David Lindley and Peter Case

A native of Southern California, David Lindley began playing banjo as a teenager and soon added the fiddle. By his late teens, he had acquired a reputation as California’s best young instrumentalist, winning the Topanga Canyon banjo and fiddle competition five times. After playing with a series of traditional folk and bluegrass bands, including the Smog City Trestle Hangers, the Mad Mountain Ramblers, and the Dry City Scat Band, Lindley joined a rock band, the Rodents. When the group disbanded, he formed his own group, Kaleidoscope, that blended traditional music with rock influences.

Peter Case was born in Buffalo, New York in 1954. He had two older sisters who were big music fans, and he grew up listening to the rock n’ roll and R&B records they collected. While Case’s mother got him a ukulele when he was four years old, he didn’t begin taking music seriously until he heard the Beatles and Bob Dylan in the mid-’60s. In 1965, Case wrote his first song, “Stay Away,” and in 1967, he discovered the blues through a Mississippi John Hurt album he checked out from the local library. After completing ninth grade, Case dropped out of school to focus on music full-time (he later received a GED). After playing with blues and rock bands in Buffalo, Case made his way to San Francisco in 1973, where he became a street performer; footage of Case busking during this period can be seen in Bert Deivert’s documentary film Nightshift.