In the months ahead, Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep will check in from time to time as singer-songwriter Neko Case creates the follow-up to her 2009 album Middle Cyclone. In the first installment, we listen in to a song that’s not quite finished, not quite recorded, not even quite written. First, Case has to learn what the song is.“That song is kind of just an ambient thought process,” Case says. “I don’t really know what the song’s gonna do yet, so that’s kind of the best description I have of it, I think.”
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Excerpt:
Canadian students Kate Macdonald and Janelle Blanchard recorded a version of Neko Case’s brooding “Star Witness” on a school staircase and the result moved Case to tears. “Wow. That just made me bawl my eyes out,” she tweeted. “What beautiful singers. I’m not worthy… Holy god. They broke the shit out of my heart!!” Mine, too. They accomplish this with a ukelele, angelic voices, a talent for harmony - and a mission to save their school.
The Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School houses an arts-intensive program that draws creative students from the Toronto area. But, in September, the local school board voted to close the school. It is the only school in downtown Peterborough and is described by locals as vital to the life of the community.
- Bob Moses
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ELTON JOHN, LEON RUSSELL, SHERYL CROW & NEKO CASE
HelplessA MusiCares Tribute To Neil Young (January 29, 2010)
Neko Case & My Morning Jacket Cover Stevie Nicks/Tom Petty
MMJ and Neko Case unleashed their second collaborative ’80s cover song in as many weeks the other night in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, following up their fun, flirty take on Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers’ “Islands in the Stream” with “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” a Tom Petty and Mike Campbell-penned 1981 hit off Stevie Nicks’ first solo LP, Bella Donna. Hear Jim James take on the Petty role, Case as Nicks, and the rest of MMJ channel the Heartbreakers above.
(Source: twentyfourbit)
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Neko Case with The New Pornographers at Summer Live in Stanley Park, Vancouver, July 9 2011
PHOTO BY ANJA WEBER