The next show is north of San Francisco, in one of my favorite clubs in the area, Rancho Nicasio, on November 8. www.petercase.com/gigs gets you to the ticket link. Hell of a week for a gig…but I played the day after Obama won in 2008, and that show was sold out. I played the day after the 2016 election in the Ozarks, and that show was sold out, too. After the 2000 election I was up in Spokane with my friend Dave Alvin.  I was just starting a long tour across the US and Canada and Dave was just returning from one and we crossed paths up there. Sold out show. On the other hand, the day after the second Bush election was a dud…up in Minneapolis at the Cedar Tavern. The audience seemed quite down that night but we made the best of it…anyhow…c’mon out, whatever happens, I guarantee a dynamic and moving night of music.

Now I”ll pick up this winding tale of a journey. I hopes it’s not any sort of affectation of mine that drives me to tell all this. The point is, we’re all going somewhere, for better or worse, and maybe some of you will see yourselves in this one…or maybe just see and hear the music from another side.

All of these stories, I’m not sure what they mean, are they the tale of one man’s journey   only?  Maybe I was under the delusion I could be the exception to every rule. Or maybe we all were. But, somehow my parents and teachers let me get away when I was small.

Dead ends I’d slide out of, down wrong way streets.

Pestered for results like buttons for shoemakers, trash on the infield, never did an honest days work it was always play time for me, even when I was exhausted and my hands were bleeding, or when the hours were way too long and the Summer heat was like a furnace. I got lucky and stayed that way through a thousand disasters. The moon fell out the sky was a neon blanket and the stories plod hop and roust the boredom of another predictable landing forgone.

•Somewhere towards the end of the Plimsouls’ initial run for rock n’ roll fame and fortune, I had a rebirth of wonder and amazement at the power of a song itself to move listeners, especially in the absence of elaborate musical or band arrangements. I was returning to the belief that one songwriter with a guitar or piano and voice, putting across a song, was the most powerful and complete form of musical performance possible if the song was right, and the execution, completely committed. It was a feeling I had, as well as an idea and it came to life in my fantasies and visions regarding the pending first-time McCabes solo show, which was exciting to contemplate, in my calmer moments, but the prospect of which scared the bejesus out of me.

Ramblin’ Jack Eliot was performing a stand of club engagements around town and I decided I needed to hear and see as many of his shows as possible. Everybody knew Jack’s energy and attentiveness could run either hot or cold at these things, but the fact was that when he wanted to, he could stop the world with a crazy, heartbreaking, completely fresh arrangement of a song that you might have heard a hundred times, and it felt like magic. One night he sang “All My Trials,” the Trinadadian folk-song and I never got over it, he broke my heart, I was hooked, he was a big inspiration to me. And it was always a kick to see little Ramblin’ Jack perched under that huge Western hat, and delivering one of his famous “stream-of-unconsciousness” raps, or having a “nervous breakthrough.”

•“If this record doesn’t sell a million copies I quit the business.” T-Bone Burnett announced loudly to the people in the control room at Ocean Way Studios in Los Angeles. It was early 1986 and they were listening to a playback of my first solo album, a collection of songs and music that was a big departure for me, a record that had begun its journey to vinyl two years before, born in inspiration, then run through a gauntlet of trouble and interference. Making that album was one of the big turning points of my life, and in a lot of ways, though it’s been decades since, it still feels current to me. It was lauded by New York Time’s critic Robert Palmer as the top album of the year, hailed as a “masterpiece” by David Wild in Rolling Stone, described as “genius” by New Musical Express in the UK. And since I was the first musician of the “punk generation” to commit fully to the solo/folk approach, it’s style inspired a large group of third generation rockers to become singer/songwriter’s, to acknowledge ‘roots’ music, to widen the approach to powerful music.

It wasn’t just going solo that interested me, it was the idea of playing solo that came to me so powerfully that night on stage in Lubbock, Texas. The Plimsouls were all there with me, playing the arrangements from our first album to a basically empty house. The ‘souls were a great band, and even on the bad nights they played with an intensity and passion that few groups could match, but I looked around, and felt this kind of rock n’roll was a thing of the past. It just seemed over to me, it was rocking music but my head and heart were going somewhere else.

In the cottage up in Laurel Canyon I was writing songs daily, living with the door open, digging the air and the fire-blue howls of the coyotes in the night, as they would burst out suddenly from an invisible spot right below my bedroom window and tear up the hillside. I was living alone, and for first time in ten years, wasn’t a member of a rock and roll band. Once in the early morning hours I’d heard a marauding band of raccoons outside going through the cans, and when I came out on the steps to yell at them, they just stopped rummaging for a second and stared at me, then went right back to rifling through the trash. They didn’t seem to be that impressed by my solo career. But, sometimes, looking off the porch at night, I’d see a big tufted owl, up over the road, balanced on the power line, a silhouette against the dark sky, and that sent a chill down my body. Big snakes would crawl out of their skins and holes, disappearing into the brush by the side of the dirt road. We were high above the city, which could be glimpsed, silent in the distance, all sparkling, darkling lights. “My bands all gone,” I’d say to myself, “I’m on my own, where is it all going now?”

