Peter Case 'Wigs!' Out

Bouncing back from double-bypass heart surgery, the singer-songwriter announces new album due June 29.

By Blurt Staff

It's time to go back to work for one of rock's most talented songwriters-and since musicians famously lack health coverage, Peter Case is wiggin' out.

"I'm what you'd call ‘very extremely overcommitted' at this point," jokes Case in a Yep Roc Records press release announcing his 10^th studio album, Wig! A 2009 double-bypass left Case with a six-figure medical bill (a chunk of which was defrayed by benefit shows by friends Dave Alvin, Richard Thompson, Joe Henry, Loudon Wainwright III and Van Dyke Parks) and lots of time on his hands. He says he killed time maxin' and relaxin' to jazz records but as he prepared reissues of albums by his bands The Plimsouls and The Nerves, he began to feel like rockin' again.

"I had to do the mastering and spent quite a bit of time listening to the old records," he says, and "it really got me going, hearing those guitars." After an "especially rocking" sold-out comeback show at favorite venue McCabe's where he debuted the new stuff, Case went into the studio with drummer DJ Bonebrake (X) and lead guitarist Ron Franklin (Gasoline Silver, Jack Oblivian, Arthur Lee). The trio had Wig! "mainly finished" five days later. The press release describes the album as "full-on electric and loaded down with dirty, raw blues riffs... recorded largely live and definitely straight to analog tape."

"It felt really good to rock again," says Case.

It's good to have you back, man.