Casey Gomez Walker hasn’t gotten comfortable calling herself a musician, even though storied North Carolina indie label Merge is releasing Last Missouri Exit, the debut album by her alt-country group Case Oats. “I have this skewed idea of what it means to be a musician,” she says. “Once the album is out—and once we get on the road and I’m truly playing it every night—I think I’ll be like, ‘I can say I’m a musician now.’”
Walker traces the beginnings of Case Oats back to 2018, when she visited drummer Spencer Tweedy in Appleton, Wisconsin, where he was going to school. She brought along a song she’d just written, “Bluff,” which is brisk and breezy but also wistful and sad. She released it online at the time, and a new version closes Last Missouri Exit.
“We recorded that track super easy one afternoon,” Walker says. “I didn’t have a band name or anything. Case Oats was my Internet screen name for a long time. I was like, ‘I’ll just upload it to Bandcamp under that [name],’ and it never changed.”
Walker had long thought of herself as a writer. When she moved to Chicago from Saint Louis in 2013, it was to major in creative writing at Columbia College. Throughout her years in college and well after graduation, she sporadically worked on a novel. But after her best friend suggested she give the electric guitar a try, her creative priorities began to shift. “I bought my electric guitar, and I was like, ‘This is actually fun,’” Walker says. “Then I started putting the words that were in this barely started novel into songs.”
When Walker was invited to play a Crown Liquors show scheduled for March 2019, she said yes, though at that point she’d only finished one song. “That was really the catalyst for putting pedal to the metal and finishing stuff,” she says. “From there I was like, ‘OK, this is doable.’”
In three weeks, Case Oats had a full set worked up. Some of the songs from that first concert appear on Last Missouri Exit, among them the album’s first single, “Seventeen,” a besotted elegy for the intense, confused emotions of youth. Walker and Tweedy have been dating since before the beginning of Case Oats, and they got engaged earlier this summer; aside from “Seventeen” and “Bluff,” which are Walker’s work alone, they wrote the whole album together.
Case Oats’ debut was produced by Spencer Tweedy and engineered by Tweedy with Jason Ashworth and Max Subar.
Shortly after the Crown Liquors date, Walker and Tweedy filled out Case Oats’ live lineup with bassist Jason Ashworth and guitarist Max Subar. “They luckily understand the vision and what the sound is,” Walker says, “and just have always been able to wholeheartedly bring that to the table.”
Recording on Last Missouri Exit (which also involved fiddler Scott Daniel and pianist and organist Nolan Chin) has been finished for a couple years. The band cold-emailed a list of labels until Merge finally came through. The album comes out on Friday, August 22, and Case Oats headline a release show that night at the Hideout. TV Buddha open; tickets cost $23.65, and the music starts at 8:30 PM.
You might recognize Peter Cimbalo as the live drummer for Kai Slater’s solo project, Sharp Pins, one of the busiest indie-rock bands in town. Cimbalo also records his own material as Alga, and he dropped a self-titled album under that name last month. On Alga, Cimbalo stretches his tightly arranged power pop into whimsical songs whose almost psychedelic lushness and euphonious grandeur would’ve made Brian Wilson smile. Cimbalo is assembling a live band to play Alga songs at a record-release show at Fallen Log on Friday, August 22. Current Union, Laurie Duo, and Riddle M open. Tickets are $10, and the show’s at 8 PM.
Peter Cimbalo played every instrument on the new Alga record.
This wolf must be getting older, because the years sure seem to be flying by—somehow Pilsen vinyl shop Pinwheel Records is already celebrating its tenth birthday. It’s throwing a party on Saturday, August 23, and there will of course be live music: Lizard in the Spring, Apiaries, and a special set of Huey Lewis covers by Ryan Powers & the Newsboys. (Pinwheel has a whole bin stocked with copies of the 1983 Huey Lewis & the News album Sports.) The free party also promises sales, snacks, and more, and it runs all day, from 10 AM till 7 PM.
On Sunday, August 17, Chicago indie rockers Sick Day dropped the album Olivia’s Dead-End Solo Career, where they adorn their homespun sound with flourishes reminiscent of choral singing and chamber music. Front woman Olivia Wallace recorded with nine instrumentalists and singers, who helped elevate her heart-wrenching songs without stepping on their scrappy charm.
Seven different people contribute vocals to the Sick Day album Olivia’s Dead-End Solo Career.
If you were part of the Chicago house scene in the 2000s, you probably have fond memories of Monday nights at the Boom Boom Room, a long-running party that spent more years at Green Dolphin Street (2200 N. Ashland) than anywhere else. If you were part of Chicago nightlife in the 2010s, though, your memories of the club may be less fond—it was plagued by fights and gun violence, sometimes fatal, and after a 2015 shooting that left two dead, the city asked it to close for 60 days. It reopened briefly as Rio, but violence connected to the club continued, and the building has largely been vacant since 2017.
This weekend, though, the space is reopening as an outpost of Dr. Greenthumb’s, a cannabis dispensary founded by Cypress Hill rapper B-Real. To celebrate its grand opening on Saturday, August 23, the store will host a full day of music featuring Green Dolphin veterans, among them Boom Boom Room DJs Derrick Carter and Just Joey, Power 92 personality DJ Pharris, and drill icon King Louie. The party runs from 9 AM till 9 PM, and it’s 21 and up.
Got a tip? Email your Chicago music news to gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
