Plimsoul-turned-singer/songwriter Peter Case gets backs to his rock & roll roots

"I'd like to make another record with this group if I could," says Peter Case about the posse of folk pros who sat in on his latest album Flying Saucer Blues and on 1998's Full Service No Waiting, "but the rebellion factor would be pretty high."

It's hard to think of Case as rebellious. After all, he's retreated into making masterful singer-songwriter records for the last fourteen years since disbanding his unruly but magnificent pop rock band the Plimsouls. Then again, he's never done it by the book, so what's that if not the dictionary definition of a rebel?

For those who remember the quintessentially Eighties cult movie Valley Girl, Case is the cool guy in shades, poolside, soul shouting the Plimsouls' anthem, "A Million Miles Away." But for another set of fans, Case has defined a new movement in American singer-songwriter music and folk-rock, beginning with his self-titled 1986 release and the 1989 follow-up, the watershed The Man with the Blue Post-Modern Fragmented Neo-traditionalist Guitar. The songwriter was among the very first to unplug, as they say, paring down his lyric intensive story-songs into an acoustic-based form that helped launch the new-folk-alternative ("No Depression") and a handful of other acoustic strains that took hold in the Nineties.

But on Flying Saucer Blues, Case bridges the divide between his train whistle harmonica and chug-a-chuga finger pickin' style -- the kind he's played ever since he ran away from home as a teenager in upstate New York to survive as a busker on the road -- with his love of roots rock. He pulled in recording veterans like guitarist Greg Leisz, percussionist Don Heffington and bassist David Jackson to achieve the authentic sound. It's this "return to rock vibe" that Case points to when he talks of rebellion.

"I try to write my things so they cut through to strangers, if I just walked into a bar and nobody knew me or my reputation or anything, so I have more armament to go out and play them," he explains. "But this time, I wanted something that was outside of the Woody Guthrie tradition."

It's not the first time during his solo career that Case has had to scratch his rock itch. In 1997, smack in the middle of his new folk renaissance and a new liaison with the reinvigorated folk label Vanguard, Case went and reformed his ramshackle outfit, the Plimsouls. Original members Case, Eddie Mu±oz, David Pahoa plus drummer Clem Burke went into the Epitaph studios, cut some demos and took the show on the road. A cleaned up version of the tapes was eventually released as Kool Trash (Shaky City, 1998).

"There was unfinished business with the Plimsouls and incredible energy when we came back, but I'm not sure we did it right musically," Case says of the reunion. "There's no reason to break up a band twice, so we'll never break up again, but...it was really hard. It was like picking up where we left off in good and bad ways. We'd have the same arguments, the same ridiculous things happening, the same incomprehension, and then I realized, I need to focus. Time's infinite and all that shit, but I finally remembered why I broke up the Plimsouls, and I wanted to go solo again!"

Case bounced back from the reunion experience with Full Service No Waiting. "It was the record I'd wanted to make for a long time and I finally got to it," he says. "I couldn't sit there and pretend to do a million different things."

Nonetheless, Case continued to immerse himself in a million things. He curated music for a Brassai exhibit at the Getty Museum, organized a tribute record to Mississippi John Hurt (the bluesman who inspired him) for Vanguard, wrote children's songs with his daughters, organized a night for songwriters at Santa Monica's legendary Ashgrove and performed with George Martin and orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl last summer.

"I got to this big soundstage and there was no one there except George Martin and he says, 'Come on over to the piano, Peter,'" says Case. "It was cool, you know. We just sat there and sang. I guess the Beatles kind of influenced this new album a little because to hear those songs and sing 'em, you realize how good the songwriting was. It's just unreal. If you put on Rubber Soul, you think if you listen to that for a couple of days you could sit down and knock out ten of those yourself -- it seems so natural."

But for Case, there seems to be much more to the process of songwriting than just knocking them out. And no matter how many different musical hats he wears, he's found a common thread that runs through everything he writes.

"I can't really explain it," he says. "I do a lot of different kinds of things but the same temperatures run through all of it, the same kind of concerns and stuff. I've always used songs as a way to sing up the past. It could also be about singing up reality, singing me back home or singing me out of here. Hitting a plane where songs exist, especially if you're in prison or in a situation where you're stuck in a room or a place and there's an avenue of freedom through the song -- that's always really appealed to me. I was really flipping out when I was a kid and music was such a life raft. I clung to it for my life, really. And I learned everything from it. It's just like a means for me to keep sane."

DENISE SULLIVAN