\n<\/p>\n
One morning, when she was about 7 years old, Neko Case stood on her front porch, closed her eyes and wished with all her might to see a horse.<\/p>\n
It was a tall order. She and her parents lived in the coastal city of Bellingham, Wash., and none of their neighbors were equestrians. But, as the musician recalls in her new memoir, \u201cThe Harder I Fight the More I Love You,\u201d the young Case \u201cclench-focused as hard as I could,\u201d and when she opened her eyes something incredible had happened: Two gorgeous horses, ridden by two girls, came clomping directly toward her. In the midst of a difficult childhood, this stands out as one fleeting moment when she believed irrefutably in miracles, fairy tales and the possibility that good things could happen to her.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt 52 years old,\u201d she writes, \u201cI can still see the horses clear as day.\u201d<\/p>\n
A cult-favorite singer-songwriter with a gale-force voice and a spiky, irreverent personality, Case has been releasing acclaimed solo and collaborative albums for nearly three decades, and has built an adoring fan base. But readers don\u2019t need to be familiar with her music to be moved by her raw, unflinching memoir, which chronicles her impoverished and at times surreal upbringing as well as her long journey toward self-confidence. It\u2019s a book that mixes defiant humor with an unsentimental resilience that recalls Cheryl Strayed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t going to go tabloid,\u201d Case said with a dry shrug, sitting in a booth at the Cosmic Diner in Manhattan on a recent, chilly Saturday morning. \u201cI never had sex with famous people, so.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Still, the book depicts Case\u2019s early life as a minefield of emotional trauma. In a phone interview, A.C. Newman, her longtime bandmate in the power-pop group the New Pornographers, recalled a mutual friend once marveling of Case, \u201cFor her to achieve what she\u2019s done, considering where she came from, it\u2019s like winning a marathon with one leg.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the diner, Case, now 54, wore a dark-blue button-down, and her predominantly gray mane was skunked with a streak of flaming auburn. At one point she interrupted herself to look \u2014 respectfully \u2014 at a neighboring table\u2019s breakfast order. \u201cThat\u2019s a good-looking pancake,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to stare a hole in their pancakes, but wow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Case has lately become a regular at this Midtown restaurant, splitting her time between New York and her Vermont home because of another exciting project she\u2019s working on nearby: She is collaborating on the songs for a musical adaptation of \u201cThelma & Louise\u201d that she hopes is bound for Broadway in the next year or two. \u201cI was the<\/em> target audience for that movie,\u201d Case said of the 1991 hit. \u201cI was exactly the right age. I saw it trillions of times.\u201d<\/p>\n Callie Khouri, who wrote the film\u2019s Oscar-winning screenplay and is also writing the musical\u2019s book, was a fan of Case\u2019s music and selected her personally to work on the musical. \u201cHer music has such scope, sonically and lyrically,\u201d Khouri said in a phone interview. \u201cShe\u2019s such a righteous, true-north artist and person.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Case is plain-spoken about the financial realities of being a working musician; she said she wrote the book mainly because she needed another source of income while the pandemic kept her from touring. Later in 2025, she will also release her first new album in seven years, which she described as an explicit rebuttal to what she sees as the digital era\u2019s dehumanization of her industry. She intentionally employed more musicians than usual; some tracks feature an entire orchestra.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted everything to be played by real people,\u201d she said, \u201cto show how we fill space differently.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Fans of her off-kilter, country-tinged albums like the Grammy-nominated 2009 release \u201cMiddle Cyclone\u201d are unlikely to be surprised that Case writes uncommonly vivid and lyrical prose. Her mother\u2019s pale-green station wagon, for instance, looks like \u201ca nauseous basking shark.\u201d The grasses of northern Washington house \u201cgrasshoppers the size of staplers with underwings like striped blushing flamenco skirts.\u201d On a class trip, when her father packed an inadequate lunch (a few sad slices of cheese), a teacher\u2019s aide gave her a pitying look and the young Case \u201cdragged that shame around like a wet wool cape.\u201d<\/p>\n The most startling revelations in the book are about Case\u2019s mother. The musician writes that when she was in second grade and her parents were separated, her father picked her up from school one day, burst into tears and told her that her mother had died of cancer. She was stunned.