On the heels of her recent appearance at the venue as a member of the New Pornographers, singer-songwriter Neko Case will return to Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, this time for two back-to-back nights: May 28 and 29 at 7:30pm.
Case, whose powerful, “flamethrower” voice reignites the notion of “torch singer” for the indie generation, draws on country, rock, folk, jazz, pop, and blues while painting poignant lyrical vignettes. Chosen as 2006’s Female Artist of the year by the PLUG Independent Music Awards, she’s also been nominated for Grammy Awards in the Best Contemporary Folk Album and Best Alternative Music Album categories for 2009’s Middle Cyclone and 2013’s The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You, respectively.
Born in Virginia, Case moved with her family to Tacoma, Washington, as a child. While in her teens she moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where she played drums in a series of area punk bands that included the Weasels, Cub, and Maow and recorded vocal tracks that would later appear on the New Pornographers’ first album, 2000’s Mass Romantic.
Stepping up to the mic full time, she formed the “country noir” Neko Case and Her Boyfriends, whose debut, The Virginian, arrived with great acclaim in 1997. Likewise lauded albums Furnace Room Lullaby (2000), Blacklisted (2002), Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (2006), The Tigers Have Spoken (2004), and the above discs followed, as did more work with the New Pornographers and membership in the duo the Corn Sisters (with Carolyn Mark) and the trio case/lang/veirs (with k.d. lang and Laura Veirs). Case’s newest opus is 2018’s Hell-On.
Tickets for Neko Case’s performances at Levon Helm Studios on May 28 and 29 are $95 reserved seating and $65 standing room.
Levon Helm Studios
160 Plochmann Lane, woodstock, NY
This article appears in February 2022.
