Latest news with #NekoCase
CBC
15-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
As a child, American Grammy-nominee Neko Case thought she was Canadian. She still feels close to the country
Growing up in Washington state, Neko Case thought she was Canadian. Living close to the U.S.-Canada border, she received CBC broadcasts and watched Canadian classics like The Friendly Giant and Mr. Dressup, which, for a time, truly made her believe she was living in Canada. "I was in grade school and the teacher asked, 'What country do we live in?' because we were looking at maps," she said during an interview on CBC's North by Northwest. "I said 'Canada,' and they were like 'no.'" "Culturally, I feel very close with Canada." Her childhood and path to becoming a Grammy-nominated musician are detailed in her new memoir, The Harder I Fight The More I Love You, available now. When Grand Central Publishing approached her, Case thought she would be writing fiction. But the publisher had something else in mind — a memoir, delving into everything that made the singer-songwriter the person she is today. "It was the pandemic. I had no money, and along came this book deal, which was the greatest timing ever," Case told North by Northwest host Margaret Gallagher. "They didn't strong arm me into it or anything. I was fully amenable to the decision." Case, now 54, says she spent much of her childhood alone, which sometimes made her angry. Rage is a common theme in the book and, as it happens, on the cover. The front of the book features a young girl holding a cat, with a black monster of sorts situated behind her. "That shadowy figure is the rage, and my friend, and it saved my life a lot of times," Case said. For her, music is something of a synthesis of rage — a controlled rage. "It's like making lace out of rage, sort of," she said. A self-described "aggressive kid," Case began playing the drums in her teens, before she eventually became a singer, known for her soothing vocals on moody tracks. That transition meant overcoming her shy nature, someone who kept the drums between her and the audience, and gradually taking centre stage. Case describes her passion for music as a "consuming desire." "I think it's just who I am. I don't know where it comes from. I think it's just what I was meant to do. It's always been bigger than me, but it is me at the same time." She moved to Vancouver in 1994, becoming an honourary Canadian of sorts, to attend the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. During her time in B.C., she played in a few local bands and joined indie band The New Pornographers, with which she remains part of today. Case left art school in 1998, but says that while she was living in Vancouver, she gained an understanding of the difference between her two countries. "It seems like we're so close culturally, the United States and Canada," she said. "I really learned a lot about being kind of an outwardly aggressive American. I learned about the ways that Americans are annoying.
CBC
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Neko Case says the music scene in Canada is 'much healthier' than in the U.S.
When the American singer-songwriter Neko Case was a kid growing up in Washington state, she thought she was Canadian. "In the '70s there weren't a lot of media outlets," she tells Q 's Tom Power in an interview. "We had CBC … and so I remember being in school as a little girl and being asked what country we live in, and I said Canada because I just heard Canadian media all the time. I thought we were Canadian." Case is best known as a solo artist as well as a member of The New Pornographers, one of Canada's most beloved indie rock bands. She recently released a new memoir, The Harder I Fight The More I Love You, which details her path to becoming a Grammy-nominated artist, and how she found her home in the Canadian music scene. WATCH | Neko Case's full interview with Tom Power: In 1994, Case moved to Vancouver to attend the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where she found a thriving community of artists. "It was the most positive change that I remember happening in my life," she says. "The Canadian music scene is very different than it was in the United States. If you're in a band in Vancouver, you have to just be OK with the fact that your bass player is going to be in five other bands because the population just isn't what it is in the United States. There's just less people. So there was more of a potluck sort of feel rather than a competitive feel. I think that was the healthiest thing I've ever been a part of." [In Vancouver,] there was more of a potluck sort of feel rather than a competitive feel. - Neko Case While it seems more typical for a Canadian musician to move to the U.S., rather than the other way around, Case says she thinks the music scene in Canada is "much healthier" than it is below the border. She's happy to be considered an honourary Canadian. But there is a question of whether she uses Canadian or American spelling. Power notes that her breakthrough hit Favorite off her 2001 EP Canadian Amp is spelled the American way, without a u.
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts Neko Case is best known as a lead vocalist for the Canadian indie-rock band the New Pornographers and a solo career that doesn't quite fit any genre ('country noir' and 'odd rock' are two labels she has suggested). Her songs feature unusual protagonists, many of whom are animals, and critics and fans have been puzzling over her lyrics for years. Recently, Case published a memoir, The Harder I Fight the More I Love You, which suggests possible source material for her vivid and sometimes alarming imagination. In the memoir, she writes mostly about her experience growing up as the child of teenage parents who, in her telling, never came around to wanting a child. And about finding an alternative home in the music scenes of the American Northwest and Canada. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, we talk with Case about men, music, her own sliding sense of gender, the impossibility of being a musician in the age of streaming, and most important, how not to suffer for your art. After a lifetime of thinking about her parents, she also has good advice on when not to Rosin: Just a quick note: This episode contains some cursing that you might not usually hear on this show. Neko Case is one of those musicians that people have really strong personal attachments to, especially indie music lovers of a certain generation. Like, I know two people who have named a child after her. Neko Case is a lead vocalist of the indie-pop collective the New Pornographers, and she's also had a long solo career. But what's most distinct about her are her lyrics, which are often oblique. Like, a song seems to be about a car crash, but maybe it's really about incomplete grief. You have to listen a few times before you get closer to it. [] Rosin: And then there are lots of times when Case seems to be writing about herself, but it's not entirely clear. [] Rosin: This is Radio Atlantic. I'm Hanna Rosin. Last month, Neko Case peeled back some of the mystery. She's written a memoir called The Harder I Fight the More I Love You, which shares part of the same title as one of her albums from 2013. She writes about growing up poor and neglected. Her parents were teenagers when they had her, and her guess is that neither of them ever wanted a child. By the end of her sophomore year in high school, she asked her mom for emancipation. She writes: 'She couldn't sign it quickly enough; she didn't even have to think it over.' And so Case hid a lot behind her music. [] Rosin: One of my favorite scenes is you as a kid in the school library. Like, you remembered that the beanbags were corduroy. The image was so perfect. It was such a perfect image from that era. And you were hiding out with your headphones on. I think you mentioned listening to 'Atomic,' by Blondie. Neko Case: Over and over and over and over, like only a neurodivergent ADHD kid can do. Rosin: Right. Right. (Laughs.) Like, just a million times. Do you have words for what that was like for you? Because it felt like, Okay, that's the moment that she discovers the power of music. In a movie, that would be the scene in which you discover what music is for and what it does to you. Case: Music was always just there. And I took it for granted, but I also leaned really heavily into it. I did not make a connection that music was something I would want to do or I would do, because I was just a girl. And I did not make a connection between myself and Blondie, or myself and the Go-Go's. I just knew I really loved them. Rosin: So why did it take so long, do you think, for you to open your mouth and sing? You played in bands, but you didn't really sing for a while. Case: Well, I was raised to be female in the United States of America so, you know, I wasn't raised with a lot of self-confidence. Rosin: So what was the point where you were like, Oh I can do this? Case: It wasn't so much deciding I could do