Reviewed for LiveGuide.

Vic Chesnutt and Victoria Williams have been recording and performing for two decades and they have both had their share of physical setbacks. Chesnutt ended up paralysed after a car crash aged 18 and, as an adult, Victoria Williams learnt she was suffering from multiple sclerosis. These conditions made for interesting and at times moving performances from the two Vics at the Factory Theatre.

Singer-songwriter Natalie D-Napoleon and Andre Hooke from Melbournians Khancoban warmed the fairly sparse crowd with their straightforward country folk music. Hooke in particular possesses an emotive voice that dips and soars while he peers at the ground and picks out tight melodies on his guitar. His voice is like a more countrified Glenn Richards from Augie March. D-Napoleon on the other hand doesn’t seem to have the same depth of emotion to her songs but she nails the key ingredients of country and roots music all the same.

With little fanfare Vic Chesnutt rolled his way onto the stage and, after making some minor adjustments to his setup, began to sing an improvised ode to warming up. From that moment he won over the crowd with his dark humour and the ability to mesmerise the audience with his sparse and fragile folk.

Chesnutt’s skill lay in the his voice, his lyrics and his guitar playing. His singing was grounded in pain and hope and was rich with rising notes in its weary croon. His lyrics had the ability to create laughter one second and then suck the air out of the room the next. He sang one song about all the different types of friends and you could hear a pin drop when he hit the line about “Everybody has a friend battling cancer, for the second time”. His guitar playing was as important as his singing. Frail, scratching and incessant, it held the songs together like an invisible spider web and in the less than full Factory Theatre the intimacy and closeness of the sound was a real highlight.

Victoria Williams shuffled onstage looking something akin to an op-shop mannequin with her quirky fur hat and Amish style clothes. Her MS means she has a shuffling walk and it placed a sense of doubt and hesitancy in her performance. Her first song or two were loose and unsure to say the least but after that she warmed to the task and some magic moments emerged.

Chesnutt shared the stage with Williams for her set and as well as moral support he added featherlite percussion and then towards the end of the set – guitar and vocals. The highlight came when the two of them duetted on ‘It’s A Beautiful World’. It was ragged and sung with warmth and empathy, devoid of the sunny cheesiness the standard sometimes attracts.

Williams shifted between guitar and piano, both of which she seemed to play in her own time zone. She had a unique way of stopping mid phrase, putting on a thinking expression and then resuming the song. It had the effect of keeping the audience on the edge of their seats, anticipating the next line, wondering if she had forgotten where she was going. But when Williams opened her mouth to sing in her soft drawl or her bluesy squeal the crowd realised she had full control of what she was trying to do with the song.

A curious lack of set lists made for a tentative performance overall. It felt like the songs had to be coaxed out of the performers and the show felt a little too casual and the ice too thin at times. When both singers really got inside their songs though, you could see why they have earned the respect of people from Sparklehorse to Pearl Jam, Neil Young, REM and Lucinda Williams. It as a totally unique, raw and honest show, and it felt like one of those very special and intimate performances that don’t come round often enough.