Interview with Neko Case

Since Neko Case swapped her punk-rock drum kit for a country pulpit, she’s barely looked back. Her towering and tender tones have flavoured four fine and increasingly essential albums. From straight covers-based country (1997′s The Virginian), to cowpunk pop classicism (2000′s Furnace Room Lullaby), through to lilting lo-fi (2001′s Canadian Amp), and on to this year’s deliciously atmospheric affair (Blacklisted), Neko knows all the right Americana buttons to press, and more importantly just how hard.

Blessed with boundless energy and a tireless work ethic, Neko has hitched more rides than a homeless rodie. This has seen her forging strong touring ties with the likes of Calexico, Chris Mills, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and The Handsome Family, during the last few intensely busy years. Her stretched schedules have also incorporated studio collaborations with Canadian power-poppers The New Pornographers and Arizona’s mighty Giant Sand.

In short, Neko has become alt.country’s most wanted women and, in the eyes of certain indie-boys, a blooming sex symbol. Her relentless work rate has also earned her a reputation as a nut too tough to be cracked by errant venue owners or major label enticements. Yet despite this boiled hard exterior Neko is not without her charming balmy moments, as her records firmly attest. And luckily for this timid music hack, she duly gave me the benefit of her passionate thought-processes the day after a savagely beautiful near-solo show in London town.

Delusions of Adequacy: How did you enjoy playing that stripped-down showcase gig last night?

Neko Case: It has highly unenjoyable, because The Borderline made it highly obvious that they wanted me to get the fuck out of there immediately. It sounded good, but the soundman made it very clear that he didn’t care if it sounded good, so we felt very unwelcome. The crowd was fine and it sounded fine, but it was very obvious they wanted us to leave, so I didn’t feel very good about it.

DOA: Have you done shows like that before?

NC: Yeah, but I’d rather just play a regular show to be honest.

DOA: Personally, I enjoyed it more last night than when I saw you before supporting The Handsome Family with a full-band in tow…

NC: Oh really, why is that?

DOA: I think because you were stripped down to basic elements: a nice big sounding guitar sitting alongside your really fulsome voice…

NC: Well that’s the way my show really is. We don’t play with a drummer anymore. So it’s much more about the vocals, far less noisy.

DOA: When it comes to playing live, do you tend to find yourself becoming more or less confident as a person when you’re on stage?

NC: I’m usually fine; I usually feel pretty normal, often I have a great time. Sometimes I get nervous, sometimes you just don’t feel yourself. Sometimes it doesn’t come off the way you want it to. The audiences notice it far less than I think they’re going to if I’m having a bad time, unless I’m outwardly complaining, which isn’t very professional certainly.

DOA: Normally with interviews, I’d ask what someone has been doing between albums, but in your case I’d have to ask what haven’t you been doing?!

NC: I haven’t been spending time at home sadly, because I’ve been touring the whole time pretty much.

DOA: Would you say that you were a workaholic or has it all just happened to you?

NC: I don’t know if I’m a workaholic as much as I am a workhorse. I’m really hyperactive, I need to be doing something all the time.

DOA: You’ve also moved to Chicago, have you had much time to settle in at all?

NC: I understand Chicago. I love being there, I feel really comfortable there, I have a lot friends there, but like I said I don’t really get really much time there.

DOA: You released a self-recorded mini-album Canadian Amp [as a tour-CD and recently re-pressed as a vinyl-only Canadian release]. Was that quite a good stepping-stone between the full albums? Particularly when you recorded and played such a lot of it yourself…

NC: I didn’t fully understand engineering, and obviously I don’t know everything about engineering now, but it made me feel a lot more confident. I’ve always let other people record me; I thought I should record myself one of these times. And, you know, it wasn’t a complicated experience, but it was definitely an eye-opening experience. It was really fun. I had a really great time doing it. So I went into the studio feeling more confident to record Blacklisted, but I was also in an environment with people I knew I’d feel comfortable with. It helped a bit though.

DOA: When it came to record Blacklisted, did you have a clear idea of how you wanted it to sound?

NC: Well I knew who I wanted to play on it, but I didn’t know how it was going to sound. I had an idea of what I wanted, yes. It’s a bit an abstract concept I suppose.

DOA: By choosing to record in Wavelab Studios in Tucson, did you almost know you would get a certain earthy sound?

NC: Well, in the medium of analog, it’s one of the better studios. I wanted to do it analog, and I had already recorded with Craig Schumacher [Wavelab Studios owner/resident producer], John, Joe, and Howe [Giant Sand/Calexico] because of our other recordings we haven’t yet released. It was really gratifying and everything worked really nicely.

