"The guitar was a vintage Gretsch Duo Jet tenor from 1959. “I went into the store and asked about the guitar, and the guy was really snotty with me,” she remembers. “He said, ‘I’m saving that guitar for Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick!’ And then I heard this voice go, ‘Let her try it out, he’s probably not even going to buy it!’ It was Tom Petersson from Cheap Trick, who happened to be in the store! And he saved my ass. The store owner didn’t want to look bad in front of Tom, so he let me try it and I loved it. I started making payments on the guitar. The owner was such a weird, cocaine cowboy--I don’t know if he’s a cokehead or not, but he sure acted like one--he was really condescending and alienating. And he tried to tell me the guitar was part of the Tsumura collection, which I kind of believed, but I’ve seen the Tsumura collection books and my guitar isn’t in there. What he didn’t realize was that the guitar had belonged to Ry Cooder. There was a receipt for Cooder in the case from a repair store in Los Angeles! " - Neko Case on her tenor guitar collection: Fretboard Journal #2 cover story (Summer 2006)

The guitar was a vintage Gretsch Duo Jet tenor from 1959. “I went into the store and asked about the guitar, and the guy was really snotty with me,” she remembers. “He said, ‘I’m saving that guitar for Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick!’ And then I heard this voice go, ‘Let her try it out, he’s probably not even going to buy it!’ It was Tom Petersson from Cheap Trick, who happened to be in the store! And he saved my ass. The store owner didn’t want to look bad in front of Tom, so he let me try it and I loved it. I started making payments on the guitar. The owner was such a weird, cocaine cowboy--I don’t know if he’s a cokehead or not, but he sure acted like one--he was really condescending and alienating. And he tried to tell me the guitar was part of the Tsumura collection, which I kind of believed, but I’ve seen the Tsumura collection books and my guitar isn’t in there. What he didn’t realize was that the guitar had belonged to Ry Cooder. There was a receipt for Cooder in the case from a repair store in Los Angeles!

“I had to pick up the guitar right before my 30th birthday, and it was funny because I had show in London,” Case says. “It was my first time I had ever been to London, the show was on my birthday, I get the Gretsch on stage and it doesn’t work! I was so angry. I took it back to the store’s repair shop three times and the metalhead guitar dudes couldn’t figure it out, so finally I opened it up myself and noticed it wasn’t grounded properly and I fixed it myself, which I should have done in the first place. It just goes to show you that it’s really good to stay away from those kinds of guitar stores.” [...] During the election [of 2004], Ry Cooder was in town,” Case recalls. “A friend of mine who was a politician was at a rally with him. He called me up to say, ‘Hey, Ry Cooder remembers that guitar [the electric Gretsch]! He’s really bummed out that he sold it, too!’ I passed along the message that if he ever wanted to use it, he could.” - Neko Case on her tenor guitar collection: Fretboard Journal #2 cover story (Summer 2006)