it. It was just that I couldn't help but to do it, because the desire was so intense. Rosin: Now, the desire is the desire to make music, to write music, to sing? What was the desire? Case: Even just to sit near it. Anything. Anything I could have. Rosin: In the book, you complain about your voice. You write that it was neither pretty nor powerful. And that's— Case: Oh that's not a complaint. Rosin: It's not a complaint. Okay, okay, okay. Case: No, no, no. It's not powerful, and it's not pretty. Like, those are things that—you know, I wish it were powerful. I don't care that it's not pretty. I very much enjoy hearing women singing in ways other than being pretty. And singing is an incredible physical feeling. It's like your mouth is a fire hose, and you can twist your insides and make a powerful thing come out to the point where your feet levitate ever so slightly off the floor. [] Case: It gets so physical. It is so athletic, and there's nothing else like it. [] Rosin: Well, even in this just few minutes that we've been talking, you describe a little journey from a point where the world gives you a set of expectations and tells you, you can and can't do things. And you seem to sort of find your way out of that, either through your voice or how you experience music, or even the way you write about institutions. Like, you write the country-music institution was limiting in some ways. Case: Oh it's straight up misogynist and racist and hateful. We don't even have to sugarcoat that one. The current country-music scene of radio music in Nashville is absolutely heinous. And I watch young women try to get in there, and I love them so much, and they're trying, and I'm like, Don't even bother. Let that thing die. That thing is poison. Come over here. Let's make the other thing. Rosin: And is the other thing, like, you inventing your own genres? You've given them names over the years that are—'country noir' or 'odd rock,' and things like that. Like, is that the way out? Is that what you tell women? Case: I think that what it is, is the gatekeepers of country music are absolutely terrified that it might evolve, whereas the gatekeepers of rock and roll don't have a problem with evolution. But there's something very white supremacist about how country music works. And they're really, really dialing down on it now. Rosin: So you don't mean just then. You're talking about then, and now there's a resurgence. Because there was a great moment— Case: I think it's worse now. I think it's far worse now than it has been in a long time. Rosin: I mean, there was a good moment for women—it was a brief good moment for women in country music. Case: There have been a couple. Rosin: Yeah. Case: Sometimes, people are so talented that they're undeniable, and not even the gatekeepers can keep them out. Rosin: Well, it's good Beyoncé made that country album then. Case: We're lucky to have Beyoncé doing a lot of things. That's all I'm saying. Rosin: That's true. That's true. (Laughs.) I think reading your memoir, for me, changed how I heard your music, and I wasn't sure if that was the right thing or not the intended thing. Is that something you explicitly thought you were doing? At times, I almost read it like, Oh this is a key to some lyrics, and I wasn't sure if that was correct or not correct. Case: I tried to not give away the songs as much as possible. Like, there was a couple times where I kind of went into them, but I don't like to ruin songs for people. You know how you will hear the lyrics of a song one way, and then you find out it's not the lyric that you thought it was, and then you're like, Oh. It's not as good anymore? If you think you know what a song's about, and it makes you feel connected emotionally to it, and it becomes a little chapter heading in your life, you don't want to ruin that for people. Rosin: Yeah. But I don't know if it's ruin it. I think it's just complicate it. I'll give you an example—and maybe just indulge me, and you can walk me through the process. I'm the listener. You're the singer. When I read the book title, of course, I immediately thought of your 2013 album— Case: Yes. Rosin: —The Worst Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You, for obvious reasons. Because of the song 'Nearly Midnight, Honolulu,' which has run in my head for 10 years— [] Rosin: —which starts with the kid at the bus stop, and then the perspective is quickly shifting, so it's hard to keep up with who's the you and who's the me. [] Rosin: And then that kind of devastating line about, 'My mother, she did not love me.' [] Rosin: In your mind, is that line related to the book in any way? Case: Well, that song was a real event. I was really at a bus stop in Honolulu, fleeing Hawaii. And I saw it happen, and I just felt so helpless. Rosin: You felt helpless to protect the kid? Case: Yeah. But the kid, also, was being very resilient, and she was entertaining herself. She was very spunky and cute. And her mom was just an asshole. Rosin: I mean, reading your book, I did think, Oh that line resonated with Neko for a reason, because of struggles with your own mother. Do you mean for people to read the memoir that way? Case: Well, I mean, I told the story. I just—I've never written a book before, and I didn't set out to write a memoir. I wanted to write fiction, but it was at the height of the pandemic, and Hachette said, We'll pay you to write a memoir, though. And I was like, Okay. A memoir it is. And that's not a complaint or, you know, they didn't hold my heels to the fire or anything. I just thought, Okay, well, it'll just be a little challenging, because, you know, talking about yourself or writing about yourself to yourself isn't the most exciting thing ever. You spend a lot of time with yourself. So I don't think of myself as like, Oh people are really going to want to know this. So I mean, that's one of the reasons I tried to pick more interesting stories from childhood that were scenes, maybe, of good things, too, because I didn't want it to just be, Oh poor me, especially because it's not unusual. It's most people's experience. I mean, my situation with my mother is pretty bizarre. But neglect or abuse or things like that—those are most people's experiences. Or growing up really poor—that is most people. Rosin: I think your experience is actually pretty unusual. Case: Yeah. It's pretty damn weird. [] Rosin: 'Pretty damn weird' it is. When Case was in second grade, her father told her that her mother had died of cancer, which was surprising because Case didn't even realize she was sick. And then a year and a half later, her dad said to her one day: I don't want you to think your mom's a ghost, but she came home. As Case recalls in her memoir, the story was that her mother had had terminal cancer and gone to Hawaii to recover but didn't want Case to see her so ill. And Case—who, remember, was a little kid—believed her. She had her mom back. She was happy. It only occurred to her later—after many, many years and another disappearing act from her mother—that she might never have been sick in the first place. Rosin: It's one of the weirdest stories I've ever heard. I mean, it is a little shocking and hard to forget. And I'm not sure if you knew that or recognized it in that way. Case: I didn't know that until I was in my early 20s, and I told somebody I knew that my mom faked her death. And then they were like, That's the weirdest fucking thing I've ever heard, and I was like, Oh yeah. That is actually pretty weird, isn't it? But you know kids. Kids just think what's happening to them is what happens. So it didn't occur to me. Rosin: So where did it register for you? Because now I see that what I am assuming about that song isn't actually how you move through the process. I just assumed you had that in your head when you wrote the lyrics, 'She did not love me.' Because that lyric is haunting, even the way you sing it and the pacing of it. I just assumed you had that in your head, but maybe you didn't. Maybe you just had it in your subconscious somewhere. Case: It's in me all the time. And, you know, it's just not my fault. [] Case: She didn't love me. And it's just the fact. [] Rosin: When you work out memories and pains in song, is cathartic a banal word to use here? Does it do something for you to work it out and learn? Case: Only in a super-nerdy, kind of neurodivergent-slash-Virgo way where I'm like, Oh! I'm taking all the things, and I'm organizing them in this box. And so now I can put this box over here like a hard drive, so my brain has more room in it. And it's all color-coded, and I know where it is. That's, like, Virgo organization. Rosin: Interesting. Case: Yeah. Rosin: Because I feel like one glib way to read a memoir like this is, Oh from family trauma and a mother who didn't love you comes immense creativity. How wonderful! What's wrong or right about that interpretation? Case: Well, the mythology of people needing to suffer to make beautiful things or just art or creative things, in general, is not true. Rosin: You mean they don't need to suffer? Because