DOA: So what are these other recordings that you have done then with Giant Sand?

NC: We did a bunch of recordings together that we haven’t released yet. Simply because we went crazy and had so much stuff we couldn’t finish it at the time.

DOA: Is it Neko Case & Giant Sand or more a Neko solo thing?

NC: It started as an EP for me, and then it kind of turned into me, Calexico, and Giant Sand. There are many little elements, more like three bands on one recording in a way. It’s really great, I love it. They love it, and we have to finish it. But we have to wait until we’re all home, which is really difficult. But we’ll release it, probably next year at least.

DOA: Were you keen to have a smaller group of players and record in more or less one place with the new album?

NC: Well there was actually a lot of people on the album. There were the guys in my band as well, Jon Rauhouse and Tom Ray, and then we flew in Dallas Good. Then I did a little more recording when I was in Toronto, because we mixed it in Toronto. It was pretty much like the other albums – there was actually quite a few people, it was quite a rambling time.

DOA: But it sounds more of flowing album than the last one…

NC: It’s more cohesive yeah. It was definitely a conscious effort. All the bed tracks were recorded in the same place anyway, so that really helped. I think every person who played on the album, with the exception of Brian Connelly and Kelly Hogan, and Mary Margaret O’Hara, pretty much played on every song, and that made it more cohesive too. Plus the mood and the kind of theme of the album are pretty similar. It’s more a novel style, than a short story style.

DOA: Yeah, you said in MAGNET magazine, that it’s “more a mood than a bunch of songs.” Could you roughly define that mood?

NC: Well, it’s a lot about homesickness and a bit about paranoia. It’s definitely not a love-song album. I mean there’s a couple of love songs on the record, but they’re the cover songs. It was written over a period of two years on the road, and basically it was constantly ever changing like the scenery I was in. It’s really hard to describe…

DOA: Is a lot of it a combination of loneliness and the long-time long-distance journeys?

NC: Well, it’s not so much loneliness for other people as it is loneliness for another time or place. It’s a homesickness without the comfort of actually knowing where your home is. Like you’re homesick, but where’s this place you’re supposed to return to? You don’t really know.

DOA: Musically Blacklisted certainly does feel more assured. I think you’ve really given your voice room to breathe. You really seem to push it out…

NC: I’m a relatively young singer, like I’m not a young person necessarily but I didn’t start singing till my mid-20s. I’ve been working really hard at getting a lot of dynamic in there. Because on my first record I was singing on 10 the whole time, you know. You can tell I was nervous. The last record was a lot better. And then this record I wanted the vocals to serve the lyrics more than serving the voice.

DOA: In MAGNET you also said you don’t feel like you have control over it. But it seems on Blacklisted that there’s maybe an innate knowledge of how far you can take it without becoming too overblown…

NC: Yeah, you have to know your own range, but I think I stay tastefully within that. You know, you hear people beating the shit out of their voice and it’s a really ugly American Idol style singing – it’s terrible. But there’s a definite tastefulness I like to go for. You know, I wish I could sing like Bessie Griffiths or other gospel singers. I’m not Mavis Staples, so I can’t push my voice to where Mavis Staples’ voice can go. I have to try to learn my own voice. Maybe I can find places I didn’t know it could go.

DOA: Stylistically, who do you think may have influenced you most on this record?

NC: Well, I listened to a lot of soundtrack music. So influences came mostly because I was playing a lot of guitar, and so I was pretty heavily into Neil Young’s soundtrack music. I listened to a bit of Paris Texas too.

DOA: Morricone?

NC: No not so much Morricone, more simple than that. The Dead Man soundtrack Neil Young did, which is really simple. There are maybe just two guitars on most songs. He would do really strange things like using an idling V8 engine as a kind of drone sound underneath song, even before it would start, even though the film was set in the 1800s, where there were obviously no V8 engines! Just things like that, I wanted to do something that was different. So we did a lot of experimenting in the studio with guitar sounds. It’s not like a landmark album of brand new guitar sounds, but it’s a landmark album of brand new guitar sounds for me personally. Because, you know, I haven’t been playing guitar that long.

DOA: The album certainly does have a certain cinematic ambience, it feels very late-night and very atmospheric…

NC: It’s kind of intimate, but it’s spacious at the same time. It’s giving the illusion of spaciousness. People tend to think it’s sparse. But actually there’s a lot going on all the time. To make it more spacious, you take all the music and make it much quieter than the vocals. You put the vocals way up and use a bit of reverb. I did that because I really admire old recordings by people like Owen Bradley. I admire old recordings, like those old Platters records, stuff where they would use a giant orchestra and make it subservient to the vocal. This creates this remarkable tension, that gives it the spaciousness it has. And using the analog format helps that too. I think tape hiss is almost atmosphere in itself.

