WHEN RENOWNED singer/songwriters Neko Case, Laura Veirs, and KD Lang announced a musical partnership earlier this year, their union came with a utilitarian name—case/lang/veirs—and a seemingly unlikely origin.
The story goes, Lang messaged Veirs and Case out of the blue proposing that they make music together. The three women had never before considered starting a band. Veirs had met Lang once a few years prior, at a benefit show at the Aladdin Theater, but the two didn't hatch any grand musical plans. Still, Lang connected with something she saw in Veirs that night.
"I was singing Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson songs with Wes Stace, and I was super pregnant and moonwalking," Veirs says with a laugh. "I don't know, maybe she liked that."
But for years Lang had admired Veirs and Case from afar. So after moving to Portland in 2012 and meeting the two women, she reached out about collaborating.
"I had just had my second kid and she said, 'We should make a record.' I was like, 'Let me check my schedule. I'm free,'" Veirs says. "But I was so not free. I had a newborn and a three-year-old and [her producer husband] Tucker [Martine] was super busy. I was like, 'Really? Okay.'"