it feels like, reading this book, your suffering is related to how you think and work through things and organize things. Case: No. If I had had a supportive upbringing, I would be able to read music and play instruments and would probably be a lot further along. You don't need that. Rosin: So to you, it just feels like pure baggage. It's, like, a thing you've had to tolerate, but you could have been a singer some other way. Case: Oh it's an absolute trunk of shit. Rosin: (Laughs.) Case: The things that I admire about myself are despite those things. You know, like, I still am a trusting person. I still really want to see the good in people, and sometimes I will make mistakes and trust people I shouldn't. And I could beat myself up about that, or I could just go, No. You still want to believe people are good. And I think that's a more important quality than whether or not you're wily enough to spot a jerk a mile away—you know what I mean? Rosin: Yeah, I was more thinking, like, you had this life, and you had to escape this life and find your family elsewhere, and you had a huge, strong motivation to do that, and so you found music. Case: Yes. Rosin: But that's just another way of saying trauma made you a great musician. Case: No. Music is the only thing that never let me down. But trauma did not make me a great musician. I am a journeyman, at best, and, you know, I'm broke. I don't know—I think great musicians do other things. Rosin: Mm-hmm. Wait. Did you just say you were broke? Case: Yeah. Rosin: Do you mean financially broke or personally broke? Case: Financially broke. Rosin: Really? How is that possible? I think your fans would be shocked. Case: The confluence of my house burning down, COVID, and streaming—those three things together. Rosin: Wow. Case: And I cannot catch up. [] Rosin: When we come back—more with Neko Case on politics, on forgiveness, and a recent experience with a friend's death that she said felt like getting on the spaceship to go to the moon. Case: I felt absolutely unafraid. And I was seeing an actual moment of grace in life, and I couldn't believe it. Rosin: That's after the break. [] Rosin: I wanted to ask you about gender, because the way you write and sing about gender is very much the way a lot of people talk about gender now. And I'm curious how you have watched the evolution of how people inhabit and think about gender, like in your lyrics to 'Man'— [] Rosin: —you don't mean that literally. What do you mean by 'I'm a man'? Case: I do mean it literally. [] Case: I mean, I am of the species. I am a man. Like, whatever's going on downstairs doesn't matter. I have all my faculties. You can call a female or a male lion a lion, and they're still a lion. I'm a man in that same way. And I am so thrilled and proud and excited by generations younger than mine who are not backing down from who they think they are and the idea that they get to be who they are. That has been one of the most exciting things I've ever witnessed, and it has given me so much more insight into myself because I never felt like a girl or totally a guy. I'm more of a gender-fluid person. Rosin: And when you say it's taught you so much about yourself, what do you mean? Because in the book, there is one way in which you very much inhabit the experience of a woman of that generation, just at the hands of careless and arrogant and brutal men, like a teacher, older brothers, fellow musicians. And then there's a sense, I imagine, of being trapped in that. So what have you learned about yourself in this era of gender fluidity? How do you think about yourself? Case: As neither. I am neither. I still call myself she/her. I'm used to it. It doesn't bother me. And partly because the world hates women so much, I will not abandon it. I just won't. But I also understand that the world hates gender-fluid people and trans people, LGBTQ people, and I understand the importance of not abandoning that, either. Rosin: So you see the world as making some cultural progress and how we think of what's a man and what's a woman in some corners, but not a lot of progress politically or socially. Case: Politically, we are fucked. Socially, I don't think what the president and his people represent, represents the American people. I don't believe that Americans, in general, have a hatred or a problem with people who are not white, who are LGBTQ, who are immigrants. I just don't think they do. Rosin: To shift away from politics, since we get a lot of it over here in D.C., although this is related, the thing— Case: Well, I mean, a human being's right to be is—I mean, that's just everyday life. Like, politics and everyday life just—they just aren't separate, not that I want to talk about politics, specifically. Because I just refuse to be afraid. Rosin: Do you feel like that's something you found at this age? Because you've said there are times in your life where you haven't had self-confidence, you've been depressed, or you've kind of lost your mind, even, in one section of the book. Is it easier to not be afraid now? Case: Well, I have really benefited from menopause. And a lot of people who menstruate who don't anymore have said the same things about, you know, the hormone shift. Like, you don't care anymore what people think of you. And also, I just came from seeing one of my best friends die. And sitting with her body for four days as—you know, she was an organ donor, and she had a massive aneurysm. And her partner just heroically did CPR, and then the paramedics came and kept her pulse going and got her to the hospital, and they stabilized her, despite the fact that she had no brain activity. And you cannot be an organ donor unless you die on a respirator in the hospital. Like, it's very, very specific. And then you have to wait for all the tests. There are barrages of tests that happened to make sure that you're healthy and that your organs can really save someone else's life and not be rejected. And so we spent days just with her and talking about her life and what a selfless person she was. And we joked a lot about how she was going to work, even in death. She was all about service. And then the day came. Right on the way to the OR, what they do is they do a thing called an 'honor walk.' And we went down what seemed like miles of corridors behind her hospital bed, behind the doctors. And the corridors were lined with doctors and nurses and hospital staff honoring her. And it seemed like one of those movies where you see the people going down the corridor in slow motion to get into the spaceship to go to the moon or whatever, and everyone's saluting them, and it seems so important. And I think I actually saw that in real life. And I just thought, All those things that I worry about and the injustices—we are so right to fight for them. And I was there watching this incredible thing happen, and these beautiful people from all over the world—many of the doctors are immigrants—and it was a mix of people of all colors from all over the world and all different cultures. And I felt so utterly galvanized against the fear and so utterly galvanized in that joy is the way forward. Rosin: Mm-hmm. Case: Loud-ass, exuberant joy. Rosin: I mean, one of the things I took most from your book is how you write about forgiveness. It's related to this. I mean, you definitely acknowledge the beauty of forgiveness, but then you say this other thing, and you could read this in a lot of different ways, which is the 'trust your contempt' paragraph. Do you remember that? You don't have the book in front of you, right? Case: I don't. But I do talk about this, occasionally. Rosin: Yeah. Dissect it if you can. If something doesn't stir anything but contempt in you, then there's a reason. Don't canonize your contempt, but don't ignore it. This is the part that I love. It's so good: 'Sometimes bad things are just senseless brutality that finds you. You do not deserve or ask for these things. They are not always teaching you a lesson.' Where would you say you are—you know, you have a lifetime of songs; you have this memoir; it sounds like you have friends—on this path? Is it different for different people? Like, forgiving members of your family, people who have hurt you in the past? Case: Oh yeah. I mean, relationships with people are all very different, and some are very complicated, and some are not. Rosin: So you would say you're at different places with different people? Case: Oh yeah. Rosin: What about your dad? I was curious about him because he plays a kind of shadow role in the book, not quite with the extravagant cruelty of your mother. Maybe neglectful—maybe—is the right way to read that. Case: I have a lot of compassion for my dad and a lot of sadness because I feel like his development was arrested completely. And he had to be an adult man and head of the family and all these things, and he was just a kid inside. And he didn't know how to handle it. He maintained it with drugs and drinking for a long time, but then it catches up with you. And the kind of pain from that—he didn't use what happened