The Plimsouls could’ve made a million bucks, it had seemed, but now, it was over, and instead, I was broke and owed at least a million bucks, between the tax and the lawyers, and other of the band’s creditors. They were all coming straight for me, that’s how it felt, and that’s how the record business works, on any musician bold enough to take a bite of the bait. I’d reached for the rock’n’roll ring, almost grasped it, then slipped. The ring had moved on, but there was something else brewing inside me, another kind of music, and I could hear it in the ether, alive in the atmosphere, coming in more clearly everyday. I had a vision of what I could do, and it was based on the music that’d excited me, in my days before the Nerves. I was gonna take a page from Robert Johnson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Bob Dylan. I was gonna lay the songs out there, stripped down, on my own, alone.

Some big packages of phonograph records had begun to arrive in the mail, out of the blue. I opened up the first one and found perfectly clean copies of several Bob Dylan albums. I didn’t know what it was about, but I opened the other packages and was soon glad to be in possession of the entire Dylan vinyl catalogue. The return address was his publishing company, but with no name or contact there. I never found out why they were sent, but I started to listen to his records again. It had been a while since I’d really poured over his work.

I was disorganized up there in the canyon, living alone, banging on the piano I’d rented, with records scattered all over the couch and floor, and notebooks too. All I did was write and demo songs. There was never anything in the refrigerator except beer. On the shelf were boxes and boxes of sake. And I powered down coffee like mad when I wasn’t drinking beer or wine, sake or brandy. Not being much of a cook, I took all my meals out, down on Sunset Boulevard usually, at one of the places down there. My two favorites were Ben Franks’s twenty-four hour diner, and the famous natural food restaurant The Source, where I could pretend I was doing great things for my health.

One night I was sitting in a booth at the Source, picking at an avocado, beet, and bean sprout salad, when I realized Mohammmed Ali was seated at the very next table, in discussion with a number of men. I listened in, couldn’t help it, and from what I could pick up, straining my ears as best I could, the guys were from the Olympic Committee, doing their best to convince the Champ to host the Olympic Boxing that was coming up in LA later in the Summer. I was trying to be cool, and not let on I was eavesdropping, but I nearly fell out of my seat when I heard Ali tell them, “I threw my medals in the river.” He was turning them down, and they were beseeching him. His no was solid, no matter how they begged, and finally he got up to walk out, right past my table. He was big as life, looking very strong, totally cool, and he winked at me as he walked out.

Another time I was up at Ben Frank’s restaurant in the small hours of the morning, sitting at the counter drinking cup after cup of the bad coffee they served there. David Bowie was just a few seats down from me at the counter, wearing a khaki coloured jacket, drinking the coffee too, leaning on his elbows and absently chain smoking, looking off into the imaginary distance. No one else seemed to notice him there, or seemed to care. That’s the way it was in Hollywood, it still had a few surprises left in it back then.

I was songwriting all the time, trying to catch a ride to the next level, looking to tap secret power, pouring over the Song Of Solomon in the Old Testament, Robert Browning, the complete Hank Williams catalogue, and the ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound. EP laid it down as “dichten = condensare,” poetry as concentrated verbal expression. To condense. Highly charged language was the goal. Every word, every note is important to the whole. Whenever I saw the word poetry I read the word “songs.” I was consciously trying to expand my mind on the subject. I had a box set of Lotte Lenya singing the Brecht-Weil songs from Three Penny Opera and Mahogany, and I followed the lyrics in print in German and English. I was developing a love for condensed, colorful , concrete language. The best songs told their story by referencing the world of people and things directly, vividly evoking the senses. Dylan’s records reflected all of this in a big way. And I was digging Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, plus all the pre-war blues, and somewhere in there I was still working on the lessons I’d learned as a street singer, as one of the Nerves. I was brewing up a hybrid.

Rancho Nicasio show rescheduled for February 2, 2025

I was focused on being a singer and guitarist, and learning to write.

