by Michael Gray

The melancholy beauty of the song is in synch with the quiet afternoon rainfall outside the Wedgewood Avenue recording studio. So are the pensive observations of the audio engineer and the two scruffy musicians who are tinkering with a freshly recorded song called "Mysterious Tunnel" -- a dreamy, enigmatic piece in which the gruff, folksy singer tells of drinking from a nasty water fountain and later mutters something about astone-age fax machine.

With Picasso prints, a country music history book and a soundless CNN telecast, Wedgetone Studio is an informal room, one full of character, neighboring the StateFairgrounds.

It is the kind of place where, if they had coffee, you would assume it was stale. But there is no java in sight, only cigarettes, pretzels and a half-empty box of Hot Tamales.

It's the day after the Nashville Music Awards, and Kurt Wagner is a little curious about what went down. His iconoclastic band, lambchop, was a contender, but he did not attend the award ceremonies.

Instead, he and Vic Chesnutt worked at Wedgetone mixing their new album, Salesman and Bernadette, due in the spring on Capitol Records, a fitting and somewhat surreal collaboration between lambchop and the Athens, Ga., songwriting hero.

Knowing, or maybe just sensing, lambchop did not win, Wagner was pleased to find out that the team of Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana nabbed the trophy for best independent recording, the award for which lambchop was nominated. Moore and Fontana's win was the first award ever for each, in careers dating back to the early days of Elvis Presley.

``Are you hungry?'' Wagner asks Chesnutt, deciding if they should conduct the interview over lunchtime grub.

``I'm trying to get there,'' Chesnutt, preoccupied with the mixing process, answers wryly.

After Chesnutt makes some final adjustments to "Mysterious Tunnel" and the pair decides they're content to postpone lunch, the conversation moves from the control room to the sound room so Mark Nevers, the recording engineer, won't be bothered.

``It is a good melding of the moods,'' Chesnutt says of his collaboration with the 12-piece Nashville ensemble.

``I really like their individual personalities, as well as the group dynamic. lambchop is like one big family -- I envy that a lot. I was hoping for an energy boost out of that, which I got.''

The communal traits of lambchop will be on display this evening at Lucy's Record Shop, 1707 Church St.

The indie-stocked record store, which has doubled as an underground, all-ages concert room for the past five years, is owned and operated by Wagner's wife, Mary Mancini.

Marking an end of an era for the local rock scene, the alternative music headquarters is closing up shop Saturday night. Tonight's concert, headlined by lambchop and Vic Chesnutt, is the first of the two farewell shows at Lucy's this weekend.

In typical collective lambchop style, two of the group's members will showcase their side projects tonight in the opening slots. Mark Nevers (the aforementioned audio engineer) will front CYOD, an experimental rock outfit that rarely plays outside the studio. And Paul Burch will perform retro-style country music with his W.P.A. Ballclub.

Lambchop, fronted by Nashville native Wagner, performs a set of its own. Last, Chesnutt will join the informal group in previewing some songs from Salesman and Bernadette.

``I'm sure it will be a bit emotional,'' the soft-spoken Wagner says of the farewell concert. He's feeling a little sentimental, not only because Lucy's was the adopted home of lambchop and other kindred spirits, but also because the last time he played there with Chesnutt was the night he fell in love with Mancini.

The seeds of the Chesnutt-lambchop collaborations were planted in 1991 at Club 1000, a short-lived music joint located on Nashville's north side.

``There were five people there,'' Chesnutt recalls. ``Four of them were cops, the other was Kurt.''

``It took forever for Vic to go on,'' adds Wagner, who didn't know much about Chesnutt's music before hearing him that night.

``Was I getting drunk?'' Chesnutt asks.

``No, that was later,'' Wagner tells him. ``I think you were just hanging around waiting for more people to show up.''

Chesnutt doesn't have to worry about that these days. Lately, the colorful and literate songwriter has been touring with such popular concert draws as R.E.M., Bob Mould, Soul Asylum, Live and the Cowboy Junkies.

After a decade of writing, performing and recording songs for sparse but ardent audiences, Chesnutt has seen his small army of devout followers expand in recent years with the high-profile arrival of a celebrity-packed tribute album and his major-label debut, About To Choke.

Prior to signing with Capitol, Chesnutt released four low-budget records on the obscure Texas Hotel Records and a collaborative effort with Georgia jam band Widespread Panic (released under the name brute), on Capricorn Records.

Encouraged by R.E.M. frontman and fellow Athens resident Michael Stipe, Chesnutt first went into the studio in 1987 (protesting all the way, so the story goes) to record Little, which was released the following year.

As a New York Times writer once noted, Chesnutt's songs, like early R.E.M., hint at a mysterious American South where elusive meanings lurk in the back woods.

A native of rural Pike County, Ga., Chesnutt took inspiration from his grandfather, Sleepy Carter, a heavy machinery operator and semiprofessional musician who played country-swing guitar.

``I was the only person that got to hear him sing much,'' he says. ``He couldn't sing with his (false) teeth in, so he didn't hardly ever sing. He had a big influence on my vocal style, though.

``When I was a little kid, he wrote songs. I started to do it because I thought everybody must write songs. I don't feel like I break any new ground in that way. Anybody who puts words to music -- that's the tradition I'm in.

``I'm just a folk songwriter,'' he continues. ``I'm doing the same thing people have been doing forever. I'm no different than old ladies who sit down and write songs about their imaginary lives.''

Word of Chesnutt began to spread and his Southern folkisms, comic insights and emotionally textured songs made their way into the consciousness of better-known artists and songwriters.

Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation, released on Columbia Records in 1996, features Chesnutt tunes covered by R.E.M., Live, Garbage, Madonna, Cracker, Smashing Pumpkins, Nanci Griffith with Hootie & The Blowfish, Soul Asylum, Indigo Girls and others.

Most proceeds from the album go to the Sweet Relief Foundation, a fund that helps uninsured musicians with medical bills. The first Sweet Relief album collected covers of songs by Victoria Williams, who suffers from multiple sclerosis.

Chesnutt was involved in a near-fatal car accident at age 18 which left him paraplegic -- he got drunk on Easter Sunday 1983 and plowed his car into an Atlanta ditch.

His flirtations with self-destruction are legendary among his followers, and his cantankerous nature has been much publicized in the music press.

But there's no trace of orneriness in the sound room of Wedgetone Studio, where the conversation continues to unfold amid various musical instruments and vintage sound gear.

``I knew I wanted to record with lambchop, so I tailored the songs to showcase their many talents,'' Chesnutt says.

``The whole concept of the record was with them in mind.

``This record is different for me in a lot of ways. I wrote all the songs and we recorded them in order as they will appear on the record. I've never done a record like this which was so well-organized ahead of time.

``It is a series of recollections, mostly. It tells the story of this guy who is looking back on his life. Each song tells another snippet of his life. It's a fictional tale, but he's a guy like myself in many ways. His little doings overlap my little doings somewhat -- they have odd parallels to my life.

``It was important for me to work with one band on this record,'' Chesnutt continues. ``The last record was more chaotic. It was basically all on me to make. With this one, I spent a lot of time before hand writing songs and piecing it together.

``When it came time to record, though, I wanted to have fun and not have to work so hard.''