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Neko Case comes home

St. Johnsbury concert to benefit Catamount Arts

Neko Case only lived in Vermont for two years as kid, spending her fifth- and sixth-grade school years in Lamoille County farm country near the town of Waterville. But the time was so indelible, so enjoyable, that she vowed — almost immediately upon leaving — to someday return.

"I've wanted to come back here since I was in seventh grade," said Case last week in a phone interview while painting the kitchen cabinets at her 18th-century homestead in northeastern Vermont. "It was utter bliss living there."

Shuffled around the Northwest throughout a childhood mostly marked by poverty and neglect, Case's parents divorced before she started school. (Her hard-drinking father died not long ago of a heart attack at age 56.) Following the divorce, Case split her time between her father and her mother and stepfather, an archaeologist from western Massachusetts.

Vermont "was so completely different from where I was from," said Case, now 39. "The other kids were poor, but they were lacking this sort of weird, sophisticated pettiness that the kids I went to school with out west had."

"They were really just kind, and they didn't care if your parents were poor, and they didn't care if you didn't have new clothes," she added. "They just wanted to know if you were fun and if you liked to go sledding, and if you wanted to talk about horses and read cool books."

"And that just really spoke to me," said Case. "I missed that the whole time I was gone, and I'm so happy to be back. Because that feeling is still here. It's like, you really CAN go home."

"Everything clicked," she added, "and I still know my friends from when I was in school. When I came back, everybody was still here; no one had died and no one had aged," she said with a laugh. "And it was so nice to see that things hadn't been developed, that things hadn't been ruined."



Kingdom calling

After searching long and hard for her own Green Mountain State space to call home, Case finally scored her dream house in 2007, a 100-acre former dairy farm in the Northeast Kingdom. The sizable barn contributes to three songs on her widely lauded, Grammy-nominated 2009 album, "Middle Cyclone."

"When I saw the place, I thought, 'That's the place I had in my mind,'" said Case. "The stars aligned."

(Case is reticent to divulge the exact location, citing her experience with stalkers in past residences such as Seattle, Vancouver, Chicago and Tucson – and has "had a couple creepy people come to my house" in Vermont, she said. "And they weren't Vermonters, believe me. My neighbors could not be cooler or more protective.")

Case's first stop was St. Johnsbury arts organization Catamount Arts, which she said has been "invaluable in helping me settle back in Vermont."

"They just gave me such great advice, and always were telling me where I should go and who I should talk to about this or that," she said. "Everybody has such a huge enthusiasm, and I love going in there to talk to them. They have great resources and they're really connected. And they're just really nice people."

"I met them because I started renting videos there," she added. "Vermont is like that – you can make friends just renting videos in town. It's pretty great."



Helping the home team

Case is repaying the favor with a benefit concert for Catamount Arts in St. Johnsbury. All proceeds from the show will go to the cash-strapped organization, which has recently suffered the loss of several funding sources while also facing increased costs associated with the operation of its stunning community arts center, renovated by St. Johnsbury Academy students and unveiled in the fall of 2008.

To keep production costs down, Case will play a rare stripped-down show with two of her band members, guitarist Paul Rigby and affable singer-sidekick Kelly Hogan – and without the video projections employed during her live shows.

"It'll definitely be very different (than our regular show)," said Case. "We had to keep everything on a smaller scale because we really want the money to go to Catamount Arts. They need the money. They really do."

"But," she added, "I promise it will be a very unique show."



Workin' it

Case won't be hanging out at home much in the coming months. In May, she'll head out on a tour of Europe with Canadian power-pop group the New Pornographers, which she has been affiliated with for more than a decade. The band will be touring in support of its fifth album, "Together," scheduled for release on May 4.

After that, Case and her entire band, including Hogan, will serve as Jakob Dylan's backing band during the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter's upcoming summer tour. Both Case and Hogan are prominently featured on Dylan's second solo album, "Women and Country," produced by T-Bone Burnett and scheduled for release on April 6.

"I just like to play," said Case regarding her hectic tour itinerary. "I'm going to try to do it all, which is probably the dumbest thing I could every try to do, but I'm going to try. It's nice to have a job, so I'm going to try to keep it."

Following the Dylan tour, Case – who said she has about eight new songs of her own — hopes to start work on her next solo album.

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