Making His Case: Singer Returns to Town

Don’t talk to Peter Case about craft. The veteran singer-songwriter who started life as a power pop/punk rocker in such bands as The Plimsouls and The Nerves back in the 1970s and ’80s finds hearing that people love his “well-crafted songs” something close to an insult as it undercuts the artistry. Which seems reasonable, since it was an early Case solo album that lent its title to the Santa Barbara subscription series known as Sings Like Hell, one that has introduced more than a generation of singer-songwriters to discerning listeners every month for more than 20 years. For his part, Case said he can’t even remember how that arrangement came about, but he’s still flattered.

In any case, the Plimsouls found instant success with the single “A Million Miles Away” but broke up shortly afterward, and Case’s 1986 solo Geffen Record debut dived deeper into his roots in folk and blues, earning him his first Grammy nomination, and has only gazed further back and beyond on subsequent albums and projects. Case, who was Sings Like Hell’s first performer and the star of its 100^th show, has returned on and off through the years. He’s singing an early show on Sunday, July 15, at the smaller space of SOhO, with openers Dead Rock West, the L.A.-based Americana band, also offering up two singers for his main set. (Tickets cost $15. Info at (805) 962-7776 or www.sohosb.com.) He talked about his music and career over the phone earlier this week.

Q. Do you still resonate with “Million Miles….” or does it seem like a million years ago?

A. I’m proud of it, you know. The Plimsouls were a great band and the song was a landmark record. I’m always resonant with it for that reason alone. To me, it still sounds timeless, although I didn’t sing it in my solo shows for years. But I just started again. I’m not sure why, but somehow it seems more relevant again to me.

You have had a number of well-reviewed and influential albums over the years. What stands out most for you?

I’m really into Highway 62, which is still pretty current. I had Ben Harper on guitar and DJ Bonebreak from X. The songs were heading into the current period of time we’re in now, just before it all went mainstream in everybody’s consciousness. But there are songs I like from all of my albums. Flying Saucer Blues and Full Service No Waiting were big records where we came up with a sound and a way of putting across what I do that really worked.

Highway 62 is a reference to Dylan’s famous early album, I imagine.

Yeah, where Highway 61 took the pulse of America in 1965, that’s kind of what I was doing now. That highway was the one going right down the middle of the country, north to south. [Highway] 62 is east-west, and cuts across the country horizontally. I grew up one block off the highway, and it’s amazing how much of a music thoroughfare it is. It doesn’t get talked about much, but it’s one of the back roads of America,. And that’s what the record is about.

How has your songwriting evolved over the years? Are you in touch with how much of that has been via choice versus just the product of age and experience?

To me, I’ve always wanted to make the songs as great as possible. Every moment of the song needs to be as good as any other. You want the whole thing to transport people from beginning to end. But it has changed over the years. That’s kind of why I went solo in the first place as it evolved uncontrollably. You’re not really running these things as much as you think. You write with the talent you develop. But the songs just come to you, and you hope you catch them and get ’em down. Sometimes weird things happen and you don’t know why you are writing. You just do, and at the end it’s like “Oh, now I see.” It’s funny that way.

I’ve been writing a book for the last 10 years, a lot more recently, and all that energy stirs you up for songwriting in a way. I’ve been playing the piano a lot lately too, and that’s also informing my music. But I don’t see musical boundaries. To me, rock ‘n’ roll and punk rock were also folk music. It goes full circle. Just gotta keep it fresh, find something in your own heart and music that moves you, makes you feel alive and awake and wakes up the room.

Is the balance between inspiration and discipline also in flux?

They’re the same thing, really. The discipline is just doing it when you don’t want to, when you’re not in the mood, or it’s not convenient. It takes time to get things right and not settle. But craft is a word I’m not that fond of. It’s just what you do to finish the song, fill in the parts that didn’t come in the original inspiration, so it’s done and you can actually sing it. A “well-crafted song” isn’t a compliment. I’d rather hear that it was moving, that it made a difference. You want the song to be undeniable, not something you admire for its craft.

Songwriting is a real strange thing. I have to keep evolving a new approach, because once it becomes codified, or a process, I have to overthrow it and start fresh. I don’t ever want to do it the same way again.