to him to manipulate anyone. His forward path was genuine. He wasn't doing a great job, but he was also a 19-year-old kid when he had me. And he didn't want me, but he ended up with me. Rosin: Yeah. And ended up raising you. Case: Not really. Rosin: (Laughs.) Right. Ended up housing you under the same roof. Case: Sometimes. Rosin: Sometimes. Yeah, there was that moment when you guys reconnect over a car. You speak car talk with each other— Case: Yeah. Rosin: —which is very familiar to me. I come from a family of mechanics and car people. And so I found that very peaceful. It was a tiny second of peace in a very rocky journey. Case: Yeah, it was nice because when I was a little girl, I would have loved to have had him show me how to do things, because he was always fixing the car or the truck or whatever, and it would have been nice to have been included. I mean, when I was a kid, I thought he wanted a boy, and I thought he was really disappointed. But he just didn't want any kid. Rosin: You know, I've just been nonstop listening to your music to prepare to talk to you and sort of tuning into the different moods of different albums. And I wonder, from you: What's the song you wrote when you were happiest? Or even when you listen to it now, it makes you happy. Like, it just makes you feel good. Case: Probably 'Hold On, Hold On.' It's melancholy, but it feels very much like I am in charge of myself. And I make good decisions in it. [] Rosin: So it's, like, a song that makes you feel like all of this pain and trauma—like you can handle it. Case: Partially. It's a moment of actually seeing yourself clearly. It doesn't mean the moment's going to last. Rosin: Mm-hmm. [] Case: I think I also partly feel that way because I wrote it with the Sadies, and I have such a loving relationship with them. And it's always made me feel good to play it. And my dear friend Dallas Good passed away a couple of years ago, way too young. And so now it takes on a new sort of heaviness, but it's a heaviness that feels good to carry somehow. [] Rosin: Thanks again to my guest, Neko Case. [] This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Jinae West and edited by Claudine Ebeid. Rob Smierciak engineered, and Genevieve Finn fact-checked. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. I'm Hanna Rosin. Thank you for listening. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
The Strange, Lonely Childhood of Neko Case
Neko Case is best known as a lead vocalist for the Canadian indie-rock band the New Pornographers and a solo career that doesn't quite fit any genre ('country noir' and 'odd rock' are two labels she has suggested). Her songs feature unusual protagonists, many of whom are animals, and critics and fans have been puzzling over her lyrics for years. Recently, Case published a memoir, The Harder I Fight the More I Love You, which suggests possible source material for her vivid and sometimes alarming imagination. In the memoir, she writes mostly about her experience growing up as the child of teenage parents who, in her telling, never came around to wanting a child. And about finding an alternative home in the music scenes of the American Northwest and Canada. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, we talk with Case about men, music, her own sliding sense of gender, the impossibility of being a musician in the age of streaming, and most important, how not to suffer for your art. After a lifetime of thinking about her parents, she also has good advice on when not to forgive. The following is a transcript of the episode: Hanna Rosin: Just a quick note: This episode contains some cursing that you might not usually hear on this show. Neko Case is one of those musicians that people have really strong personal attachments to, especially indie music lovers of a certain generation. Like, I know two people who have named a child after her. Neko Case is a lead vocalist of the indie-pop collective the New Pornographers, and she's also had a long solo career. But what's most distinct about her are her lyrics, which are often oblique. Like, a song seems to be about a car crash, but maybe it's really about incomplete grief. You have to listen a few times before you get closer to it. [ 'Star Witness,' by Neko Case ] Rosin: And then there are lots of times when Case seems to be writing about herself, but it's not entirely clear. [ 'Things That Scare Me,' by Neko Case ] Rosin: This is Radio Atlantic. I'm Hanna Rosin. Last month, Neko Case peeled back some of the mystery. She's written a memoir called The Harder I Fight the More I Love You, which shares part of the same title as one of her albums from 2013. She writes about growing up poor and neglected. Her parents were teenagers when they had her, and her guess is that neither of them ever wanted a child. By the end of her sophomore year in high school, she asked her mom for emancipation. She writes: 'She couldn't sign it quickly enough; she didn't even have to think it over.' And so Case hid a lot behind her music. [ Music ] Rosin: One of my favorite scenes is you as a kid in the school library. Like, you remembered that the beanbags were corduroy. The image was so perfect. It was such a perfect image from that era. And you were hiding out with your headphones on. I think you mentioned listening to 'Atomic,' by Blondie. Neko Case: Over and over and over and over, like only a neurodivergent ADHD kid can do. Rosin: Right. Right. (Laughs.) Like, just a million times. Do you have words for what that was like for you? Because it felt like, Okay, that's the moment that she discovers the power of music. In a movie, that would be the scene in which you discover what music is for and what it does to you. Case: Music was always just there. And I took it for granted, but I also leaned really heavily into it. I did not make a connection that music was something I would want to do or I would do, because I was just a girl. And I did not make a connection between myself and Blondie, or myself and the Go-Go's. I just knew I really loved them. Rosin: So why did it take so long, do you think, for you to open your mouth and sing? You played in bands, but you didn't really sing for a while. Case: Well, I was raised to be female in the United States of America so, you know, I wasn't raised with a lot of self-confidence. Rosin: So what was the point where you were like, Oh I can do this? Case: It wasn't so much deciding I could do it. It was just that I couldn't help but to do it, because the desire was so intense. Rosin: Now, the desire is the desire to make music, to write music, to sing? What was the desire? Case: Even just to sit near it. Anything. Anything I could have. Rosin: In the book, you complain about your voice. You write that it was neither pretty nor powerful. And that's— Case: Oh that's not a complaint. Rosin: It's not a complaint. Okay, okay, okay. Case: No, no, no. It's not powerful, and it's not pretty. Like, those are things that—you know, I wish it were powerful. I don't care that it's not pretty. I very much enjoy hearing women singing in ways other than being pretty. And singing is an incredible physical feeling. It's like your mouth is a fire hose, and you can twist your insides and make a powerful thing come out to the point where your feet levitate ever so slightly off the floor. [ 'I Wish I Was the Moon,' by Neko Case ] Case: It gets so physical. It is so athletic, and there's nothing else like it. [ 'I Wish I Was the Moon,' by Neko Case ] Rosin: Well, even in this just few minutes that we've been talking, you describe a little journey from a point where the world gives you a set of expectations and tells you, you can and can't do things. And you seem to sort of find your way out of that, either through your voice or how you experience music, or even the way you write about institutions. Like, you write the country-music institution was limiting in some ways. Case: Oh it's straight up misogynist and racist and hateful. We don't even have to sugarcoat that one. The current country-music scene of radio music in Nashville is absolutely heinous. And I watch young women try to get in there, and I love them so much, and they're trying, and I'm like, Don't even bother. Let that thing die. That thing is poison. Come over here. Let's make the other thing. Rosin: And is the other thing, like, you inventing your own genres? You've given them names over the years that are—'country noir' or 'odd rock,' and things like that. Like, is that the way out? Is that what you tell women? Case: I think that what it is, is the gatekeepers of country music are absolutely terrified that it might evolve, whereas the gatekeepers of rock and roll don't have a problem with evolution. But there's something very white supremacist about how country music works. And they're really, really dialing down on it now. Case: I think it's worse now. I think it's far worse now than it has been in a long time. Rosin: I mean, there was a good moment for women—it was a brief good moment for women in country music. Case: There have been a couple. Rosin: