Singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt [ tickets ] continues to work the road hard in support of his eleventh album, "Silver Lake," which reached stores in March.

Chesnutt's July schedule includes stops at clubs in about a dozen cities. Alt-country group Hem [ tickets ] opens most dates; a complete list of support acts is in the itinerary below.

Backing the Athens, GA-based Chesnutt this year has been a group dubbed the Amorphous Strums: Curtiss Pernice (Porn Orchard) on guitar, bass, omnichord and backing vocals; Sam Mixon (Porn Orchard, Sunshine Fix) on bass, guitar, omnichord, piano and backing vocals; and Ballard Lesemann (The Causey Way, the Rock-a-Teens) on drums, bass and backing vocals.

Chesnutt recorded "Silver Lake" in a large living room in the Paramour, an 80-year-old hilltop mansion in the Los Angeles neighborhood after which the album is named.

Though most of Chesnutt's previous albums featured bare-bones production and instrumentation, "Silver Lake"--produced by Mark Howard (Lucinda Williams, the Tragically Hip)--is a more ambitious affair. The band for the album included Doug Pettibone (Lucinda Williams, Alejandro Escovedo) on guitars and vocals, Daryl Johnson (Neville Brothers, Emmylou Harris) on bass and vocals, Patrick Warren (Michael Penn, Tracy Chapman) on keyboards and Mike Stinson (Christina Aguilera) on drums. Don Heffington (Bob Dylan, Victoria Williams) assisted on drums and percussion, while Chesnutt sang, played guitars, harmonica, Casio keyboard and omnichord.

A 1983 car accident left Chesnutt partially paralyzed and reliant on a wheelchair, but his musical career blossomed in its wake.

"I didn't start reading until after the accident," Chesnutt said in a statement. "Before that I couldn't sit still long enough--except to read Beatle books --and [Anthony Scaduto's "Bob Dylan"]. I was 18 when the accident happened and afterwards I moved to Nashville. I shoplifted the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry and stayed up nights reading it; Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, W.H. Auden, Steven Crane. And Emily Dickinson, I loved her nursery rhyme rhythms."

In 1996, Columbia Records released "Sweet Relief II: Gravity Of The Situation--The Songs of Vic Chesnutt," a benefit album to assist musicians with medical and financial hardship. Smashing Pumpkins, Madonna, Hootie & The Blowfish, Garbage, Live and R.E.M. were among the artists who covered Chesnutt's songs on the disc.