What Do You Mean?

I love Liz Durrett. When I first heard her2006 album, The Mezzanine, I immediately thought to lump her in with other contenders for the recently vacated Moon Pix-era Cat Power throne, after that songstress discovered the pleasure of rocking ever-so-slightly more out. But with prolonged and more considered listening, she's definitely carving out her own niche as a musician, and her songs are hauntingly beautiful in their own right. She also happens to be Vic Chesnutt's niece.

Durrett made her debut on her uncle's second record, West of Rome, playing violin "wherever [producer Michael Stipe] 'heard' violin" as Vic put it in the liner notes (her sister Mandi played cello). Allmusic credits her with "choir, chorus" on 1995's Is the Actor Happy? but I can't find her in the liner notes. I'm going to take a not-so-wild guess and say it was on "Betty Lonely", which is the kind of kudzu-tangled, southern-themed track that would be right in Durrett's musical wheelhouse.

"What Do You Mean?", from 2005's Ghetto Bells, utilizes Liz's talents in much the same, by multi-tracking the hell out of her ethereal vocals, but to even greater effect. The song's construction is a playful spin on call-and-response, and is also a sort of whimsical SAT-prep, with both Chesnutt and choral-Durrett providing indirect definitions for words they later reveal. Example:

Vic: Like a puppy on a trampoline

Choral-Liz: What do you mean?

Vic: Bewildered.

Choral-Liz: We heard you laughing

Vic: What do you mean?

Choral-Liz: Felicity

It's one of the highlights not only of Ghetto Bells, but probably Chesnutt's last several albums, not only for its idiosyncratic construction, but because of the gorgeous wash of instrumentation that sweeps over the song, making the most out of a crew of absolute pros that included Bill Frisell, Don Heffington, and Van Dyke Parks. Despite the puppies and trampolines, the song is not fluffy in the least. The arrangement is both melancholy and serene, Durrett's voice is layered into a choir of angels, and the song becomes (like Durrett's own body of work) much more than it seems at first.

The second set of Vic-Liz interplay goes like this:

Vic: Like a salmon headed up a stream

Liz: What do you mean?

Vic: Ambivalent.

Liz: We heard you whistling

Vic: What do you mean?

Liz: Contentment.

Vic's lines in both verses offer visual images and end in adjectives that describe his mood. Liz's lines describe sounds and end with nouns. I'm not sure how much this needs to be unpacked, but the consistency is interesting at least. It also seems as if the Durrett choir's purpose is to call Chesnutt's bluff, essentially saying, "You can't fool us, we know there's happiness in you."

In the poet W.D. Snodgrass's lecture-essay "Tact and the Poet's Force" (which I will no doubt reference again and again on this blog), he talks briefly about how people generally react to others' declarations of feeling with some suspicion. For example, a friend telling you that they're having the best day of their life is way less convincing than the body language and other indirect signals that would move toward proving that exaggerated statement. That's kind of how "What Do You Mean?" works: you can say you're feeling ambivalent or bewildered, but I heard you laughing and whistling, so you're showing me something different. Vic's whole catalog of songs is full of that push and pull, between songs that are outwardly dark and tragic, but contain bits of mirth, to songs that are buoyant and silly while putting forth brutal truths. The answer to the question, "What do you mean?" is then, "Life is complicated." People are complicated.

If the emphasis is placed on the word "you", and the question is "What do you mean?", then the song's answer is that we're a collection of moods and feelings that shapeshift into each other. The song's bridge goes:

Vic: It is a vibration, it moves in a wave

Liz: You are a surfer on that clarion tone

Vic: I hope so

Liz: We know so

Vic: I hope so

So moment to moment each day, we hope to be surfers, to navigate the crests and drops of our moods with smoothness, to not get stuck, to stay afloat, all of the metaphors I have no desire to try and think up right now because I'm not a surfer.

Steve Willoughby

On the opposite end of the spectrum from "Speed Racer" is "Steve Willoughby", a quick, goofy number loaded with pop culture and personal references, and slathered with "funkyish" clavinet courtesy of producer Michael Stipe.

One of the sacred rules of Creative Writing 101 is not to include references to people or brands that people will probably not understand 50 years hence. I remember a professor trotting out a Marianne Moore poem as an example, which referenced Esso, a now-defunct brand name that grew out of the initials for Standard Oil, and has now morphed into Exxon. The theory is that without exposition, the puzzlement by the reader (or listener) about who or what is being referred to takes away from the experience of the poem/song. Brands and fads and other proper nouns that are loaded with special meaning for those living in their particular time, will all eventually lose that potency over time. On "Steve Willoughby", Vic Chesnutt throws all of that (sometimes useful) hoo-hah right out the window.

