HWY 62 (2015) Hello friends, I hope this finds you all well after surviving the zig-zag fortunes of 2021. What a time! I’m glad I have some positive music news to bring you. On Bandcamp Friday (December 3) a new expanded version of my album HWY 62 is being released for downloads; 17 tracks, including three unreleased songs and three other alternate versions, as well as the eleven songs from the original album, remastered. https://petercase1.bandcamp.com/album/hwy-62-expanded-edition       My latest album, The Midnight Broadcast is available on vinyl and cd directly from Bandaloop Records: https://bandalooprecords.bigcartel.com/ Here’s the review from American Songwriter: Peter Case Captures a Late Night Connection to Radio on ‘The Midnight Broadcast’     Please vote for my album The Midnight Broadcast in the No Depression Poll! (Link below) https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScNcWaHy9rhQ7TFpFMdPQeFPfSoNkYJ9ao5AOtHu0plVqAcvw/viewform?fbzx=5820312378874917764&fbclid=IwAR15jsX1CDGwAeYPCPG19n-7X05fVIMaSgUsSw1Cgk2lT4oDfqUnTjW_L2g My latest book, a collection of lyrics, drawings and stories, is available here: www.amazon.com/Somebody-Told-Truth-Selected-Stories/dp/1930935455/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=peter+case+books&qid=1638480081&sr=8-1 I’ve been home in San Francisco writing songs and arranging the recording for the next album, which I’m very excited about, set for mid-January. Not sure when touring will resume, but fingers are crossed for a Spring tour in Europe, and then dates in the U.S. I hope you all have a great holidays,

Let’s see, it was October 1983 and I was still in the Plimsouls, but we had come in from the road, and  had wound down, and I was just knocking about, living alone in a tiny pad up in Laurel Canyon (in the same cottage the Melvins eventually moved into, after I split). I  was writing songs for what was gonna be my first solo LP, and felt like I was on the moon, ’cause I was living at night, isolated, kinda living in my dreams & musical ideas, and I didn’t have to show up anywhere or for anything, it was woodshed time. It was a good time, I was 29 years old, freed up for the first time from a lot of things that had been bugging me. So I picked up the new Dylan LP at Tower on Sunset, and took it straight back home, and threw it on, and was completely transfixed by “Jokerman.” The first thing that got me about it was the Sly and Robbie groove, unlike anything I’d heard before: it’s not rock or reggae either, but something new, very open. As usual with a Dylan record you hear every word. He delivers

  Thanks to Bob Dylan, on his 80th birthday for all the gifts he gave to us. Personally, I always feel like it’s Christmas on Earth (as Rimbaud coined it) when I experience Bob singing, speaking, writing, acting, painting and drawing, most whatever he does has been illuminating. I learned about American music and America itself. For me, time stopped when I heard Mr. Tambourine Man for the first time, and shortly after read “Folk-Rock: the Bob Dylan Story” in paperback, (which was very misleading in, but also enlightening in some ways.) By the time I was 14 I’d heard his first several albums, read the poems enclosed with the third album, 11 Outlined Epitaphs, started learning the songs in the Bob Dylan Songbook I received as a gift in 1966, listened over and over to HWY 61 through John Wesley Harding, then read Tarantula from a mimeograph while high on mescaline, and weeping, in 1971, in my first room away from home, with the Dont Look Back poster on the wall, hidden when the door opened, that movie, then companionship on the bank of sand Watching The River Flow, later the generational tale of Tangled Up In Blue, and

https://petercase.com/wp-content/uploads/03-Downtown-Nowheres-Blues.mp3 I was the lead singer of this band: From the Hamburg Sun, April 23, 1970 The Silent Minority ‘ Chaperones appear to be the silent minority at ‘ Hamburg High School dances: At the dance Friday, April 17, something unthinkable occurred. Vulgarity and obscenity. The first vulgar thing to assail the sight of the youthful patrons, was a sign on the bandstand. A middle finger upended. ‘ – Then, as the dance progressed, the group from Pleasant Ave. known as “The Pig Nation” began an audience participation “thing.” They said it was not unlike a Football cheer. It continued till a chant was yelling the most obscene four-letter word, concluded with the words “Hamburg High School.” Unbelievable. Yet, corroborated by nine reputable witnesses, who related this to Photo News. “They were high on grass,” was one absurd excuse. One can’t help but wonder if the recent breakdown in unity in the High School faculty could account for the breakdown in discipline. Why was this excused, condoned and unpunished. Where were the chaperones? T. A. Ehrnke, Publisher .  

Here’s a Spotify playlist of some of my songs, as I get ready for my new album to be released March 12.

This is a live show from February 2020, a couple weeks before the quarantine. It’s an hour long and features interviews as well as the music.

the priest who never slept was our favorite you could talk to him he was always there alone smoking and writing equations on the board but poor Gaynel took her own life at sixteen and the little longhaired girl with glasses cried for her and got out of that stuck up school I never wanted to go that’s how we met in a suburban development with no trees called Forest Glen not far from the Thruway the priest had theories that’d scare you if you ever thought of ‘em and the little longhaired girl with glasses was very thin and very sad in the spring the snow was filthy still in melting piles shrinking the earth smelled like an open wound wet clay and rotten leaves trees still bare on Pleasant Avenue I smell the raindrops in her hair she’s my best friend and we both wear long coats. debris in the gutter broken plastic toys shreds of colorful garbage in the living room we watched he held a gun to the man’s head and blew his brains out everybody saw and soon a few minutes later the Beatles were somberly singing let it be.

For my old street singing buddy Crazy Horse Danny no reunions on stage for us/ the ‘Frozen Chosen” we never played much on stages anyways/ 1973 usually a streetcorner/ a telephone + a parking meter were all we needed  to put on a show: a couple winos would glare red faced + itchy from the curbstones/ leaning on a letter box while the neon flashed/ + the headlights crashed/ the cop on the sidewalk/ sends for the paddywagon/ so we had to dash/ How is a life like this pieced together? You worked on the black market + fringe/ jobs like guarding the pot fields for the jungle growers in Hawaii/ hustles/ rock +roll cover bands for Honolulu tourists. Our secrets + dreams were looked up + mixed in poverty’s ferocious history/ always one step in back// so if we get weak/ too lonely/or drunk on cheap fireworks. If his eyes are swollen from a brawl on Broadway/ with usurpers who had the nerve to pull a swithchblade/ Danny reached into the the trash bin  + pulled out a weapon: a coke bottle/ one of the ones made of glass/ boink! boink! boink! on the guys head the fight then

                    Who you stood up to while your back ached yr heart beat yr breath galloped yr heartbeat doubled—he got next to me & I could see murder in his eyes—I know he wanted to teach me a lesson—he ordered me to “sit down” in a chair he threw into the middle of the room—he was going to terrorize me & I ran—he couldn’t catch me & I hid—soon after that I began to stand up to him—I stopped running & turned around & he wept—courage is off the heart—its not just resistance but resistance for a heart-felt cause—we never discussed the heart—I did a lot of things OTHER people are scared of—did they take courage? I know I’ve shown some but I also suspect my cowardice—you have to know your heart to defeat cowardice—you gotta believe—standing up to a beating—I’ve never been good at but I kept my terror in check a couple times—they say what I did took courage—but I don’t know  only the individual knows about themselves—Lord Jim—hitch hiking when I was a kid? say what you gotta say—do what you gotta do—fear is always there but “take