Peter Case

Peter Case plays The 04 Center on Wednesday, October 14, from 8 PM to 10:30 PM. He'll be performing his sixteenth solo album, Doctor Moan, on piano.

If you're not familiar with the name, Case is a triple Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter who's spent decades writing about underdogs and lost souls. His work moves between rock & roll, contemporary folk, and blues, and he's one of the few artists who can bridge those worlds without it feeling forced. He first made his name in the power-pop bands The Nerves and the Plimsouls. The Nerves toured the country in 1977 sharing bills with the Ramones, Mink DeVille, Pere Ubu, and Devo, and their single "Hanging on the Telephone" was later covered by Blondie. The Plimsouls' "A Million Miles Away" hit the Billboard charts and has remained a garage-rock standard ever since.

He went solo in the mid-eighties, and his self-titled debut, produced by T Bone Burnett, earned a Grammy nomination and was called by The New York Times the best album of 1986. As one of the first of his generation to shift from rock toward an acoustic sound, he helped usher in what became known as Americana. Born in Buffalo in 1954, he's returned to blues and folk on later records like 2007's Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John and 2023's Doctor Moan.

That's the album he's bringing to the piano for this show. It's his sixteenth solo outing, and hearing it stripped down to just him and the keys should give it a different weight than the record. The 04 Center is at 2701 S Lamar Blvd in Austin, and the set runs from 8 PM to 10:30 PM on Wednesday, October 14.