God blessed me, I’m a free man with no place free to go

I had the good fortune to get tickets for Neko Case’s taping of Austin City Limits back in 2003. It was a hot, hot night in Austin and the studio at KLRU was not offering much in the way of help in getting out of the heat. Like most people going to a live show I had a list of songs I hoped Case would play. At the top of my list was the song, “I Wish I Was The Moon” and to my good fortune she broke into an introduction to the song midway through her set. She told the story of how she found a guitar in her friend’s house one day and, upon giving it a strum, loved the sound it developed. Over the time it had been sitting in the closet strings went out of tune in one direction or another, creating a unique sound. She talked about how hard it had been to replicate that tuning without a lot of work in the studio and hoped she’d be able to pull it off for us that night.

A little fidgeting with a guitar tuned for the song commenced and seconds later she and the band started up. I don’t recall exactly how far they made it before they stopped due to tuning and vocal issues. It clearly had flustered Case and she muttered she really wanted to do the song but it was tough without extra work. They started up again and didn’t even make it as far as the first try before cutting it short. If case had been flustered before she was now even more stressed as she discussed trying to do it one more time. With a lot of encouragement from the audience (specifically from yours truly) they tried one last time and barely made it thirty seconds before Case stopped and said she just couldn’t play the song and they were going to go forward with another track. I’ve seen her live a few times since and she’s never played the song so I gather it might never appear in a live set again, pity that.

Neko Case - I Wish I Was the Moon