Yeah. Case: Sometimes, people are so talented that they're undeniable, and not even the gatekeepers can keep them out. Rosin: Well, it's good Beyoncé made that country album then. Case: We're lucky to have Beyoncé doing a lot of things. That's all I'm saying. Rosin: That's true. That's true. (Laughs.) I think reading your memoir, for me, changed how I heard your music, and I wasn't sure if that was the right thing or not the intended thing. Is that something you explicitly thought you were doing? At times, I almost read it like, Oh this is a key to some lyrics, and I wasn't sure if that was correct or not correct. Case: I tried to not give away the songs as much as possible. Like, there was a couple times where I kind of went into them, but I don't like to ruin songs for people. You know how you will hear the lyrics of a song one way, and then you find out it's not the lyric that you thought it was, and then you're like, Oh. It's not as good anymore? If you think you know what a song's about, and it makes you feel connected emotionally to it, and it becomes a little chapter heading in your life, you don't want to ruin that for people. Rosin: Yeah. But I don't know if it's ruin it. I think it's just complicate it. I'll give you an example—and maybe just indulge me, and you can walk me through the process. I'm the listener. You're the singer. When I read the book title, of course, I immediately thought of your 2013 album— Case: Yes. Rosin: — The Worst Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You, for obvious reasons. Because of the song 'Nearly Midnight, Honolulu,' which has run in my head for 10 years— [ 'Nearly Midnight, Honolulu,' by Neko Case ] Rosin: —which starts with the kid at the bus stop, and then the perspective is quickly shifting, so it's hard to keep up with who's the you and who's the me. [ 'Nearly Midnight, Honolulu,' by Neko Case ] Rosin: And then that kind of devastating line about, 'My mother, she did not love me.' [ 'Nearly Midnight, Honolulu,' by Neko Case ] Rosin: In your mind, is that line related to the book in any way? Case: Well, that song was a real event. I was really at a bus stop in Honolulu, fleeing Hawaii. And I saw it happen, and I just felt so helpless. Rosin: You felt helpless to protect the kid? Case: Yeah. But the kid, also, was being very resilient, and she was entertaining herself. She was very spunky and cute. And her mom was just an asshole. Rosin: I mean, reading your book, I did think, Oh that line resonated with Neko for a reason, because of struggles with your own mother. Do you mean for people to read the memoir that way? Case: Well, I mean, I told the story. I just—I've never written a book before, and I didn't set out to write a memoir. I wanted to write fiction, but it was at the height of the pandemic, and Hachette said, We'll pay you to write a memoir, though. And I was like, Okay. A memoir it is. And that's not a complaint or, you know, they didn't hold my heels to the fire or anything. I just thought, Okay, well, it'll just be a little challenging, because, you know, talking about yourself or writing about yourself to yourself isn't the most exciting thing ever. You spend a lot of time with yourself. So I don't think of myself as like, Oh people are really going to want to know this. So I mean, that's one of the reasons I tried to pick more interesting stories from childhood that were scenes, maybe, of good things, too, because I didn't want it to just be, Oh poor me, especially because it's not unusual. It's most people's experience. I mean, my situation with my mother is pretty bizarre. But neglect or abuse or things like that—those are most people's experiences. Or growing up really poor—that is most people. Rosin: I think your experience is actually pretty unusual. Case: Yeah. It's pretty damn weird. [ Music ] Rosin: 'Pretty damn weird' it is. When Case was in second grade, her father told her that her mother had died of cancer, which was surprising because Case didn't even realize she was sick. And then a year and a half later, her dad said to her one day: I don't want you to think your mom's a ghost, but she came home. As Case recalls in her memoir, the story was that her mother had had terminal cancer and gone to Hawaii to recover but didn't want Case to see her so ill. And Case—who, remember, was a little kid—believed her. She had her mom back. She was happy. It only occurred to her later—after many, many years and another disappearing act from her mother—that she might never have been sick in the first place. Rosin: It's one of the weirdest stories I've ever heard. I mean, it is a little shocking and hard to forget. And I'm not sure if you knew that or recognized it in that way. Case: I didn't know that until I was in my early 20s, and I told somebody I knew that my mom faked her death. And then they were like, That's the weirdest fucking thing I've ever heard, and I was like, Oh yeah. That is actually pretty weird, isn't it? But you know kids. Kids just think what's happening to them is what happens. So it didn't occur to me. Rosin: So where did it register for you? Because now I see that what I am assuming about that song isn't actually how you move through the process. I just assumed you had that in your head when you wrote the lyrics, 'She did not love me.' Because that lyric is haunting, even the way you sing it and the pacing of it. I just assumed you had that in your head, but maybe you didn't. Maybe you just had it in your subconscious somewhere. Case: It's in me all the time. And, you know, it's just not my fault. [ 'Nearly Midnight, Honolulu,' by Neko Case ] Case: She didn't love me. And it's just the fact. [ 'Nearly Midnight, Honolulu,' by Neko Case ] Rosin: When you work out memories and pains in song, is cathartic a banal word to use here? Does it do something for you to work it out and learn? Case: Only in a super-nerdy, kind of neurodivergent-slash-Virgo way where I'm like, Oh! I'm taking all the things, and I'm organizing them in this box. And so now I can put this box over here like a hard drive, so my brain has more room in it. And it's all color-coded, and I know where it is. That's, like, Virgo organization. Rosin: Interesting. Case: Yeah. Rosin: Because I feel like one glib way to read a memoir like this is, Oh from family trauma and a mother who didn't love you comes immense creativity. How wonderful! What's wrong or right about that interpretation? Case: Well, the mythology of people needing to suffer to make beautiful things or just art or creative things, in general, is not true. Rosin: You mean they don't need to suffer? Because it feels like, reading this book, your suffering is related to how you think and work through things and organize things. Case: No. If I had had a supportive upbringing, I would be able to read music and play instruments and would probably be a lot further along. You don't need that. Rosin: So to you, it just feels like pure baggage. It's, like, a thing you've had to tolerate, but you could have been a singer some other way. Case: Oh it's an absolute trunk of shit. Rosin: (Laughs.) Case: The things that I admire about myself are despite those things. You know, like, I still am a trusting person. I still really want to see the good in people, and sometimes I will make mistakes and trust people I shouldn't. And I could beat myself up about that, or I could just go, No. You still want to believe people are good. And I think that's a more important quality than whether or not you're wily enough to spot a jerk a mile away—you know what I mean? Rosin: Yeah, I was more thinking, like, you had this life, and you had to escape this life and find your family elsewhere, and you had a huge, strong motivation to do that, and so you found music. Case: Yes. Rosin: But that's just another way of saying trauma made you a great musician. Case: No. Music is the only thing that never let me down. But trauma did not make me a great musician. I am a journeyman, at best, and, you know, I'm broke. I don't know—I think great musicians do other things. Rosin: Mm-hmm. Wait. Did you just say you were broke? Case: Yeah. Rosin: Do you mean financially broke or personally broke? Case: Financially broke. Rosin: Really? How is that possible? I think your fans would be shocked. Case: The confluence of my house burning down, COVID, and streaming—those three things together. Rosin: Wow. Case: And I cannot catch up. [ Music ] Rosin: When we come back—more with Neko Case on politics, on forgiveness, and a recent experience with a friend's death that she said felt like getting on the spaceship to go to the moon. Case: I felt absolutely unafraid. And I was seeing an actual moment of grace in life, and I couldn't believe it. Rosin: That's after the break. [ Break ] Rosin: I wanted to ask you about gender, because the way you write and sing about gender is very much the way a lot of people talk about gender now. And I'm curious how you have watched the evolution of how people inhabit and think about gender, like in your lyrics to 'Man'— [ 'Man,' by Neko Case ] Rosin: —you don't mean that literally. What do you mean by 'I'm a man'? Case: I do mean it literally. [ 'Man,' by Neko Case ] Case: I mean, I am of the species. I am a man. Like, whatever's going on downstairs doesn't matter. I have all my faculties. You can call a female or a male lion a lion, and they're still a lion. I'm a man in that same way. And I am so thrilled and proud and excited by generations younger than mine who are not backing down from who they think they are and the idea that they get to be who they are. That has been one of the most exciting things I've ever witnessed, and it has given me so much more insight into myself because I never felt like a girl or totally a guy. I'm more of a gender-fluid person. Rosin: And when you say it's taught you so much about yourself, what do you mean? Because in the book, there is one way in which you very much inhabit the experience of a woman of that generation, just at the hands of careless and arrogant and brutal men, like a teacher, older brothers, fellow musicians. And then there's a sense, I imagine, of being trapped in that. So what have you learned about yourself in this era of gender fluidity? How do you think about yourself? Case: As neither. I am neither. I still call myself she/her. I'm used to it. It doesn't bother me. And partly because the world hates women so much, I will not abandon it. I just won't. But I also understand that the world hates gender-fluid people and trans people, LGBTQ people, and I understand the importance of not abandoning that, either. Rosin: So you see the world as making some cultural progress and how we think of what's a man and what's a woman in some corners, but not a lot of progress politically or socially. Case: Politically, we are fucked. Socially, I don't think what the president and his people represent, represents the American people. I don't believe that Americans, in general, have a hatred or a problem with people who are not white, who are LGBTQ, who are immigrants. I just don't think they do. Rosin: To shift away from politics, since we get a lot of it over here in D.C., although this is related, the thing— Case: Well, I mean, a human being's right to be is—I mean, that's just everyday life. Like, politics and everyday life just—they just aren't separate, not that I want to talk about politics, specifically. Because I just refuse to be afraid. Rosin: Do you feel like that's something you found at this age? Because you've said there are times in your life where you haven't had self-confidence, you've been depressed, or you've kind of lost your mind, even, in one section of the book. Is it easier to not be afraid now? Case: Well, I have really benefited from menopause. And a lot of people who menstruate who don't anymore have said the same things about, you know, the hormone shift. Like, you don't care anymore what people think of you. And also, I just came from seeing one of my best friends die. And sitting with her body for four days as—you know, she was an organ donor, and she had a massive aneurysm. And her partner just heroically did CPR, and then the paramedics came and kept her pulse going and got her to the hospital, and they stabilized her, despite the fact that she had no brain activity. And you cannot be an organ donor unless you die on a respirator in the hospital. Like, it's very, very specific. And then you have to wait for all the tests. There are barrages of tests that happened to make sure that you're healthy and that your organs can really save someone else's life and not be rejected. And so we spent days just with her and talking about her life and what a selfless person she was. And we joked a lot about how she was going to work, even in death. She was all about service. And then the day came. Right on the way to the OR, what they do is they do a thing called an 'honor walk.' And we went down what seemed like miles of corridors behind her hospital bed, behind the doctors. And the corridors were lined with doctors and nurses and hospital staff honoring her. And it seemed like one of those movies where you see the people going down the corridor in slow motion to get into the spaceship to go to the moon or whatever, and everyone's saluting them, and it seems so important. And I think I actually saw that in real life. And I just thought, All those things that I worry about and the injustices—we are so right to fight for them. And I was there watching this incredible thing happen, and these beautiful people from all over the world—many of the doctors are immigrants—and it was a mix of people of all colors from all over the world and all different cultures. And I felt so utterly galvanized against the fear and so utterly galvanized in that joy is the way forward. Rosin: Mm-hmm. Case: Loud-ass, exuberant joy. Rosin: I mean, one of the things I took most from your book is how you write about forgiveness. It's related to this. I mean, you definitely acknowledge the beauty of forgiveness, but then you say this other thing, and you could read this in a lot of different ways, which is the 'trust your contempt' paragraph. Do you remember that? You don't have the book in front of you, right? Case: I don't. But I do talk about this, occasionally. Rosin: Yeah. Dissect it if you can. If something doesn't stir anything but contempt in you, then there's a reason. Don't canonize your contempt, but don't ignore it. This is the part that I love. It's so good: 'Sometimes bad things are just senseless brutality that finds you. You do not deserve or ask for these things. They are not always teaching you a lesson.' Where would you say you are—you know, you have a lifetime of songs; you have this memoir; it sounds like you have friends—on this path? Is it different for different people? Like, forgiving members of your family, people who have hurt you in the past? Case: Oh yeah. I mean, relationships with people are all very different, and some are very complicated, and some are not. Rosin: So you would say you're at different places with different people? Case: Oh yeah. Rosin: What about your dad? I was curious about him because he plays a kind of shadow role in the book, not quite with the extravagant cruelty of your mother. Maybe neglectful—maybe—is the right way to read that. Case: I have a lot of compassion for my dad and a lot of sadness because I feel like his development was arrested completely. And he had to be an adult man and head of the family and all these things, and he was just a kid inside. And he didn't know how to handle it. He maintained it with drugs and drinking for a long time, but then it catches up with you. And the kind of pain from that—he didn't use what happened to him to manipulate anyone. His forward path was genuine. He wasn't doing a great job, but he was also a 19-year-old kid when he had me. And he didn't want me, but he ended up with me. Rosin: Yeah. And ended up raising you. Case: Not really. Rosin: (Laughs.) Right. Ended up housing you under the same roof. Case: Sometimes. Rosin: Sometimes. Yeah, there was that moment when you guys reconnect over a car. You speak car talk with each other— Case: Yeah. Rosin: —which is very familiar to me. I come from a family of mechanics and car people. And so I found that very peaceful. It was a tiny second of peace in a very rocky journey. Case: Yeah, it was nice because when I was a little girl, I would have loved to have had him show me how to do things, because he was always fixing the car or the truck or whatever, and it would have been nice to have been included. I mean, when I was a kid, I thought he wanted a boy, and I thought he was really disappointed. But he just didn't want any kid. Rosin: You know, I've just been nonstop listening to your music to prepare to talk to you and sort of tuning into the different moods of different albums. And I wonder, from you: What's the song you wrote when you were happiest? Or even when you listen to it now, it makes you happy. Like, it just makes you feel good. Case: Probably 'Hold On, Hold On.' It's melancholy, but it feels very much like I am in charge of myself. And I make good decisions in it. [ 'Hold On, Hold On,' by Neko Case ] Rosin: So it's, like, a song that makes you feel like all of this pain and trauma—like you can handle it. Case: Partially. It's a moment of actually seeing yourself clearly. It doesn't mean the moment's going to last. Rosin: Mm-hmm. [ 'Hold On, Hold On,' by Neko Case ] Case: I think I also partly feel that way because I wrote it with the Sadies, and I have such a loving relationship with them. And it's always made me feel good to play it. And my dear friend Dallas Good passed away a couple of years ago, way too young. And so now it takes on a new sort of heaviness, but it's a heaviness that feels good to carry somehow. [ 'Hold On, Hold On,' by Neko Case ] Rosin: Thanks again to my guest, Neko Case. [ Music ] This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Jinae West and edited by Claudine Ebeid. Rob Smierciak engineered, and Genevieve Finn fact-checked. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.
