{"id":4945,"date":"2025-09-03T18:02:05","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T18:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/were-new-here-case-oats-151214\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T18:02:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T18:02:05","slug":"were-new-here-case-oats-151214","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/were-new-here-case-oats-151214\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re New Here \u2013 Case Oats"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cI wanted to write a coming-of-age novel and I made an album instead,\u201d says Casey Walker<\/strong>, fulcrum of Chicago\u2019s lustrous alt.country newcomers Case Oats<\/strong>. Their upcoming debut Last Missouri Exit<\/strong> is certainly steeped in confessional Midwest storytelling. A creative writing graduate, Walker crafts vivid portraits of youthful abandon and struggle, of deadbeat exes (and the exes they went back to), and of the darkness that can engulf her homeland landscapes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI wanted to write a coming-of-age novel and I made an album instead,\u201d says Casey Walker<\/strong>, fulcrum of Chicago\u2019s lustrous alt.country newcomers Case Oats<\/strong>. Their upcoming debut Last Missouri Exit<\/strong> is certainly steeped in confessional Midwest storytelling. A creative writing graduate, Walker crafts vivid portraits of youthful abandon and struggle, of deadbeat exes (and the exes they went back to), and of the darkness that can engulf her homeland landscapes.<\/p>\n

\u201cSongs are born out of a short story or a poem,\u201d she says, perched on a stool in a Notting Hill bar, ahead of an in-store performance at Rough Trade West with bandmate Spencer Tweedy<\/strong>. \u201cA lot of times when I sit down to write a song, I have a scene, a character or a piece of dialogue, and that\u2019s what I will come to first.\u201d<\/p>\n

Messing around in a garage-rock band after graduating from Columbia, in 2018 Walker ran into Chicago scene mainstay Tweedy \u2013 son of Wilco<\/strong>\u2019s Jeff, and drummer in numerous local acts \u2013 and the pair recorded a single track, \u201cBluff<\/strong>\u201d, at his home studio. Its warm collage of bittersweet relationship memories instantly crystalised the crux of her songwriting. \u201cHaving fondness for people who aren\u2019t right for you or who have wronged you and hurt you \u2013 that is a lot of what I went through in my early twenties.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putting the track online as Case Oats, Walker soon found her non-existent band getting offers for local shows. Spurred into action, within a few months she\u2019d completed an album\u2019s worth of material and assembled a group from members of Chicago\u2019s indie-rock \u2018Wrecking Crew\u2019: fiddle player Scott Daniel<\/strong>, guitarist Max Subar<\/strong> and bassist Jason Ashworth<\/strong>, some of whom had previously played with her at a Creedence Clearwater Revival<\/strong> covers night on Halloween. \u201cCasey was in John Fogerty<\/strong> drag,\u201d Tweedy chuckles. \u201cThere\u2019s a photo of that\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

In Subar and Ashworth\u2019s Big Pink<\/strong>-style basement \u2013 \u201cIt was cosy enough, but still a basement,\u201d Tweedy recalls. \u201cCorners of it smelled bad\u201d \u2013 they cut most of Last Missouri Exit<\/strong> in two days, in thrall to Gillian Welch<\/strong>, Doug Sahm<\/strong> and Neil Young<\/strong>. Tweedy\u2019s experience of recording in the Wilco loft proved invaluable: \u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s an improvised space made out of an industrial warehouse, so I was steeped in that already.\u201d<\/p>\n

These conditions delivered them a record of dusky, intimate, pure-malt country drenched in wistful and reflective teen-era autobiography. The minutiae of the post-relationship mind-churn is refreshingly dissected. \u201cIn The Bungalow<\/strong>\u201d revels in the universal fantasy of old partners withering away without us, while \u201cNora<\/strong>\u201d is \u201ca love song for your lover\u2019s ex\u201d who hung around and eventually got him back. And the breezy \u201cSeventeen<\/strong>\u201d revisits the angst and antics of teenagehood. \u201cYou can look back at high school and be like, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s beautiful and great and fun\u2019, but it wasn\u2019t,\u201d says Walker. \u201cIt was painful and hard, and I\u2019m glad that I\u2019m not there any more.\u201d<\/p>\n

The record\u2019s \u201cmost painful\u201d song, \u201cKentucky Cave<\/strong>\u201d describes a trip to Mammoth Cave with a boyfriend suffering paranoid religious delusions. \u201cI sat down and wrote that song like an expulsion,\u201d Walker admits. \u201cIt was a very healing thing for me\u201d. The haunting tale of \u201cBitter Root Lake<\/strong>\u201d \u2013 in which a teenage couple steal a plane and crash it into the titular lake, killing the girlfriend \u2013 is drawn from a podcast rather than Walker\u2019s own experience, but it\u2019s still a true story: \u201cEven the line about the kids who found her body and they thought it was a sleeping woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her cathartic sonic novel complete, Walker is already plotting out a sequel. \u201cPlenty of life has been lived in the time in between,\u201d Tweedy says, as Walker nods along: \u201cI\u2019m ready to write.\u201d<\/p>\n

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