DOA: Do you think that it’s a record that some people are going to dismiss on first listen, but love from the third or fourth spin?

NC: Yeah, it’s certainly not as immediate as the last one. It’s kind of a slow-burner.

DOA: Looking at a couple of more specific tracks now. On the first track “Things That Scare Me,” you sing about being “haunted by the American Dream.” What do you mean by that?

NC: Well, I don’t know, I live in a country that holds up values as something that’s branded on Americans and people don’t really live by them. And the so called “American Dream” is a pretty all-consuming monster. People can’t step back from it enough to see that they need to calm down a little bit and focus on much smaller things. I don’t know, it’s just a little thing that means a lot of big things.

DOA: “Stinging Velvet” and “Pretty Girls” are two quite dark tracks. Are they a pair?

NC: No, they’re not really related. “Stinging Velvet” is just a sort of love song about missing the rain, and “Pretty Girls” is just another thing altogether. I really can’t say what they’re about. They’re about specific things to me but they’re never about one specific thing. They’re written in a way that you’re supposed to decide what they’re about.

DOA: You’ve done a couple of covers on the album. “Running Out Fools” feels quite a gospely song…

NC: It’s an old R ‘n’ B song. I learned it off an Aretha Franklin album, and I was really nervous about doing it, like I can never do it as good as Aretha Franklin because I don’t sound like Aretha Franklin. But then I thought I can’t sing like Aretha Franklin, so it won’t sound the same, nobody will think I’m trying to sound like Aretha Franklin. God wish I could, but there’s no possible way! So I have to do it like I would do it.

DOA: Legend has it you got into music by listening to a lot of old gospel records. Is it the first time that you’ve really directly added a gospel feel to one of your recordings?

NC: No, we’ve done lots of songs like that before. I don’t know how many I’ve recorded. “I’ll Be Around,” the other cover, is in slightly the same vein, though it’s not as dynamic.

DOA: It’s more smouldering…

NC: It’s a lot less angry! It’s got a lot less tension. Like “Running Out Of Fools” is tension, and “I’ll Be Around” is release, I think.

DOA: Now for this new record, you’ve stayed with Mint Records in Canada and Bloodshot in America, but you’ve moved from Loose to Matador in the UK, what happened there?

NC: We just needed distribution in Europe, which Loose didn’t have, but there was no horrible fight or anything.

DOA: But wasn’t there an incident when you played in London a year or so ago where you were complaining about something in relation to Loose records whilst you were on stage?

NC: I’m not going to complain about anyone in an interview ever. I won’t do it, it just makes you look bad.

DOA: But Loose has given you a good platform?

NC: Yes, very much so…

DOA: So do you think Matador will help you take things further?

NC: I hope so – we’ll see how it works.

DOA: You seem very protective of yourself as a working musician. In the MAGNET interview it talks about you having issues with a few venue promoters, and on the back of the sleeve to the vinyl copy of Canadian Amp there’s a statement pretty much against Internet music…

NC: It’s not against Internet music. It’s against abusing that privilege. For example, Napster’s a really good example of great idea that became mishandled. They should have gone into it in co-operation with musicians, because it could have worked out really nicely. I mean basically, every single aspect of the music business is designed to make sure somebody else makes the money other than the musician. Publishing is one of the only avenues that the musician has left, where they can actually make money regardless. So free Internet music does take that away from us, and people act like you’re a fucking bitch cos somebody didn’t ask your permission to use your song. But it’s like my song – I’m sorry, I wrote it, I performed it, it does belong to me. But at the same time, I think Napster’s a really great idea, and I would love to have the opportunity to give people the opportunity to listen to some of the songs for free and to try things out. But I’m not going to give my entire catalogue away, because I tour 10 months of the year, I don’t even have a fucking family. I work really hard; it is my job, I’m not doing this just to give it away. I feel good about my job because it makes some people happy and it makes me happy, but I’m not here to be walked on. I just want somebody to ask me first. I might be okay with people using my stuff for free, but ask me first, it’s my decision.

DOA: Have you had too many bad experiences of the industry side of music?

NC: Not too much, because I’ve mainly stuck with independent labels. I’ve done a bit of work with majors, which can be really trying.

DOA: But it’s venue promoters that you have the most problems with?