The Guardian
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Women's rage is real. Mostly we turn it on ourselves': Neko Case on songwriting, survival – and her mother's faked death
When the singer-songwriter Neko Case was growing up in poverty in rural Washington, it did not occur to her to question her parents or their indifference to her. 'Kids don't think things are weird,' Case, 54, says with a shrug. 'It's like: well, this is my reality, so this is what reality is.' So when Case's father picked her up from her grandmother's house one day and told her that her mother had died, from terminal cancer she had kept secret, Case believed him. She attended her mother's wake with her father, her relatives on her mother's side and 20 or 30 other mourners. About a year and half later, Case left school to find her dad waiting unexpectedly. He informed her that her mother was at home, apparently back from the dead. Case was told that her mother had faked her death to spare her family the pain of a drawn-out demise, then had been miraculously cured in Hawaii. At the time, she was so overjoyed – and so young – that she didn't doubt their story. It wasn't until she was a 'full-blown adult' that she grasped the magnitude of the deception – and the fact that her mother, whose description of her illness would often change, had probably never had cancer. 'I never even thought it was weird until I told somebody the story one day,' she says. She never asked why the death was faked, but her mother continued to come in and out of her life in the ensuing years. 'That was her grift: to make me want her and then disappear all over again,' Case writes. 'That's what I can't forgive.' Eventually she decides, in a moment of horrifying clarity, her mother faked her death 'because she didn't want me'. The 'incredibly long time' it took Case to make sense of her childhood reflects the self-deception she had to cultivate to survive it. 'When you're a kid and you love your parents, you will go to any lengths to believe the most outrageous lies,' she says now. 'And you will continue the lies yourself, and embellish them and grow them, like they're your tomato plants, or something – you don't even know you're doing it.' In Case's new memoir, The Harder I Fight the More I Love You, she attempts to impose order on her tangled roots – from her childhood, characterised by poverty and neglect, to her escape into music via the Seattle punk scene. She didn't want to write a memoir, she says; that was just what she got offered money to produce: 'It was during the pandemic and I was in dire straits financially.' But she had no misgivings about putting the story in print. 'I'm an oversharer – I tell my friends these things all the time, and it helps,' Case says. 'It doesn't necessarily make anything better, per se, but it feels good to have somebody hear you.' Simultaneously a solo artist and a member of the Canadian supergroup the New Pornographers, Case is known for her distinctive, flaming contralto and gothic Americana. Two solo albums, 2009's Middle Cyclone and 2013's The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You, were nominated for Grammys; in 2013, she formed the supergroup case/lang/veirs with kd lang and Laura Veirs. Her lyrics – filled with folkloric wisdom, wildlife and natural imagery – invoke a world where human logic ranks second to animal instinct, and 'civilisation' is only a flimsy veneer over red-in-tooth-and-claw reality. Case displays those same carnal instincts when she says she is smelly ('so I'm glad this is a Zoom') and discombobulated by menopause. Her trademark auburn hair is magnificently intermingled with grey; her forearms are tattooed with the phrases 'Scorned as timber' and 'Beloved of the sky'. Until The Worse Things Get …, her sixth album, Case said she never explicitly wrote songs about her life. Her memoir, however, reveals her love of animals, music and mythology as lifelines through her 'feral' childhood. Case was born in Virginia, the result of a backseat fumble between two poor teenagers who divorced after a few years of marriage. Both parents drank; her dad smoked and grew marijuana. Case spent hours alone in inhospitable residences and was so hungry that she would eat uncooked rice and flour. Bored and lonely at her dad's, she would kill time by biting the heads off fleas. Yet hers is not a misery memoir: Case tells these stories with honesty, heart and deadpan humour. 'When you tell people how poor you were when you were growing up, they are like: 'Oh, that's so sad' – but it was actually pretty funny,' she says. There was also trauma. At 14, Case was raped by the 19-year-old brother of a schoolmate. At the time, she blamed herself. Now, she directs her rage at the adults who failed to protect her – chiefly her mother. 'There's a certain amount of saturation that happened to me, at a very young age, of: 'I cannot take this; this is too much for a human being,'' Case says matter-of-factly. The trauma remains, as does the rage. 'I come to it quicker than other people do, but I'm also better at controlling it than I used to be. People don't talk a lot about women's rage, or women's violence – but it's a real thing. It's very real, and mostly we turn it on ourselves.' As a child, Case quickly forgave her mother's deception, but their relationship deteriorated with time and her mother's descent into alcoholism. At 16, Case requested a legal emancipation; her mother readily agreed. With no money and only short-term accommodation, Case ended up dropping out of high school, too hungry to learn. 'Of course, I didn't make that connection when I was young – I thought I was a loser.' Music was Case's salvation long before she had any idea of making it herself. She embedded herself in the Seattle and Portland punk scenes, taught herself to drum and started playing in bands. After moving to Vancouver for art school, Case founded Maow: a scrappy, pop-punk three-piece that stood out for their homemade fur bikinis. In 1997, she released her debut solo album, The Virginian, and started playing with the New Pornographers. But finding success did not make up for the struggle, Case says. 'The idea that you have to suffer to be an artist, I think it must have been made up. It's like some sort of trust-fund tourism – 'I've really got to be authentic; I need to understand that squalor.'' If her upbringing had been stable, 'I would have been a much better musician, because I'd have started earlier – I would have had people backing me up and some sort of safety to experiment.' Case's father died in 2004 from a heart attack and long-term alcoholism. She cut all contact with her mother in 2010; Case does not know if she is alive or dead (although she has long allowed the latter to stand in the press). Case still feels the impact of her upbringing in her anxiety. 'I have an incredibly hard time trusting people, and also there's a contradiction, where I trust too easily.' Although she is in a long-term relationship and has a teenage stepdaughter, she never considered becoming a parent: 'There's no way.' But Case's anger is tempered by hard-won compassion and awareness of the impact of intergenerational trauma. Both her parents were allegedly sexually abused as children. Her mother was raped again when Case was 18 and still in denial about her own assault. Although she had largely processed her past by the time she started writing her memoir, pulling the threads together made them easier to carry, says Case. 'I was able to put a lot of things in the book … [Now] I know where it is and I can go check it out if I need to; I don't have to walk around with it all the time.' She sees herself as the family firefighter, surveying the damage done and deciding: 'This ends here. I'm chopping that shit down, I'm putting that out, I'm going to do a controlled burn over there: this is not going to go on any more.' 'Yet Case would never have written the memoir if music still paid the bills. 