of the band.”

Chesnutt says he was proud to play a role in a successful film and hopes to act in other roles in the future. But he maintains that music remains his priority, and he’s preparing again to tour Europe and the U.S. promoting his album and spreading his love for music.

“I really enjoy performing,” he said. “There are so many things that I can do, and being in a wheelchair hasn’t stopped me from enjoying life. That’s why I say that being able to walk isn’t the most important thing in life.”