"Steve Willoughby"'s construction is simple enough. The singer tosses out hopeful lines about what he's going to be in the future (rich, good-looking, idolized, important), by comparing those traits with pop culture figures, and people that he knows. Each verse closes by recognizing that at the moment, he's none of those things:

Someday I'm gonna be cool

Someday I'm gonna kick major butt

Someday I will transcend

Just like Jane's Addiction

But today I simply am in a rut, I'm in a rut.

Other references include Louis Farrakhan, Larry King, and Deborah Norville. Each one of these people has a very specific realm that they occupy publicly, and while Larry King is pretty well known across the board, the Deborah Norville line is pretty obscure, and Farrakhan hasn't been in the news lately. Even Jane's Addiction doesn't elicit the same kind of response it would have in 1992, when West of Rome was released. But maybe what's great about this song, and how it thumbs its nose at Strunk & White, is that it becomes even funnier/more poignant the less people get the references.

The song's protagonist is so worshipful of minor celebrities, and so down on himself for not possessing the same skills and perceived worth, that you want to shout by the end of the song, "Who cares! Who really wants to be like these people!" And now, as their stars fade or have faded, the question is "Who are these people", and the idea of wishing to be other people becomes more and more ridiculous.

As a side note, I'm not sure if this is the Steve Willoughby in question, but it would make sense.

Speed Racer

I've gone back and forth about writing a post for "Speed Racer" so close to the start of this blog, but the elephant in the room must be dealt with. Inasmuch as Vic Chesnutt has a singular, iconic song, it's "Speed Racer".

"Speed Racer" is the climactic song on Chesnutt's first album, 1990's Little, and much of its attendant love has to do with its autobiographical nature and unflinching confessional tone. A 1992 PBS documentary on Chesnutt took the title, and even for those who have followed his every move, the song looms large over his entire canon. Which is not to say that "Speed Racer" is his best song, but it does contain all of the songwriting and performance elements that make him unique, while directly dealing with a personal event that for some fans, and certainly the media, is defining.

In 1983, at the age of 18, Chesnutt was left partially paralyzed after a car accident. In the trailer for Peter Sillen's film, Chesnutt says (submerged in a bathtub and doodling a picture of himself in his wheelchair on the wall tiles) that he gets asked why he doesn't write songs about his chair, then submits that maybe they're all about it. "Speed Racer" doesn't reference his car accident or wheelchair confinement explicitly, but it's a declaration of attitude and world-view that serves as an answer to people's questions about it. "I used to watch Speed Racer with that hyper attitude / That carried me here to this fluorescent enlightenment!" he sings, which prefigures the hospital room of "Supernatural" (another enormously beloved Chesnutt song concerning the crash).

I once read in an interview (at least I think I did, I can't seem to find the damn thing) that after the accident, some people's reactions were it was destiny, part of God's plan, somehow meant to be "for a reason". "Speed Racer" is defiantly opposed to this, and in a powerful chorus, Chesnutt yowls:

I'm not a victim!

I'm not a victim!

No, I am intelligent, I am intelligent!

I'm not a victim!

I'm not a victim!

No, I am an atheist, I am an atheist!

A brave sentiment anywhere, but particularly in the deep South. He then elaborates, "The idea of divine order is essentially crazy / The laws of action and reaction are the closest thing to truth in the universe." Imagine allowing yourself to write such bold lines, then imagine trying to sing them with a semblance of fluidity.

Music fans love to know the stories behind their favorite songs, and love to believe that every song is an autobiographical one, even if they're not. That "Speed Racer" alludes to the question on everyone's mind when they see him perform in his wheelchair ("How'd he get there?") feeds into that sensationalist/curious corner of our imaginations. At one of the shows I saw Vic perform at the Iron Horse in Northampton, Massachusetts, a fellow audience member shouted out his request for "Speed Racer", to which he replied something to the effect of, "No, that one's too difficult." The concert-goer persisted with, "But it's my birthday!" Vic squinted his eyes and leveled them right at the guy. "You lyin' motherfucker." Then he played it.

Myrtle

"Myrtle" is the first song on the first Vic Chesnutt album I owned, 1996's About To Choke, which sadly appears to be out of print. I had ordered it song unheard through the bizarre phenomenon of the BMG Music Club, which allowed members to purchase dozens of albums for less than the cost of the materials, in exchange for purchasing one at a slightly inflated price. How this business model was in any way different from the kinds of contemporary internet schemes in terms of fairness to artists, I do not know. But About To Choke was Chesnutt's first and only "major" label recording, and ironically, the only one not in print.

