Peter Case, traveling again, and grateful

'I'm happy to be here," Peter Case says over the phone from his home in Los Angeles.

The brilliant rock-and-roll troubadour is not just mouthing a showbiz cliche. What Case means is he's glad to be alive.

In January 2009, the now-56-year-old underwent emergency heart surgery to clear an artery that he says was "99 percent blocked."

"It laid me up pretty good for a few months," the inveterate road warrior says. "I didn't go back on tour until this year.

"It was weird. It was kind of the only break I'd taken in all my years of being on the road. You're a musician, you got to keep moving. . . ."

Not that Case was totally inactive. Late in 2009 he recorded an album of new material, Wig!, which was released this year. Coming after years in which the former leader of the Plimsouls had moved in a rootsier acoustic direction, the album rocks with bluesy bite and garage-band rawness.

The return to rocking was the result of "a combination of things," says Case, a songwriter so revered by his peers that in 2006 he was the subject of a tribute album, A Case for Case, that was not one, not two, but three discs long, featuring 46 artists such as John Prine, Dave Alvin, and Case's ex-wife, Victoria Williams. Musician friends also staged benefits to help defray his medical expenses.

During the time he was off the road, Case says, he was working on the reissues of work by the Plimsouls as well as two of his other former rock bands, the Nerves and the Breakaways.

"Listening to it all the time got me going again," he says.

In addition, Case produced an album by Dead Rock West - due out early next year - on which he played along with X drummer D.J. Bonebrake and guitarist Ron Franklin, who ended up forming the core band on Wig! "Me and Ron playing electric guitar, it sounded really good," Case recalls.

The Buffalo-born Case has always been an intense performer, and, as he correctly observes, "even my acoustic music rocks." For this Philadelphia show, he'll be accompanied by just a drummer, Mark Schreiber of the local band John Train.

"The big difference now is I'm playing electric guitar," says Case, who also blows harmonica. "It's sort of a revelation going back and playing it.

"I can really make it rock. You have the drummer happening, it's cool."