Former Tucsonan Neko Case has had a big year — releasing an album and a memoir

Neko Case, a former Tucsonan and Grammy nominee, is beloved for her eclectic songwriting style, which fans sometimes refer to as “country noir.”

Case has had a big year — she released a new record called “Neon Gray Midnight Green,” and a memoir, titled “The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You.”

The Show spoke to Case recently about the differences between what she’s after when she writes a song and how she approached writing the book, which she says she couldn’t have finished without the guidance of her editor, Carrie Frye.

Making her way through her own memories, Case told The Show, was a tricky process.

Full conversation

NEKO CASE: When you’re telling your own stories, it’s hard not to go, "Is this really dull?" I wouldn’t have written a memoir if I had had my druthers. I would have written fiction instead. But that’s what Grand Central asked me to write, and I was excited to do it.

SAM DINGMAN: Can I ask, when it comes to the things that you found yourself putting into the memoir in collaboration with Carrie, were you surprised at the things that Carrie responded strongly to?

CASE: Yeah, I think her reaction to things like me biting the heads off of fleas and stuff — she was grossed out, but she was also fascinated.

And so I was like, OK, I don’t want to put that in there to just gross people out. Like, I want people to understand the level of parentlessness and squalor I was living in. I kind of based things on her reactions regarding those kinds of things.

Ebru Yildiz

/

Handout

DINGMAN: The way you just put that makes me think about one of the other things in the book that I really love, where you talk about — I’m going to misquote it slightly — but screaming your feelings into a microphone is a reflection of the fact that you maybe didn’t have parenting that told you that wasn’t a good idea or something along those lines.

CASE: I didn’t have anybody to teach me how to be or what to do with emotions. Didn’t know how to contain them or how to express them or how to soothe them.

DINGMAN: Yeah. Yeah. Well, the abjection of poverty and lack of parenting that you depict in the book, as you were just alluding to — I mean, the the fleas thing you were talking about is a really intense sequence where you’re talking about coming home and picking the fleas off the dogs and cats and biting their heads off and then spitting them into the space heater.

You also write about having to suck on I think it’s dried pasta because there’s so little food in the house.

CASE: Sometimes you’re bored, you know.

DINGMAN: [LAUGHS] Sure. Bored and hungry.

CASE: Hey, what’s a kid gonna do?

DINGMAN: Did it feel scarier to write that stuff down and put it into a book than, say, scary artistic moments that have come up musically for you?

CASE: That stuff is easier. And I did years of talk therapy, and ... I’m not afraid to talk about anything. But writing about myself is not my first choice. It’s like my last choice.

DINGMAN: Does that feel true in music as well?

CASE: Most of the time. I mean, I’m in there, you know, my perspective is the only one I have, so I often wish I could just leap into other people’s minds and see things through their eyes. But being in a song and making a story out of it is what’s fun for me and what feels like play more than work. ... Whereas the book was definitely work.

DINGMAN: Well, this whole question of fiction and feeling comfortable in fiction, I have to say it does make me think about: There are so many really shocking stories in your book.

One of the biggest ones for me, though, is the story of your mom coming up with this lie that she had passed away and roping in a number of your relatives to play along with that. And you being the only one who didn’t know that she was still alive.

When in your life did the extremity of that situation start to manifest itself for you? Because I think I’ve seen you say somewhere that it took you well into adulthood to start to really reckon with that experience.

CASE: Yeah. I didn’t even think it was a weird thing to happen. I think I was in my 20s when I finally told somebody the story, and they replied with, “That is one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever heard.” And I thought about it and I went, “You know what? That is really bizarre.”

DINGMAN: Yeah.

CASE: And it’s super weird. And I definitely — I’m sure I have a weird relationship with death. I think I might be more accepting of it. More — I’m not afraid of it. I’m not afraid to confront death, especially when I’m talking about other people’s deaths. I don’t feel afraid to talk or to make jokes.

I think for a long time, I just didn’t trust that people were dead.

DINGMAN: So going back then to that experience we were alluding to earlier of putting your feelings into the microphone through song. Where did music come into the picture for you? When did it start to feel like a way of processing all of this?

CASE: I think it was just the joy channel. It was a place I could go that wasn’t this place. I don’t know how much I’ve processed through music. I have different relationships with the songs. They don’t really feel cathartic.

DINGMAN: Well, who were some of those first joyful destinations for you that felt particularly good to go spend time with?

CASE: I was really into the radio as a kid. And I think the one that really changed me the most was there was a station in Portland called KMJK, and it played kind of top 40 stuff, but it also played some punk rock. And there was a lot of women on there, strangely.

And so I was like, “OK, I know that I have to forge myself into something that gives me the feeling that music gives me.” If something existed in the world, the world couldn’t pretend I didn’t exist.

DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, can I ask you about, on the song “Winchester Mansion of Sound,” there’s this refrain of the lyric, "Only music is forever." Where does that sentiment come from?

CASE: It’s about radio science, the science of radio waves, where all the radio broadcasts that have ever been made are still echoing out into the universe. Even now, the radio waves carry into the universe. Which I think is so comforting and beautiful. It never stops.

DINGMAN: I love that idea so much, that those broadcasts that you listened to when you first started listening to the radio — and humbly, I will add, this conversation that we are now having on the radio — they’re not as fleeting as I often imagine that they are. They’re —

CASE: No, they’re traveling through the universe like beautiful ripples on a lake.