About a decade ago I was asked to participate in a songwriter’s seminar that the Nashville Songwriter’s Association International had set up in a small Midwestern city. I discovered that I greatly enjoyed critiquing songs and soon found myself giving a weeklong songwriting workshop at the Augusta Heritage Festival in Elkins, West Virginia. I’ve listened to thousands of songs since then and have always prided myself with not being able to remember the songs that have been played for me by my students with only a handful of exceptions.

Some of Vic Chestnutt’s friends in Athens learned about my workshop at Augusta and delivered him to the campus where it was being held. He had a beat-up guitar and a handful of songs that differed radically from the folk/pop material being submitted for my consideration by the other students.

The class went well and on the last day we decided to have a party. Vic had always been late so I didn’t notice him missing until many hours later when he rolled in looking like he’d been mugged -- in fact, he had fallen out of his wheelchair, tumbled down a hill, and fought his way back up, minute after long minute. Vic shrugged his injuries off and then preceded to play a song he’d just written about "you’re eating pizza and I’m eating dirt" that I still can’t erase from my memory.

This CD finds Vic singing his heart out accompanied by friends Kelly and Nikki Keneipp -- who, knowing Vic’s inability to say no, quite probably "extorted" him to make up lyrics to tracks they composed. The results are one of a kind -- a description that easily fits any of his seven previous albums.