James Victor "Vic" Chesnutt (November 12, 1964 – December 25, 2009) was a singer-songwriter living in Athens, Georgia. He had been writing songs since he was five years old. Injured in a car accident in 1983, the paraplegic artist’s first big breakthrough to commercial success came with the release of the tribute album Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation.
An adoptee, Chesnutt was raised in Zebulon, Georgia, where he first started writing songs at the age of 5. At 18, a car accident left him partially paralyzed, though it wasn’t long afterward that he realized he could still play guitar. After his recovery he left Zebulon and moved to Nashville, Tennessee; the poetry he read there (by Stevie Smith, Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, W. H. Auden, Stephen Crane, and Emily Dickinson) served to inspire and influence him.
Death of Vic Chesnutt
On December 25, 2009, Chesnutt died from an overdose of muscle relaxants that had left him in a coma in an Athens hospital.
Vic Chesnutt – Band Camp