Case Oats - Last Missouri Exit LP

RELEASE DATE: 8/22/2025

Case Oats—the Chicago-based outfit of Casey Gomez Walker (lead vocals, acoustic guitar), Spencer Tweedy (drums), Max Subar (guitar, pedal steel), Scott Daniel (fiddle), and Jason Ashworth (bass)—announce their debut album Last Missouri Exit via Merge Records. This is a remarkably assured record, capturing a transitional time for Gomez Walker. On the drive north from Casey’s Missouri hometown to Chicago, the sign before the Illinois border reads, in part, “Last Missouri Exit.” Crossing it signaled the end of her childhood and the beginning of the rest of her life. The album is a hinge between those two states, its pangs of homesickness overlapping with the thrill of breaking for the horizon. In 2018, Case Oats was something of a nebulous idea. Its bandleader, Casey Gomez Walker, had played in bands before, and Case Oats had a self-released single to its name, but it wasn’t a band until an out-of-town friend asked her if Case Oats could headline a show in Chicago. She bluffed—yes, she had a band, yes, they were ready to play a show—and buckled down to make good. “It was a bit delusional of me,” she says, “but there’s something to be said about being a bit delusional.” On August 22, 2025, Merge Records releases the payoff, Last Missouri Exit, a skeletal country jewel for fans of Waxahatchee, Iris Dement, Moldy Peaches, Jonathan Richman, etc.