From a young age I had the ability to make up songs, maybe because I felt the rhythms of the words from nursery rhymes, limericks, folk songs we sang in school, hymns at church. I never really studied songwriting, I just listened and then songs came naturally— It turned out one of my ancestors was a prolific hymn writer in the nineteenth century, a man named Hosea Ballou. Maybe that had something to do with it? My mother was obsessed with Shakespeare in an around-the-house way–she’d memorized a hundred-some key lines as a youngster in the thirties… that had an effect–she’d quote him with a laugh during the course of the days—and she’s also the first one who brought a Dylan record into the house–Bringing It All Back Home–I must’ve been 11–and got into it in a big way–one of the great things about Dylan was the songs were long, and each was a huge example of the pictures, the patterns, the rhythms and rhymes, alliterations and jumps in perspective that reeled like a movie projected on the imagination, via the ears–the basic premises of the songs were a revelation themselves—I got a song book that had all the lyrics in and poured over it for ages—he was the greatest, most generous teacher a musician could have.

Long Time Gone/ Dylan cover from my HWY 62 lp

I met a fellow in the Buffalo area named Jon Duffett. A few years older than me, he’d travelled back and forth across the country, between Buffalo and California in 1967, hopping freights and hitching rides, doing the rambling hippie thing. He played an ancient and beat up Martin guitar. Jon and I started writing songs together. I was knocked out to be working with him ’cause as far as I was concerned he was a local hero. We’d play our originals for anyone who could spare a minute or two. “Monopoly Board Blues’ “Talkin’ Christ-like Blues,” “What Do You Do When Your Time Runs Out?” and a lot of others came together in the first few weeks. I was coming up with the premises, and when one caught Jon’s attention, we’d both kick in on the words and music, and it was a good laugh. While epic parties raged outside the door, we’d hide away and write songs in the bathroom of his apartment, digging the echo in there, and sometimes during those parties we’d get a new tune and come busting out into the pad to lay it on the captive audience of stoned teens.

I was always in bands during this time, so I played electric and acoustic gigs—banging the piano with bands for dances at schools and fire-halls, then coffee houses in church basements with my folk guitar.

And I was singing, kind of just talking and shouting at first, but learning to put songs across in a melodic way as I went along.

I listened to all kinds of music from Cecil Taylor’s Conquistador LP to Glen Gould playing Bach, but the radio was the biggest influence. The Beatles brought style, the Stones had amazing lyrics too, and the Beach Boys were the kings of melody—even their rockers had catchy tunes, and every band that made it in the wake of these giants in the sixties had their own recipe. When I landed in California as a street singer I was not only doing blues, but songs by Dylan, Hank Williams, Jagger and Richards, and Jimi Hendrix.

Guitar came together, as a way to colorfully back myself up, over time and endless gigs—I’m not any sort of hot licks specialist–but it all got better and more exciting as I moved along–I’m a slow learner–and a couple thousand hours playing on the streets from SF to Baja and back helped.

Michael Wilhelm of the Charlatans was a legendary San Francisco musician I met street singing, who my mentor during the early 70’s, passing on his knowledge about blues, rock’n roll and fingerpicking, turning me on to Robert Johnson and Texas bluesman Mance Lipscomb, a master musician Mike had learned from directly. Wilhelm and I hung out and performed at the Coffee Gallery on Grant Avenue–i was playing for drinks and tips at one of the great ‘basket houses’ of the folk music era–he got paid—I backed up Michael there too..all of this in my 19th and 20th years. there were a few of us following him around. The conversation among us for a while was all “Guitar…guitar…Wilhelm…guitar…Jorma…guitar…Gary Davis…guitar guitar guitar…” obsessively focused?

I learned the most just by backing myself up as a singer, doing covers of old and new songs, blues country rock’n roll beatles stones animals kinks songs–everything–I had a big sound– “the little kid with the big voice'” –Wilhelm said he could hear me blocks away when I started rocking on my street corner–in North Beach, at Broadway and Columbus.

Many Roads To Follow (demo) /the Nerves (Case/Collins)

The Nerves evolved out of this in early 1975, doing our own stripped down/sped up versions of songs by Bacharach, Motown and Stax-Volt–we were determined to make something new of it—all of this on the verge of the great punk rock/new wave upheaval. Hanging On The Telephone came out of that.

Clips from my street singing and bands/ solo career are included in the documentary Peter Case: A Million Miles Away by director Fred Barnes, available now for streaming on Amazon Prime and many other streaming platforms. There’s also a new book by Carey Baker, Down On The Corner, about busking, and a lot of this story is recounted there in detail.

Hanging On The Telephone/ The Nerves

Next: lessons of a thousand stages.

Drawing by Frank Lee Drennen

[Small Town Sprree from my first Geffen album, Peter Case. I got to play a harp solo over strings arranged by Van Dyke Parks, one of my favorite moments]

I’ll be at Rancho Nicasio November 8, tickets at www.petercase.com/gigs. Rancho Nicasio is a great music club and I look forward to getting back there. I thought in the run up to the gig I’d discuss what goes into becoming a solo song performer and writer–from a musicians point of view…a lifetime of unraveling the mysteries of music. This is the second part of 4.

