INFORMATION, PLEASE

In the Tucson Weekly‘s Dec. 24 issue, we’ll feature our
annual New Year’s Guide, a handy go-to resource to help you plan
how you’ll usher in 2010.

But in order to inform our readers of their options, we need to know
exactly what in the heck is going on. That’s where you come in.

If your club, restaurant or other venue is hosting a New Year’s
celebration that will feature live music, let us know what you’ve got
going on. Send complete details—that’s performers, location,
address, phone number, Web site, time, cost and a description of the
event—to musiced@tucsonweekly.com and listings@tucsonweekly.com no
later than Friday, Dec. 11 (of course, the earlier the better), and
I’ll give your shindig some free publicity.

I will be patiently waiting at my desk for your e-mails to
arrive.

A PERSONAL FAVORITE

The first nonlocal musician I ever interviewed for this paper,
almost 11 years ago, was Athens, Ga.’s Vic Chesnutt, who happens
to be one of my favorite songwriters.

I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I interviewed him by phone, and
when I later spoke to him in person, after a show at Club
Congress, I had a few drinks in my belly and was feeling
fearless—perhaps too much so. I jokingly told him that it was a
bad idea for him to have given me his personal phone number, because I
might call him again, possibly in the middle of the night. “Oh, that’s
OK,” he replied without a beat. “I don’t have to answer.”

I also gushed about how much his music had meant to me, something I
hadn’t yet learned was to be avoided. I told him that I was a tough
cry, but that his song “Stupid Preoccupations” (from 1991’s West of
Rome) made me weep when I first heard it. “That means a lot to me,
Stephen,” he said, “because I cried when I wrote that song.”

I bring this up, because it demonstrates something about Chesnutt
and about his music: There’s a dichotomy there between light and heavy,
funny and serious. Chesnutt is a master at this, making you chuckle one
minute and cry the next. We discussed it during that phone
conversation. Chesnutt said, “That’s very important in my songs: Don’t
know whether to laugh or cry. It gives energy to my songs, somehow, and
it gives energy to me when I’m writing it if I don’t know whether to
bum out or giggle. I’m a cynical person.”

The humor, of course, is there to offset the underlying sadness in
his songs, of which there is a lot. Chesnutt has earned his cynicism.
While he despises sympathy, he’s been bound to a wheelchair since a
single-car drunk-driving accident at age 18. He played guitar and wrote
songs before the accident, but afterward, he couldn’t play. “My fingers
just wouldn’t do it,” he told me, so he wrote songs on a keyboard
instead. A full year after the accident, he dropped a bunch of acid one
night, and by morning, he found, miraculously, that he could play
guitar again.

In the ’80s, Chesnutt performed regularly at Athens’ famed 40 Watt
Club, and it was there that Michael Stipe came across him. Eventually,
Stipe called Chesnutt one day to say that he had an extra day in a
recording studio, and asked Vic if he wanted to come down and do some
recording. That day yielded Little (Texas Hotel, 1990),
Chesnutt’s acclaimed debut album.

Since then, Chesnutt has released a dozen albums and had his songs
covered by the likes of Madonna, R.E.M. and Smashing Pumpkins. In 1995,
he collaborated with Widespread Panic, and the pairing yielded two
albums released under the name Brute. It was the first in a long line
of collaborations; in more recent years, he has teamed up with
Lambchop, Bill Frisell, Van Dyke Parks, Elf Power and Cowboy Junkies,
among others.

A couple of months ago, in a two-week span, Chesnutt released two
new albums: Skitter on Take-Off (Vapor), a relatively
stripped-down, lo-fi affair co-produced by Jonathan Richman and
Tucson’s Tommy Larkins; and At the Cut (Constellation), his
second album backed by a band that includes Fugazi guitarist Guy
Picciotto and members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Silver Mt.
Zion. (The first was 2007’s North Star Deserter, also released
on Constellation.)

Those Constellation albums are some of the slowest, darkest and
noisiest he’s released. Chesnutt’s songs mostly provide the skeleton
for the large band to embellish upon, and they indeed open up and
stretch out. The albums are largely a series of inspired dirges and
cacophonous brooding (and are, by the way, gorgeous). Listening to
Skitter and At the Cut back-to-back, it’s striking how
one man’s songs can become so different depending on the musicians he’s
playing them with.

At his appearance in Tucson this week, Chesnutt will have the
Constellation band in tow, so expect them to mostly play songs from
At the Cut and North Star Deserter.

Vic Chesnutt performs at Club Congress, 311 E. Congress St., on
Wednesday, Dec. 2. The show begins at 9 p.m. with opening sets
by Liz Durrett and Golden Boots. Tickets are $10 in
advance, or $12 on the day of the show. For more information, call
622-8848.

KEENAN STRIKES AGAIN

As far as late additions go, this one’s a doozy.

If you haven’t had a gander at the Rialto Theatre‘s marquee
lately, you may not know that Puscifer is headed our way this
week.

Puscifer is, of course, yet another spectacle from the mind of
Maynard James Keenan (Tool, A Perfect Circle), Arizonan, winemaker (a
documentary about his winemaking efforts, Blood Into Wine, is
currently set to be released early next year) and, oh yeah,
musician.

Based on reviews of previous shows, the Puscifer live show is a
twisted, sexually explicit variety show, with Keenan portraying
characters such as the flag-waving Major Douche and backwoods country
crooner Billy Dee. (Spin compared this section of the show to an
“X-rated episode of Hee-Haw.“) Another portion of the
performance reviewed in Spin had the band members playing more
straightforward songs while hidden behind flat-screen TVs that showed
them projected onscreen. Apparently, the shows vary from night to
night, so what we’ll get at this week’s show here is anybody’s guess.
But you can pretty much count on the fact that it’ll be some good,
dirty fun.

Puscifer performs at the Rialto Theatre, 318 E. Congress St., on
Wednesday, Dec. 2. Comedian Neil Hamburger opens the
all-ages show at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $39.50 to $55; VIP packages
that include a wine tasting are also available. Call 740-1000 for further details.

Maynard James Keenan and his partner in Arizona Stronghold
Vineyards, Eric Glomski, will also be signing bottles of their
wines at Whole Foods, 3360 E. Speedway Blvd., from 2 to 5 p.m.,
Sunday, Dec. 6.

INSERT MARIJUANA JOKE HERE

The legendary Willie Nelson brings his guitar Trigger and a
lifetime of incredible songs back to Tucson for a pair of shows on
consecutive nights this week.

Also in tow: the sprawling Western-swing combo Asleep at the
Wheel, with whom Nelson collaborated on an album, appropriately
titled Willie and the Wheel (Bismeaux), released earlier this
year. More recently, Nelson released American Classic (Blue
Note), a collection of his interpretations of standards that is
something of a sequel to 1978’s Stardust (Columbia).

Willie Nelson and Asleep at the Wheel perform at the Diamond
Center at Desert Diamond Casino, 1100 W. Pima Mine Road, at 7 p.m.,
Wednesday, Dec. 2, and Thursday, Dec. 3. Advance tickets
run $35 to $70 at all Ticketmaster locations, at ticketmaster.com and at (800) 745-3000.
They’ll be $5 more on the day of the show. For more info, call
294-7777.

After selling out AVA at Casino del Sol about a year ago, reunited
stoner-comedy legends Cheech and Chong will take a victory lap
at the Diamond Center at Desert Diamond Casino at 8 p.m.,
Saturday, Nov. 28. Tickets are $35 to $65 in advance; they’ll be
$5 more on the day of the show. See above for how to get them.

This article appears in Nov 26 – Dec 2, 2009.