Part blues musician, part historian

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Part blues musician, part historian
July 14, 2009
By: DAVID HENKE
Northfield News

he first time Dan Kase heard a blues broadcast over the radio, he knew he wanted to be a blues musician.

A teenager growing up in small-town Michigan, Kase was listening to the “Blues Cruise,” a three-hour blues broadcast out of Ann Arbor, Mich. With only a half-hour left in the show, Kase remembers, they started playing acoustic blues, songs like “Bulldoze Blues” by Henry ‘Ragtime’ Thomas or “I Belong to the Band” by Gary Davis. After hearing a few tunes, Kase said, something just clicked.

“Hearing the acoustic stuff for the first time really was compelling,” Kase said. “It had a raw sound to it … it was just really moving.”

More than a decade later, Kase is still playing. Part blues historian, part finger-picking guitar musician, the Minneapolis-based acoustic blues artist performs July 23 and 31 at the Tavern Lounge in the Archer House.

Kase began delving more and more into the blues scene after his first encounter in Michigan with the Blues Cruise broadcast. He moved around, first to California, and then to New Mexico and Denver, picking up playing experience as a solo artist and with two separate bands. Finally, in 2001, he landed in Minneapolis, where he played for a time as part of the band, “The Crush Collision Trio,” before going solo once again.

His finger-picking guitar style, Kase said, grew out of the piano and banjo blues traditions, which Kase tries to emulate in his own music.

In 18 years of playing, Kase has released four solo CDs and three other albums with accompaniment, as well as picking up a few accolades, including winning City Page’s 2003 Best Acoustic Performer award.

All that experience has given Kase an almost-anthropological level of knowledge about the American blues — which frequently worms its way into his songs and shows, Kase said. And like all good blues musicians, Kase’s songs often include a degree of veiled social and political commentary.

“It’s really important for me to understand all the aspects of the music and what that includes,” Kase said. “I think that blues should always incorporate truth, whether it’s socially or politically, or internally.”