by Kevin Meenan of Epicsauce

2009 has been quite the year for Vic Chesnutt. The prolific singer-songwriter released two albums (At the Cut and the Jonathan Richman produced Skitter on Take-Off), appeared on the Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse collaboration Dark Night of the Soul and toured extensively with his all-star band, featuring Fugazi's Guy Picciotto along with members of Canadian's post-rock heroes Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Thee Silver Mt. Zion. We had the good fortune of reaching Vic via phone over the holiday weekend, where we talked with him about his band and recent works, and he told us a bit about what to expect from his show tonight at the Great American Music Hall.

You have an amazing set of musicians supporting you on this tour and on two of your recent releases, At the Cut and North Star Deserter. In my opinion, it doesn't get much bigger than Fugazi's Guy Picciotto, and Silver Mt. Zion/Godspeed You! Black Emperor connection is pretty damn impressive as well. How did the group come about?

It was all Jem Cohen’s idea, the filmmaker and my best buddy. It was all his idea to bring us together. He did my previous two records - Silver Lake and Ghetto Bells -- and he said he wanted to make a good Vic Chestnut record. He wanted to exploit the two halves of my songwriting and my musical life, and that is the acoustic and the distortion.