'I used to get royalty cheques and they would get me through lean times – not any more,' Case says grimly. Alongside promoting the book, she is staging rehearsals for the musical adaptation of Thelma & Louise she has spent eight years writing with the film's screenwriter, Callie Khouri. It is rewarding work, but her struggle to stay afloat financially 'is a brand new anger that I'm trying to learn how to deal with', Case says. She is scathing about the creative industries' structural exploitation of artists: 'The way things are set up benefits them, but not you. Be it publishing, music or theatre – each one of them has their disgusting pitfalls.' But Case remains committed to the possibility of positive change – and the potential of productive, 'protective rage' to achieve it. She has felt inspired by younger generations' pushback against gender roles and a 'patriarchal, colonial' status quo. 'It's heroic; I feel absolutely liberated by the way people talk.' Were she coming of age today, it is 'pretty likely' that she would identify as non-binary, Case says. 'I don't really feel like a woman or a man, necessarily – I'm kind of this other thing.' As a young person, she felt very conflicted about gender: 'I couldn't put those things into words'. Now, she has finally gained mastery over her rage and clarity over her targets – just in time for Donald Trump's second presidency. Case believes the attacks on women and transgender people reflect not the US public, but 'a very small group of very rich people who are pandering to fundamentalism. It's just such a great way to get people angry and to control them … and people are absolutely going to suffer.' Her own strategy, for the next four years and beyond, is to refuse to be cowed. 'I'm not giving them my fear, I'm not going to be depressed, I'm not going to be afraid – I'm just going to fight like hell and I'm going to love doing it.' About a year after I'd moved to Illinois I was standing on a stage, and my field of vision was moving inward, the edges blurring. The summer sun was hitting my body like a hammer, and a wave of nausea surged up in answer. None of this was how I expected to feel playing at [country institution] the Grand Ole Opry. When my agent called to tell me I'd been asked to play there, in 2001, I was floored. My gramma Mary Ann had been a huge fan of the Opry stars all her life. I was so proud and nervous, and I couldn't wait to tell her. When the date finally came, it was the height of the hottest July. Boiling in Chicago and only getting hotter as the band and I crept down the cracked highway south toward Nashville. When we finally pulled up to Opryland, it was 98 degrees [37C] and not a cloud in the sky. The sun was punishing, and the humidity swamp-aquatic. Even breathing was hard. I had to steel myself to keep on task as we unpacked the van. 'Load-in' was to an outdoor stage right next to a barbecue pit – it was more like we were playing adjacent to the Opry than in it, which was a little disappointing but ultimately no big deal. It had a roof but no walls, so the Nashville sun muscled across it at different angles as the day went on, magnetised to the black stage. We did our soundcheck, then retreated to the air-conditioning of the actual Opry building to get ready. I was in my orange 'Wilderness Pilots Do It in the Bush' T-shirt, which had a cute cartoon beaver with pontoons on his feet. It was just a silly thing, but I was quickly pulled aside and told my shirt wasn't appropriate for the Opry's family atmosphere. I was a little embarrassed. 'This isn't what I was gonna wear,' I said, a little grossed out by this random employee's seriousness. I'm not stupid, I thought. Yeesh! But never mind. As I moved through the building's backstage, I saw Little Jimmy Dickens and Jan Howard. I was star-struck. I was such a fan and thrilled to be introduced by our guide. Little Jimmy was gracious and Jan Howard looked at me like I was a piece of sweaty cheese rind. I didn't let it get me down – I was at the Opry to make my gramma proud. Showtime came and we hit the sweltering stage, the sun now beating directly in front of it. The barbecue pit was smoking like a steam engine. Organ meats sizzling away in the pit, me and my band sizzling away on the black skillet of the stage. I have never before or since been that hot. There was no water anywhere. I was miserable but trying to keep a brave face, so sweaty that my hands kept slipping off the neck of my guitar. We made it through two-thirds of our set and finally I was hallucinating. The world had gone dark in that tunnelled way it does when you're about to pass out. That I might puke started to seem more and more like a real possibility. I leaned into the mic and said, 'Thank you!' to the audience, calling the break before the encore early. I knew I needed water – badly. As I reached the exit stairs, a woman barred my path. She looked very serious. 'I need 40 more minutes up there!' she snapped. This was the Grand Ole Opry's manager, who had booked me for the show. 'FINE!' I said. I was so thirsty and so mad. I registered her less as a person and more like a freshly locked gate that was stopping me from getting water. I staggered back on stage and, as I walked out, I pulled my shirt over my head. I was wearing a bra, so I wasn't naked, but I also wasn't thinking. It wasn't an act of punk-rock defiance. I just had an animal need to cool down in any way possible. The band and I took our positions and began another song (at least I think we did?). Soon the power had been cut and I saw the front-of-house engineer laughing his head off. We were done. I put my shirt back on and guzzled some water that had finally materialised. I was red as a beet. The manager stormed up to me. She did a lot of yelling. I felt so sick and ashamed. She was that kind of mad where I could tell she was enjoying her own righteousness as she shouted away. Finally, she delivered the classic line, the one we'd both been waiting for: 'You'll NEVER play this town again!' She stormed away. We packed up our gear and limped back to the van. I don't think we even got paid. I was upset that I had let my bandmates down, but they were kind souls and rallied around me. Still, the realisation that I'd blown it was as heavy as the air and twice as uncomfortable. When I got back to Chicago, I wrote the manager a long letter of apology explaining that I wasn't trying to be rebellious, I had literally just had heatstroke, and that I felt terrible for what had happened. She sent a smug reply to my agent and that was that. I was never going to play that town again. I thought about what men had to do to get banned from the Opry. Hank Williams got booted after missing several shows (this was when he was in his alcoholic slide). Johnny Cash had gotten drunk and, during his show, bashed out all the footlights with his mic. I hadn't been drunk. I hadn't sworn at anyone. I hadn't sent glass flying out at the audience. I'd been overheated and sick. Granted, I wasn't a star and never would be. I was OK with that part, but I was just heartbroken I had blown my shot at playing the Opry. I so badly wanted to do it for my gramma, to make her proud of me. A few years went by, and I was booked to play the Ryman, which was home to the Opry for decades before it moved over to the Opry House. When I got there, no one looked at me like I was a cheese rind or got in a tizzy about what I might wear on stage. Everyone was friendly and helpful. As my band and I went on stage in that glorious old auditorium, I could feel the magic of playing where so many other musicians I loved had played before. This is where it was, not the Christian megapark that had booked me to help sell hotdogs. It was so decent and loving and healing. My gramma had died by then, but I was sure she could feel it anyway. Forever after, I was certain that the institutional cult that's dedicated to deciding what is 'country music' – and what isn't – wasn't worth my time. It only exists to exclude people. No one can stop you from 'playing this town again!' or from being yourself or from making dumb, innocent mistakes. No gatekeeper can stop you from playing country music or evolving it past the confines of the tight decades of time they are so desperate to preserve. When it comes to making new things, they can't stop you for being Black or a girl or gay or divorced. That's the only real 'can't' – and don't let them forget it. The Harder I Fight The More I Love You: A Memoir is published by Headline (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