To this day, I always carry a Hohner Marine Band harmonica in my shirt pocket, everywhere I go…it’s a lifelong habit I’ve had no reason to quit–harmonica fell in place for me–not in terms of virtuosity but as a way to orchestrate and express songs and emotion –and that I could do it all surprised me, too.

Brian Jones, Bob Dylan, and Paul Butterfield were the inspirations. And for a while I liked Pigpen from the Dead too. Then I heard “the Best of Muddy Water’s on Chess,” with Little Walter and Big Walter on electric harp…and Sonny Terry with his country sound on some Lead Belly records too.. The biggest moment of all was seeing Butterfield play in a Buffalo night club in late 1967. My parents took me, I was thirteen, and they thought mistakenly Billy Butterfield the swing clarinetist was the featured artist that night. Not quite. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band was the loudest electric band anybody’d ever heard at that point, and their performance was commanding, powerful, full of presence, and overwhelming. They just blew the roof of the place, it was so exciting, I can’t do it justice. I got so much from that gig, it’s still paying in my heard…and that I knew I wanted to be a musician for real.

I became obsessed with figuring out the harp. Sitting out on my parent’s porch one afternoon before they came home from work, I figured out how to play what’s known as cross–harp–unlocking the blues sounds—I’d been messing with it for weeks and all of a sudden it just happened, I got it. Some older kids were walking by–I think they were high– I immediately attracted their full attention–rocking and wailing on some pretty rudimentary blues licks–they could hardly believe I was doing it, it was like a magic trick–soon after that I began to play along with early Dylan tracks like Baby, Let Me Follow You Down and Man of Constant Sorrow, that featured colorful harp solos– I learned a version of Good Morning Little Schoolgirl–and a cool harmonica-based song, Bye Bye Bird, from a Sonny Boy Williamson record I’d got my hands on.

When I first met and talked with Steve Earle in the eighties, he said “You and me, man, we’ve had great teachers.” And it’s true, I’ve had examples and mentors and seen performances up close by people who let me pick their brain. One was a blues player named Koko, an old man I met street singing in San Francisco in 1974…he played washtub bass with the harp taped to the broom handle and made some incredibly rocking’ blues on that set up–sounding a bit like Sonny Boy II–and one night in 1981 backstage at a gig a friend of mine, Jimmie Wood showed me a technique on the harp that blew my mind–he’s a great player—thanks Jimmie…

I met Doc Watson somewhere around this time, backstage at McCabe’s–Doc told me he only ever played  Hohner Marine Bands–they have a warmer tone because of the wood chassis–those are the one I dig too–when I started out in the sixties the cost was about two and a half dollars—now its close to forty or so each—but they’re the ones. You just gotta take care of them, don’t ever play while you’re chewing bubble gum. (advice from Tony Glover!)

My first professional moment with all of this was during a sold-out Plimsouls show at the Roxy in LA–when I pulled a B harmonica out of my pocket in the middle of “Oldest Story in the World,” –and blew a wailing solo over a key change that took everyone by surprise–earning a huge hand from the crowd in the middle of the song–if they’re applauding in the middle of the tune you’re on the right track.

Next: carrying a guitar for fun and profit…

I’m coming to one of my favorite clubs anywhere, Rancho Nicasio on November 8. Tickets are available through www.petercase.com/gigs.

Last night I had a realization, and a big moment of gratitude for the path I’ve able to take in music. I’m going to try and express it. This is a long number, sort of like a late night conversation, so take what you want from it or set it down…there will be some who find it interesting from a musician how thew sounds and styles come together. I’m going to post it in pieces over the next few says

When I started out my dream was to play piano harp guitar and sing–just to be doing it–and to write songs–I couldn’t do any of these things worth a damn when I was thirteen or so–just had the desire–my heroes on the piano were Little Richard, and a local Buffalo rock’n roll piano player named Jimmy Calire who was completely fantastic and exciting, and I especially loved whoever played piano on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited album…I later found out his name was Paul Griffin, and that he’d come up with the keyboard work on many incredible hits and was known as one of the greatest session players in New York City in the sixties and seventies. I especially liked his tack piano on Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues by Dylan, it drove me wild, it said so much to me, and I tried to get my head and hands around that style for years–hours and hours trying and failing. I figured out a lot of his licks and flourishes on my own, and meanwhile banged the piano for some rock’n roll bands in Buffalo, including a short stint with Skull Street Train, and another run with Pig Nation. But I didn’t really ‘get it’ until one night in 1982, when a friend of mine took me over to her friend Benmont Tench’s house– and once there we gravitated to the piano room, and spent the whole night talking and taking turns at the keys–I picked up a million kilowatts of information in one night– keys to some musical mysteries I’d been trying to understand for years. Thank you, Benmont

it was such a beautiful surprise to even get to be there doing that—life can be amazing that way,