<\/p>\n An emotionally somnambulant year and a half later, her father just as suddenly announced that her mother was alive and, actually, they were on their way to see her just then. When mother and daughter were reunited, Case writes that her parents informed her that her mother had been sick with a potentially fatal disease and fled to Hawaii for treatment, so her daughter would not have to see her suffer. Case was too young and vulnerable to question the story. \u201cI forgave her with such desperate haste, I didn\u2019t even have time to be mad,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Her mother flickered in and out of her life for the next several decades, but even when they were living under the same roof, Case came to experience her mother like \u201ca deer, always just out of reach,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n After a final, failed attempt at reconnection when Case was in her late 30s \u2014 her mother moved in with her when she was living in Tucson and suddenly left without a word \u2014 Case cut ties with her mother for good. Shortly after, as she writes in the book, she had a revelation: Perhaps her mother had never been sick at all. The thought was at once crushing and profoundly liberating.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was much I could have forgiven,\u201d she writes. \u201cBut it was the grift of her that ground that down \u2014 that love held out to dance before me, always snatched back just as I reached out my arms for it.\u201d (Attempts to reach Case\u2019s mother for comment were unsuccessful.)<\/p>\n \u201cI guess I was an over-sharer out of desperation, like, \u2018Please, notice me,\u2019\u201d Case said, noting that there is nothing in the book about her childhood that her closest friends do not already know. Newman, though, is relieved that others \u201ccan now read her story\u201d and understand the scope of what she has endured. \u201cSometimes, when Neko was being kind of hard to deal with, I\u2019d always have that in the back of my mind,\u201d he said. \u201cLike, I can\u2019t tell you guys, but holy [expletive].\u201d<\/p>\n When asked if any of these revelations were difficult to disclose in such a public manner, Case just shrugged. \u201cSo much has been done to me where I haven\u2019t been considered,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t have any guilt.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n CASE\u2019S DISTINCT VOICE<\/strong> is as mighty as a canyon; she often sings like someone hollering into a void and pausing to let her echo confidently resound.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were all kind of shocked she could sing so well,\u201d Newman remembered. He met Case in the tight-knit Vancouver indie music scene in the mid-90s, when she was playing drums in the punk trio Maow. When he heard her sing at a friend\u2019s wedding around that time \u2014 she belted out a rendition of the Students\u2019 1958 doo-wop tune \u201cI\u2019m So Young\u201d \u2014 his jaw dropped.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s when I wanted to work with her,\u201d Newman said. \u201cI felt like I was getting in on the ground floor of something, like I\u2019d found this friend who had an incredible voice, but nobody else knew about it yet.\u201d<\/p>\n Case\u2019s debut album, \u201cThe Virginian,\u201d recorded with a rotating backing band she cheekily dubbed Her Boyfriends, came out in 1997. \u201cIt sounds terrified to me,\u201d she said now. \u201cI\u2019m just like, ahhhh! Singing on 10 the whole time. No dynamic whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n But Case found acclaim as she honed her talent over her next few albums. Learning tenor guitar \u2014 a four-stringed instrument initially made for banjo players \u2014 unlocked a unique sound and sensibility in her songwriting. Newman marveled at her rapid creative growth over that period: Each album, he said, \u201cfelt very much like a leap forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Case\u2019s brief forays down the music industry\u2019s more mainstream avenues made her feel that she didn\u2019t quite belong. In the book, she tells her side of a long-rumored story about the Grand Ole Opry. While playing an outdoor festival on its plaza in July 2001, on the brink of heat stroke, she stripped down to her bra.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t an act of punk-rock defiance,\u201d she writes. \u201cI just had an animal need to cool down in any<\/em> way possible.\u201d The Opry management cut the power and after her truncated set \u201cdelivered the classic line,\u201d Case writes, \u201c\u2018You\u2019ll NEVER play in this town again!\u2019\u201d (Representatives for the Opry said the event predates its current management team, and that \u201cNeko Case is most welcome at the Grand Ole Opry and is among the many artists we\u2019d love to welcome for an official Opry debut in 2025.\u201d)<\/p>\n \u201cI thought about what men had to do to get banned from the Opry,\u201d she writes. Jerry Lee Lewis dropped an expletive on the air. Hank Williams got so wasted, he failed to show up. She eventually chalked the incident up to sexism, but she thinks the situation for female artists in country music is now \u201cworse than it\u2019s ever been.\u201d<\/p>\n