Peter Case

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #137 (August/September 2008).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Peter Case

Out From Under the Radar

by Michael Parrish

The title of Peter Case's most recent album, Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John, is a nod to one of his most significant early influences, Sleepy John Estes. With 35 years on the road, Case is approaching the stage of life that Estes and many of his other influences had reached when they first cast their spells on him in the 1960s and 1970s. Despite a flirtation with rock stardom when he fronted the Plimsouls in the early 1980s, Case has long been a songwriter's songwriter, a position that is reinforced by the impressive cast of contributors to A Case for Case, the sprawling three-disc compilation of covers of his tunes released by Hungry for Music in 2006. Although Case has toured steadily through the years, the Grammy-nominated Sleepy John was his first album release since 2002's Beeline, and formed part of a plethora of recent Case activity that also included the Hungry for Music tribute and Case's first book, As Far As You Can Get Without a Passport. Case spoke from Los Angeles on a sunny March afternoon, resting up from a tour overseas. "I just got back from Europe, and had my best tour ever over there. I sold out shows in Scotland and Holland and Brussels. Had a great show in London."

Sleepy John is perhaps the most stripped-down effort of his career. Recorded in San Francisco in 2007, it mostly consists of just Case and his guitar, with a few guests, including Richard Thompson, Lysa Flores, and Carlos Guitarlos contributing duets. Case's ragged voice, his precision fingerpicking, and his quiet, wistful country blues tunes and story songs make the disc perhaps the most memorable and intimate of his albums. Case also feels like it is a good representation of what he sounds like at a show "When people at gigs ask me which one sounds the most like me, I tell 'em to get this one."

[cover #137]