Vic Chesnutt, the Georgia-based singer-songwriter known for his darkly comic songs, died yesterday in Athens, Georgia, after spending several days in a coma caused by an overdose of muscle relaxers. Chesnutt, who was confined to a wheelchair after a car crash at age 18, was discovered in the late 1980s by R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, who produced his first two albums, Little and West of Rome. “We have lost one of our great ones,” Stipe said in a statement posted on the Constellation Records Website, which confirmed the musician’s death. “His songs and his story remain.”
