Why Peter Case Has Toured Solo for Decades: Behind the Setlist Podcast

Peter Case hasn’t done a coast-to-coast tour with a band since 1989 — and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Part of the reason is financial, the critically acclaimed singer-songwriter tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast. His national tour in support of his second solo album, The Man With the Blue Post-Modern Fragmented Neo-Traditionalist Guitar, was “a fun tour” but “a bad deal on a van that we’d rented,” and a few canceled shows for health reasons meant the outing lost money. So after talking to his agent, Case went back on the road as a solo act. This time, though, Case came home with more money than he spent.

The way Case sees it, musicians have long toured as solo artists for the financial benefits. “Part of the reason Woody Guthrie played solo all the time was because he couldn’t afford a band,” says Case, who released his 16th solo album, Doctor Moan, in January through Sunset Blvd. Records and is the subject of the 2023 documentary Peter Case: A Million Miles Away, directed by Fred Parnes. 

Case, a native of upstate New York, was influenced by solo musicians since his formative days spent in San Francisco, where he went from busking on street corners to co-founding the band The Nerves in 1976, and later Los Angeles, where he co-founded The Plimsouls in the 1979.

“I came from a time when solo players were really a thing,” he says. “I remember going to see James Taylor in 1969, I think it was. He would just play solo, you know, and he’d be great. He was a really great guitar player. He had really good songs on his first couple albums. It was great. Or you’d see John Hammond Jr. and he’d be rocking the house, stomping his feet and blowing this incredible harmonica. He played 12-string guitar and he was great. I saw [American folk singer] Dave Van Rock. I saw [singer-songwriter] Laura Nyro play solo. I saw [blues musician] Lightnin’ Hopkins play solo.”

Case likens his first solo shows, at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, to “throwing a cat into a tub of cold water.” The audience at the intimate venue wasn’t going to be “blown away by the lights and the smoke and the volume” of his amplifier. All he had was his guitar and his songs. As the musician John Hiatt once told him, “When you play solo, it really plugs you into the worth of what you’re writing.” 

Listen to the Behind the Setlist’s interview with Peter Case below, or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeart, Amazon Music, Audacy, Podbay, Podtail and Audible.