I first heard of Chesnutt because of a song he co-wrote with fellow Athens, Georgia resident Jack Logan on the latter's aptly-titled Bulk, a collection of 42 mostly home-recorded country, punk, bar-rock, folk, blues, and unclassifiable songs. That album is also out-of-print, and disgustingly offered for only a penny as a used CD in online stores. Chesnutt's collaboration with Logan was "The Parishioners", which I intend to write about in full for this blog. I can't say the song made a huge impression on me, but it put Chesnutt on my radar, as did his known connections with Michael Stipe and R.E.M., who were heroes of mine when I was in high school. Before the full blossoming of the internet, which enables people to quickly and easily suss out musical connections and recommendations based on their favorite artists, I would rely on liner notes, thank yous, and magazine articles to establish who might be an interesting artist/band to check out. And I used BMG much the same way some people use mp3 blogs, to (relatively) risk-free test out music to see if it's worth further investment. Though I have to admit, it was a few years after getting About To Choke in the mail that I purchased another Vic Chesnutt album.

The delay in my Chesnutt appreciation wasn't due to any outright aversion to About To Choke, but more to the fact that my musical exposure was still limited, and that his work really does take time to be appreciated, an acquired taste if ever there was, though immensely rewarding. Like Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Nick Cave, and Leonard Cohen before him, Chesnutt has his own style of singing that is next to impossible to compare with anyone else's. His Georgia drawl exaggerates, twists and elongates vowel sounds almost beyond their breaking point, so it's no surprise that he's not accepted as a beautiful singer in a society that worships American Idols. But from a different perspective, he is one of the best singers we have, capable of a wide range of moods and characteristics, from fragile to strident, vulnerable to wicked, hangdog to jubilant. He rarely strays out of key unless it's the wiggle of his words that invites a slight sharp or flat, and he can pull off singing words that most writers and singers would never, ever attempt. Take "Myrtle" for example. The song is just over three minutes long, and contains the following words and phrases:

Funny pilgrim

Crazy crusade

Saucy Chaucer

Exacto knife

Load bearing wall

I whupped it out

Subrealist

Substantiate

Chesnutt is not your typical writer, but neither does he come off as a show-off. His style sounds completely natural for him, imbuing even the saddest, most poignant songs with a love of words and playful spirit. It's easy to be inspired by his obvious passion for language, but impossible to imitate.

"Myrtle", for the opening song on his major-label debut, is not a grand gesture, and it probably left more than one Capitol Records exec in tears of exasperation. It consists solely of Chesnutt's echo-drenched vocals over sparsely played and strummed piano and guitar. Single notes ping out in the gloom, and the song's climax doesn't come until the very end, when he sings one of his most beloved passages, "It was bigger than me / And I felt like a sick child / Dragged by a donkey / Through the myrtle." This is the line that was referenced by Sparklehorse's "Little Fat Baby" ("He got dragged by a donkey / Through the switches / And the myrtle / But he was once a little fat baby").

Definitions, Explanations

If you're unfamiliar with the phenomenon of "catablogs", or "oeuvre-blogs", they're simply blogs devoted to critically assessing a particular artist's entire recorded work, song by song. Some of the artists that have been covered are well-known (R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Bjork, Pavement, Elton John), others not so much (Guided By Voices, Low, John Cale). Some have been completed, some are in progress, and plenty have been abandoned. It's not an easy task, something akin to the Appalachian Trail of music criticism. However, I've finished one before, and feel like embarking again.

This time I chose Vic Chesnutt, a musician who for 20 years has been crafting albums of (I think) enormous significance not only to popular music, but to the broader realm of American art. Inspired by a host of poets ranging from Emily Dickinson to Stevie Smith, yet highly attuned to and uncomprising in his own idiosyncratic voice, the man's gifts are many and extraordinary. Though at times he has skirted mainstream attention (perhaps closest by way of a tribute album devoted to his songs which featured Smashing Pumpkins, R.E.M., Hootie & the Blowfish, and Madonna (!)), his work remains fairly unknown, though championed by his peers and devoted fans.

All of this means that this blog probably won't be any kind of draw unless for those already familiar with the songs. It's more of a way for me to continue to practice my critical writing, give myself assignments, and reconnect with a lot of amazing music in my collection. But if it does mean that a few more people will get to know Chesnutt's music, that will be the best possible outcome.