Vic Chesnutt Dead Updated
Vic Chesnutt Dead Updated: News Update at 11pm : After this article was originally published, Billboard magazine published their own report saying Chesnutt had passed. At this point, there are still no official statements.
News Update at 11:30 pm : Within the past half hour, both Billboard and Athens Blur have removed their articles reporting Chesnutt’s death. We’ve updated our headline from “Vic Chesnutt reportedly dead after alleged suicide attempt” to “Update: Conflicting reports on Vic Chesnutt condition after alleged suicide attempt” to reflect these changes. We continue to seek out an official statement and will update this story as new information comes in.
Reports circulated late Christmas Eve that singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt had died after falling into a coma.
Chesnutt’s label, Constellation Records, had confirmed in a statement that Chesnutt was in a coma mid-day, and Athens Blur magazine broke the news later that Chesnutt had died, though no official confirmation was available at press time.
Tweets from former Throwing Muses singer Kristen Hersh—a longtime friend of Chesnutt—circulated among bloggers through the day.
On Christmas Eve morning, Hersh posted:
no calls in the night-well, only to talk about how much we love vic-and no news is good news…if we lose him i’ll have lost my equilibrium.
and later
yeah, i can tell you what i know, but no one knows much: another suicide attempt, looks bad, coma—if he survives, there may be brain damage.
Later in the day, the Constellation press statement confirmed the coma.
Vic is in the middle of a serious medical situation, he is in a coma, and his family and friends are with him,” said Constellation Records’ Don Wilkie. “We have no comment right now on the specifics other than that his doctors are continuing to assess his condition. We will issue a full statement at an appropriate time. In the interim, we request that everybody respect Vic’s privacy and that of his family.”
On October, Chesnutt told Spinner that he’d run into recent financial problems. “Right now, I’m in huge trouble in that the hospital is suing me for $35,000, which is terrifying, and the rub is that I have health insurance. I have hospitalization insurance, for which I pay almost $500 a month, and then on top of that I still owe the hospital $35,000. That is truly an insane system. I did everything right and I’m still under the gun.
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