We caught up with Bob Case on December 1, 2022, at Foundation Grounds in Maplewood. We discussed his involvement in that autumn’s Artica festival. We apologize for the gap between conversation and publication. That said, we thoroughly enjoyed this chat with the multi-time Artica performer.
How many times have you played Artica now?
Probably about four. And I’ve played with bands before. I’ve also done fundraisers for them, where I had my band play as a fundraiser.
Do you have an distinct memories of the sets that you played?
The last one was a really nice one. I played by myself and I had a chance to review my history of playing slide guitar and different things about growing up in St. Louis and going down into Mississippi and Tennessee. Meeting these old guys in the ‘70s. I was used that for my storytelling performance. And then I’d play songs that they’d showed me how to play.
I remember playing with a band on the back of the…
The Kerr Center? That back ramp?
The back ramp. It was raining and I was playing and I even got a video of that. I remember playing at Tom and Nina’s for their fundraisers for Artica. I met Hap and Nita through Tom Carr.
With this particular year, you were playing on her stage, the one named after her. That was a nice touch.
Also having her husband there, Hap, with his kindergarten friend. That was real nice.
What’s fun for you in playing that event?
Well, what’s fun about it is the fun of playing in St. Louis. The community. We have a community here full of different people. We have a great artistic community. And a great music community. It’s like a small town where everybody knows each other in some way or another; there’s a connection of interaction with each other. That’s one of the joys of it. And the encouragement.. We, as people, need encouragement. And having people doing similar things is encouraging.
You’ve played close to all of the different kinds of venues in St. Louis. You’ve played some unusual stages, even at just Artica: behind the Kerr, out on that high field. These are unique environments to play in.
That last one, which I just played, was such a treat. The sound system was so good and beneficial. So easy to play because of the equipment. That’s going back into the community: they have a community of people they can call on to help provide the things necessary. That sound system was so useful for the expression.
I imagine that you playing a gig like this will mean playing to people who’ve not heard you before. Is that true?
Yeah, it was surprising to me. There was somebody there enjoying it, lying down in the grass. When they came up to talk to me afterward, they said, “listen, I book the Focal Point. Have you ever played at the Focal Point?” I said “no, I hadn’t.” And they said “really? You’ve never at the Focal Point?” Now, I’m going to be playing there and doing a show because that person saw me there at Artica.
That’s nice.
It is. That’s how I met you. I don’t think we’d ever met before.
It’s nice seeing someone play for the first time. Or seeing someone doing their art, not knowing they didn’t do that kind of work.
Are there experiences of running into people from different aspects of life at that event?
I found there are people that I knew who did art, who I didn’t realize did those types of things. Jane Linders and her husband Sherwood. One time, they were inside of the Cotton Belt building doing stuff. Sherwood does illuminations and Jane does photography. It was great to see the community and people who are able to present their artwork.
The unique nature of this event has to do with the organizers, but also the people who show up. Do you have any memories of just good conversations at the site. Or unexpected collaborations or anything along those lines?
Well, I think I always tell people that music brings people together. But art brings people together. I’m a volunteer with an organic garden in Ferguson, Earth Dance. And Molly came to see me play; she came late and was wearing a costume. I told her I was wearing costume, I was dressed as a musician.
Do you pitch them, or have they sought you out?
I pitch them. For this project, I put in for approval.
You have a longer-standing relationship, so I assume they know you have an interest in playing.
For them? Ah, Artica. They asked me. I hadn’t played there in a while, due to the pandemic. During the pandemic I wound up just playing on Facebook on Sundays. I couldn’t play in the clubs and I couldn’t get my band members to play, I couldn’t even get them to play with me on Sundays. So I went to Facebook Live for an hour and that went all over the nation. Even people I knew in Europe had seen me. They’d send me a little bit on Venmo or Patreon.
Tell me a little bit about being able to gig in public again. What that means to you and how this particular gig felt within that?
It was a really good setting. It helped me to get into more opportunities, to get into more settings in the public. Having an audience that was enjoying what I was doing, an outlet… as an artist, you formulate these shows and what you want to express. Having this allowed me to a template for thinking about what I want to express. Sometimes you have things you want to express in the marketplace; other times you want to express your own emotions. It gave me a chance to think about the marketplace and my own emotions. I’m 72 years old. I’m not playing as much to my contemporaries as to younger people now. So always tell people that when I was young I wanted to be an old blues musician. Now I can be.
Lohr was telling me something similar to your experience. He enjoys the cause-and-effect of going into the weekend. And then out of that, there’s hopefully some good, creative buzz that comes. You’re saying that you’ve got that vibe.
Yeah and that sense of purpose. Sometimes we’re doing these things for ourselves. I’ve always told people that being in music, it’s a service business. Used to be my service was boy/girl kinda songs. “I love you.” “You left me.” All of that. Know I’m an older person and I’m not playing for my peers as much as for the next generation. You need to develop a different story to tell and a different expression to go to another audience.
Not to get too ethereal about this. But you’re playing right by the river. Unfortunately, there is the wall there and you can’t get right to it. Does that at all go to your way of thinking about this gig?
The river’s an expression of water and water’s non-discriminate. Water is something that overcomes everything. It falls on the rich and the poor, on the dead grass and the flowers. The river flows into the ocean; it’s small but it joins a larger idea.
Two last things strike me. And if there’s anything that strikes you. You’ve mentioned the pandemic and how it put a pause on performance, especially at Artica. What do you think music brings to the weekend? Whether it be with full bands or solo performers? Because in some of the years, especially early on, there wasn’t as much live music.
There wasn’t as much visual art, I thought, this time. The music was something that brought people together. There wasn’t as much theatrical as there had been in the past. There used to be more costumes and more visual stuff than there was.
Maybe next year, as people get back in the swing of it…
Yeah, I’m so happy that Lohr asked me to do it.
The only other thing is something technical. Forgive me, but was there something about your rig that you brought down there with you…
I had two guitars that I brought. One was to a normal tuning; an acoustic guitar with regular tuning. Then I brought a National Steel guitar with a resonator on it, tuned to an open tuning. Those old guys I learned from in the south – in Tennessee and Mississippi – play to open tunings. They played slide in opened tunings. I played the slide in open tunings and the rest on a regular guitar. That was good to have the two, I didn’t have to change the tuning. The older guitars is from 1934, a National Steel guitar, bought in St. Louis in 1980. Someone had it in their attic in Soulard. The lady’s brother had the guitar and went to war. He gave it to his sister to have it in the attic and he didn’t come back from the war. Hadn’t died or anything, but maybe went to another city and it was left in her attic.
Well, I’m glad I asked that question. I thought there might be a story.
There is, I learned from Bukka White. Bukka played a National Steel like I was playing.
Is this an event that you’d like to continue playing?
Oh, gosh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s good to be recognized by the artistic community, the visual artist community.
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