Goodbye, my friend

A long time ago – I don’t remember the exact year, but I think it was 1983 – I was attending Gordon Junior College, a little school in Barnesville, Ga., and I had one of those chance encounters that changed me.

I was standing outside the small student center there, and I noticed this odd-looking little guy standing next to me. He was several inches shorter than me, and he was wearing a dark coat and carrying what I thought at first was a briefcase, but turned out to be a trumpet case. What a nerd, I thought.

But we began to talk, and after a few minutes, we discovered that we had something in common - music. We were both big Beatles fans, and there were several other groups that we both liked, and before long we were discussing how cool it would be form our own band.

That’s how I came to know Vic Chesnutt, who died on Christmas Day in an Athens hospital, only 45 years old, his body and his spirit apparently broken, 20 years after the world discovered the wonder of his music.

We never really got a band going back then, in part because I had no discernible musical ability. But Vic did. He could play guitar and keyboards and trumpets and he was already writing his own songs. Many afternoons I would go over to his house near Zebulon, along with our friend Todd McBride, and listen to music and try to play some and sing and make each other laugh. I don’t think I was ever around him for more than 10 minutes without laughing, and vice versa.

The laughter was interrupted one night when Vic lost control of his station wagon and crashed into a ditch, a wreck that left him partially paralyzed and in a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. A few of us went to see him shortly after the wreck at the Shephard Spinal Center in Atlanta, and it was a very difficult thing to deal with. But even that day, he made me laugh. We were on an elevator with a group of nurses and doctors and he put an unlit cigarette in his mouth and said, “Mmmm, good doobie. Good doobie.”

Though he was never able to fully regain the use and agility in his right hand, he figured out a way to play guitar, and was soon making music again. Several of my friends and I found ourselves in Athens, eventually, some going to college, some playing in a band. Vic and Todd and some others formed a band, and for a few short months, I actually joined them as their drummer. Those were some of the best times of my life.

I can recall many times, sitting around at somebody’s house in Athens, hearing Vic play his newest song. I was always amazed. His songs were quirky, funny, heartfelt, personal, and unlike anything else I’d heard. You don’t really see his music compared to many others, because he was that rarest of breed, an original.

I graduated from UGA, moved away, started raising a family, so my trips back to Athens and my chances to see and talk to Vic became rarer and rarer. He gave me a guitar, a cheap Yamaha acoustic that he had adorned with plastic stickers. He encouraged me to learn how to play, and to write songs, and I did, though none of them are as good as his. I still have that old guitar, even though it’s long past being playable, and it is one of my most treasured possessions. I’m glad he never asked for it back.

Vic got his big break not long after I left Athens. Michael Stipe, always a big fan of Vic’s, produced his first two albums, and they were a sensation – Little, and West of Rome. Music critics loved him, as did other musicians. Vic never made it big commercially, but he had a devoted following all across the country and in Europe. He was friends with Lucinda Williams and recorded with Emmylou Harris and was in “Slingblade” with his friend Billy Bob Thornton. He was, in my eyes at least, a huge star.

As too often happens with old friends, we grow apart, we lose touch, we go years without seeing each other or talking to each other. The last time I saw him was several years ago, in an Atlanta club, where was playing a show to promote his CD Silver Lake. I only got to speak to him a few minutes after the show, but when he saw me his eyes lit up and he started pointing at me, and for that few minutes we were the same as we were in 1983, laughing at each other’s dumb jokes and enjoying each other’s company.

For many, many years, I would have regularly have dreams in which Vic would appear, and in all of them, he was not in a wheelchair, but he was walking and running. I guess that’s the way my mind wanted to remember him. Today, and for the past couple of days, he’s been not in my dreams, but in my waking mind, and I don’t picture him running or walking, but I picture him laughing, and pointing at me, and picking up his guitar to blow me away again. That’s how he will always live in my mind. Rest in peace, my friend.