News Round Up: RIP Vic Chesnutt

Welcome to 2010 folks, not let’s get a cup of joe and roll up our sleeves, and get into the latest in music happenings…

• The New York Times features an article, Nashville Inches, Ever So Grudgingly, Into The Future, where it compares the lack of innovation in Music Row to the stubborn (and suicidal) stance to the recording industry over the last decade. Country music has learned tat “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” in as much as it’s attained it’s current  brand of pop-country. This is where the article overlooks Nashville’s history of of style assimilation over the past 50 years from co-opting the 1940’s crooners to the current filching of bad 70’s rock.

• New York City twangers need to head over to the always excellent Rockwood Music Hall on Tuesday, January 12 to see friend of  Twang Nation Joe Whyte (the King of NYC Americana)  who will be appearing with his full band, Cat Popper (Grace Potter, Ryan Adams) on bass, Rob Heath (Kevin Kinney, Jill Sobule) on drums, and Dan Marcus (Norah Jones, Ana Egge) on guitar. Whyte will be playing current favorites as well as premiering new music to appear on his follow up to Devil in the Details.

• American Songwriter’s newest legend’s issue features Townes Van Zandt, Robert Earle Keen, Bobby Braddock, Rickie Lee Jones, Richard Thompson and John Prine.

• If you didn’t hear, died on Christmas Day at his Athens, Georgia, holidays singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt took his own life by overdose of muscle relaxants.  Paralyzed from the waist down after a 1983 car accident, Chesnutt was wheelchair-bound since the age of 18 and suffered from years of depression. His music is a unique blend of idiosyncratic folk/Americana, bracing in its beauty as much as in its honesty. Here are some tributes: PopMatters.com, Online Athens, the New York Times and the Guardian.uk.