Peter Case Goes West and Stays There—Except When He’s on the Road

by

In 1973 Peter Case was a young man who took Horace Greeley’s advice and headed west, to San Francisco. Leaving Buffalo, N.Y. in a blizzard by bus turned out to be a good decision; San Francisco is where he is calling from in advance of his Shank Hall show on Tuesday.

Case’s musical resume is as impressive as any on the Malcolm Gladwell-approved spectrum: from early garage bands (crossing paths with a young Gurf Morlix) to logging long hours busking as a street musician to the proto-DIY group The Nerves (circa 1974) to power pop kings The Plimsouls. In 1986 Case recorded his self-titled debut for Geffen, back in history when there was such a thing as record labels. 

His new album Doctor Moan finds Case at the piano with a collection of songs that cast the songwriter in a slightly different light, yet he still comes to define that amorphic music genre, Americana.

When the pandemic shut things down his scheduled tour collapsed. Case naturally began working on songs, “playing piano in the front room. The nice thing about it—if you can say anything nice about that damn pandemic—was that I got to really work on this album from start to finish.”

Inclined to put the song and the singer first, Case found a nearby studio to capture stripped down arrangements once the coast was clear. He says the process has become more and more about getting what he loves into the way the music sounds. “In the Nerves I was just trying to figure out how to be in a band and play a two-minute song … and we did that pretty good.”

A few years ago, Case reunited with Paul Collins from the Nerves for a tour. The backing band for those dates was stacked with Wisconsin musicians including Chris Bongers, Timm Buechler, Amos Pitsch and Tim Schweiger. He said it was gratifying to be playing to clubs filled with young fans who knew all the words to the songs. That tour found Case playing a Collins-less barnburner at Shank. 

A longtime fan, bassist Buechler, called the opportunity a dream gig. “I was most fascinated by [Case’s] drive to always be playing and writing new music in his downtime and, also, his curiosity and constant thirst for new knowledge.

As for Milwaukee, Case also fondly recalls a Bastille Days show, rocking out with his trio in front of Real Chili and a house concert at Casa de Sieger, among others.

For the sake of the song

If the Nerves were rudimentary, the Plimsouls were designed to “blow the roof off the club,” Case says. Over time more of what he loved got into the songs. The best people in blues, jazz, country and rock and roll seeped in, as evidenced by Doctor Moan. “That’s what I think your job as a musician is, to take your fantasy for what a record should be like and to put it down as best you can. I follow my life like that,” he says before a low-flying helicopter interrupts our conversation, “… there must be something happening,” 

“I got to spend the time getting things right. It was great to be able to just focus on it that long,” he says of the new album’s genesis. Case speaks about the struggle of working with record labels in the past and how the challenge these days has become artists funding projects themselves.

He cites seeing Lightning Hopkins, Dave Van Ronk and Laura Nyro playing solo shows that made him realize one person can pull off an impressive performance. “A song has to have a groove you are sharing with people—simple and direct.” 

Opening shows solo for The Replacements and Hüsker Dü kept him on his toes. One particular solo show at McCabes in Los Angeles in 1984 had Case in a panic. As the date approached, he was at wit’s end, “It was like throwing a cat in a tub of water. It blew my mind how intense it was, but I got bit by the bug for it too. The ability to relate to the audience … the show became an art form in a way,” he recalls.

Songs are like movies projected on people’s imaginations, Case says, “mine are—so you don’t want to fiddle with them too much talking about what they are supposed to mean. People know what songs mean.” Songs are their own art form, he emphasizes, that’s the trick, not stepping on the song. “I don’t think [videos] were good for songs or films that much—to be a three-minute film tied to a song is kind of a weird thing … it was just an advertising tool, I suppose.”

Doctor Moan’s schooling

Case said he’d generally work in the morning warming up, playing the likes of Jimmy Yancey or Thelonious Monk. The prize in the Crackerjacks, it seems, was the stretch Case played piano at the Saint John Coltrane Church in San Francisco (nytimes.com/2021/12/03/t-magazine/john-coltrane-church.html), “I’m no McCoy Tyner, I’m pretty much a rock and roll piano player. It was a fantastic band with a great message, ‘A Love Supreme.’” 

His wife volunteered him to play on a day when the regular piano player didn’t show up. After that he played regularly. “People come from all over the world …I t is very powerful. Coltrane is a saint in the church, and they make a good case for it. It was a very uplifting experience. and I was glad to be part of it.”

As for his work process, Case says playing early in the day allowed ideas to come to the surface. “You get into a state and allow things to come through. I learned by experience that songs show up when they want to be sung,” he says. 

If he could go back in time and talk to that young Peter Case, getting in the station wagon with Jack Lee and Paul Collins headed across the country selling the Nerves EP—what advice would you give him? 

“Hang together and be patient. Be more positive. Back then everything was so urgent. You had no idea how long the run was going to be. Try listening to each other more.” He’d also say record as much as you can when you can. He regrets not cutting a whole album. “That place sounded great. It was expensive but we should have come up with it.”

Stream or download Doctor Moan on Amazon.