NC: Not as many as when I was younger because I have a really good booking agent. The majority of venue promoters I work with are great and we even have a friendly relationship. I enjoy seeming them and we go out to dinner and stuff. But there’s some here and there who do not care about the musician. There are people out there who kind of have this attitude where they love to bring up the old “you’re lucky to be here” line to get you to shut up. It’s like “no, I’m not lucky to be here, I drove 23 days to be here, you need to listen to me!” It’s not just them or the major labels, it’s the musician’s fault too. Some people are so desperate to be famous that they go “yes, I am really lucky to be here, fuck my ass, go ahead!” I’m really angry about that because I think it could be a lot easier right now if people had started sticking up for themselves a lot earlier than they have. It’s a pretty difficult fight sometimes.

DOA: Do you think you’re a good fighter?

NC: Yes, I do! But you know I also have a bit of reputation with some people at this point. It’s not like I’ve ever said anything that was untrue, or tried to get anything I didn’t work for or tried to steal from them. It’s not like that at all.

DOA: What would be your ideal relationship between a record label, the artist, and the music fan?

NC: I think my relationship with Mint Records is ideal. Sure we have our problems now and again, but we talk about them, not fight about them, and we make a compromise and we’re fine. You know, I’m pretty in charge of everything I do. Like I’m the tour manager, I drive the van, I make the records, I choose the musicians, and I’m the producer. I really feel like I know what’s going on, I feel really good about that. I haven’t screwed people to do those things. I’ve had difficult relationships with people, sometimes people lose sight of why they’re doing things. But I don’t really have any complaints about my relationship with Mint, I would say that’s the ideal one.

DOA: If you could tour less and still sell the same amount of records, would you be happy do it?

NC: Yeah, 10 months out of the year is a lot to be on tour for. I love touring, so that’s great and it is my job. I make money as I go on tour. I don’t really make it from album sales. You know, I don’t make a lot of money, but if I tour the way I do, I can make a modest living. I have an apartment with my roommate in Chicago, I do make sure that the van is fixed, I make sure we don’t have to worry about getting a motel, it’s alright.

DOA: How long do you think that you can keep doing this touring pattern?

NC: I really don’t know. But I’m trying to streamline it a bit so I don’t have to test that. I can’t imagine not wanting to play live shows, because that’s one of my favourite parts of the business. It physically feels great, it feels even better emotionally if people like whatever it is your singing. I can’t imagine not wanting to do that. But I would like to spend a little more time at home.

DOA: Now that you’ve cut your teeth in home-recording, would you like to do more albums like Canadian Amp?

NC: Oh yeah, definitely. I like to do things on my own, so I’ll probably do another one next year; I don’t see why not. It’s really easy to do!

DOA: Are you a prolific writer?

NC: No, I’m not overly prolific. I write enough to keep up with the annual making an album or something. But I don’t force myself to write, so I don’t write millions of songs.

DOA: What’s your ideal writing environment? If you feel a song coming along, where do you like to do it?

NC: Just in my room on my bed or something. I mean, I can write pretty much anywhere. I write on tour a lot, I write on airplanes a lot. Without the guitar on the airplane!

DOA: Do you think a lot of your songs are road-songs?

NC: Well this new record, I think was definitely very much written influenced by that. So if I wasn’t on tour, I’m sure I would make a different sounding record. I don’t think I would make the sounding record again either.

DOA: The press release for the new record says you’re working on a few art projects too. How finished are they?

NC: Well, I’ve been working on a photo-book for a while. I don’t know when I’ll get it done. I guess when it feels done.

DOA: You did a degree in…

NC: Fine Arts.

DOA: Would you like to get back into doing more of that?

NC: Well, I still do that. Music and art are the same thing to me. It’s the same creative process, just different mediums. I guess going to art school turned me into a person who was more prepared to deal with this sort of stuff. There’s no college for the music business or whatever. When I pay my band, for example, I have to make sure I reported it and got them 1099′s so they can they can properly do their taxes and stuff like that. That’s the part of it that’s a business, which sounds a bit soulless but it’s a part of it. You can’t ignore it or otherwise you’re going to get into trouble! So you’ve got pay attention to that stuff. But the art side I don’t think of as a business.

DOA: Any ambitions left to fulfil?

NC: Well I’d like to become a better live performer. I’d like to play bigger places too. I’d like to basically tour Europe, because I haven’t really done it. I’d like to go to Japan and Australia as well. I’ll probably end up doing most of those, I don’t know. It’s all about time.

DOA: So you’d like to be a global phenomenon?!

NC: I don’t need to be a global phenomenon. I just want to see those places because I’ve never been there. I don’t have any illusion of being a superstar in any of these places but I’d really like to see them and drink some yummy wine, have some delicious food, and see some lovely nature in a place I’ve never been, which is always a thrill.