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…