For SBCC Professor, Grease is the Word

It took a while for Katie Laris to get around to it, but the SBCC theater professor who also co-directs the academic program at the campus finally admitted that presenting Grease as the Theatre Group’s big summer musical is about more than singing and dancing, or even an educational endeavor. It’s also an elixir for a challenging period in our nation’s history, at least for most of us in the area.

“We’re living in a tough, brutal time,” Laris said earlier this week. “It’s hard to watch the news. I can’t even remember the last time I picked up the newspaper and saw something that made my heart sing.”

Bopping along to a 1950s rock soundtrack, witnessing an uncomplicated romance, and revving up a roaring hot rod proved just the thing to take her mind off the problems.

“It’s really great to be immersed in another era – an easier one – a time that was seemingly happier,” she said. “Right now, a little summer escapism sounds fabulous.”

Grease, which opens SBCC Theatre Group’s new season with performances July 11-28 in the Garvin Theatre on campus, has been around for nearly half a century. Since its debut at a Chicago nightclub in 1971, the show about Rydell High’s senior class of 1959 – complete with the duck-tailed “T-Birds” in T-shirts and slicked-back hair and their gum-snapping, hip-shaking “Pink Ladies” counterparts in bobby sox and pedal pushers – has become one of the best-loved and most-produced musicals of all time. Runs on Broadway have been interspersed with several cross-country tours and countless regional and high school productions, not to mention the live TV broadcast back in January 2016.

It’s a timeless story if a period piece, as Danny Zuko, who leads the greasers, and purported “good girl” Sandy Dumbrowski, who had a summer fling, are now faced with trying to forge a real relationship as the school year begins. The couple and their cohorts have plenty of dialogue as they navigate the territory, but the action really moves via the musical numbers, including the timeless hits “Greased Lightnin’”, “We Go Together”, and “Summer Nights”.

“Grease really is a piece for which people have so much affection,” said Laris, who is directing the show. “They associate the songs and the whole period with a point in their lives – or maybe through their parents, or even their grandparents. All the songs are so danceable and fun and upbeat, they just immediately strike an emotional chord in a very visceral way. The musical itself at the core is a celebration of rock ‘n’ roll and youth culture. There’s that aspect of danger, of breaking the rules, embracing the energy and excitement of rock ‘n’ roll and everything it implies. You can’t not respond physically and emotionally.”

Of course, the whole thing would fall apart if you’re not buying the characters, either through off-key singing or inauthentic acting, but SBCC’s production looks to be a winner, not in the least due to Laris’s commitment. She’s been working with the cast since auditions in December and January, when more than 150 young actors (SBCC casts to age) showed up for the various roles. Culling from the local colleges and high schools – some of which recently offered their own productions of Grease – and beyond, Laris has assembled a team of leading actors that has left her, in her own words, “amazed at their mind-blowing talent.”

Danny is portrayed by Ben Zevallos, who was the lead in Young Frankenstein at SB High School before moving on to Bowden College, while Tessa Miller, who is Santa Barbara theater stalwart Miller James‘s daughter and has been acting since was 7, plays Sandy. Danny’s buddy Kenickie is played by Kody Siemensma, who starred as the emcee in Cabaret last season at UCSB, and SBCC acting student Aurora Cassandra Gooch, who Laris said previously studied at Juilliard, takes on Rizzo, the tough-talking greaser girlfriend with a heart of gold. “As soon as she opens her mouth to sing, her voice elicits shock and awe,” Laris raved.

The rest of the roster of Rydel ruffians are also terrific, Laris said. “It’s an all-star cast, with many of the actors having already performed in lead roles in previous productions,” she explained. “They’re all so super-talented, and you will see that on stage.”

Plus, there’s the car.

Rather than settle for the typical low-budget solution of fashioning greased lightning out of lights and a cardboard box, SBCC went all out to find an actual automobile to wheel on stage. “At first, we thought about sprucing up an SBCC golf cart but then we found a ’54 Plymouth at the junkyard. They took out the engine and transmission, so it wouldn’t be too heavy, but it does have working headlights. And then we took a saw and chopped off the top. It’s so cool.”

Cool enough, she hopes, to make people forget about the goings-on elsewhere and just sit back and enjoy the rockin’ show that carries the simple message that when you stop posing and tell the truth, you can actually connect with others.

“It’s like I’ve been telling the cast since rehearsals began, the first act is about putting out who you want to be perceived as, while the second is about revealing who you really are and just being your authentic self. That’s how you find true love.”