The legendary Hank Aaron once said “You may not think you’re going to make it. You may want to quit. But if you keep your eye on the ball, you can accomplish anything.” Life has many parallels to the game of baseball.
As we race towards the final stretch of 2023 and look forward to a new year (and in a few months a new season of professional baseball), it’s important to stop for a moment and reflect on the past year and what we’ve learned through our wide-ranging experiences. Some experiences have brought us joy and some sadness. For a lot of us, music has been an integral part of many better moments in our lives.
There have been many musical highlights throughout the year, including much anticipated returns of musicians. That list includes supergroup The Baseball Project, who returned this past summer to release Grand Salami Time!, their fourth album. It’s their first album and follows their albums Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails (2008), Volume 2: High and Inside (2011) and 3rd (2014).
The band features Steve Wynn (The Dream Syndicate), former R.E.M. members Peter Buck and Mike Mills, Scott McCaughey (The Minus 5/Young Fresh Fellows) and Linda Pitmon (Filthy Friends, Alejandro Escovedo). Since they released their debut album 15 years ago, they’ve built up a reputation for creating great music with lyrics that capture various corners of baseball and its storied history.
For its new innings of music, the band turned to Mitch Easter (Let’s Active, The dB’s), who had been a key part of R.E.M.’s early ‘80s output, producing Chronic Town (1982), Murmur (1983), and Reckoning (1984). With Buck and Mills reigniting that chemistry with Easter, they quickly hit their stride recording at Easter’s fabled Fidelitorium Studios in Kernersville, North Carolina. It found the entire band performing live together in the same room. Grand Salami Time! also features guitar work by Easter as well as appearances by Stephen McCarthy (The Long Ryders) and Steve Berlin (Los Lobos).
Scummy Water Tower recently caught up with singer-songwriter and guitarist Scott McCaughey to talk about the band’s triumphant return, baseball and its endless source of inspiration and staying busy with his many other projects.
What do you think of the reception of the band’s latest album thus far?
Oh, it’s been great. It’s been awesome. I mean, how could anybody say anything bad about it? It’s a great record, and we had a wonderful time doing it with Mitch Easter and he did a great job, and we got in there and just rocked the shit out of it. So yeah, I think it came across pretty well to everybody. I haven’t heard anybody say anything bad about it.
I really enjoyed it.
Oh, good. I’m glad to hear it. I think all of our records have been exceptional. There’s not really anything about any of them that I think we missed or bothered me. I feel really good about all the records and this one might be the best yet. It’s hard to say. They’re all really, really strong records, I feel like.
Are there any songs that have especially taken on new life on the live stage?
Well, that’s a good question. Some of the songs that really mean a lot to me are kind of the quieter, weirder songs, and we don’t play those live very often or much at all. So, I wouldn’t know that any of them have taken on new things in the live sets. But I mean, because especially on this new record and oh, the last two records, in fact, we really did the recordings pretty live. We had all five of us there in the studio together, and we really got a live feeling for them.
I think they were pretty fully realized right off the bat once we recorded them. We didn’t really have to add much to them. I think they pretty much came off that way when we played them live. They’re pretty true to the recorded versions, so I don’t know if there’s any that have really taken on a new aspect in playing them live that I can think of right now. But there’s some on maybe some earlier records that have changed a bit. But I think on the last two records, they’re really kind of fully realized when we played them live in the studio, so they come off really comfortably. So, like that in the live setting.
What are some of your favorite stories playing at or attending ballparks of late?
Well, let’s see. Did we play any ballparks on this last tour? We did some National Anthems and stuff like that, but I don’t think we actually played at a ballpark on this last tour. But we have in the past. We played at Coors Field and Target Field. Those were both really fun. We played a couple times at the Madison Mallards, a minor league field. That was really fun because we had to play in between innings, so we had to play one-minute-long versions of our songs. That was really kind of fun and funny.
And we played in front of a lot of Grapefruit League and Cactus League games and those weren’t quite as much fun because people are just kind of walking past you and you’re playing when they’re going into the game. So those are kind of a little less fulfilling because a lot of people are just looking at you like, ‘what the hell is this band doing out here?’ But since then, we kind of stopped doing that and we played shows that are actually in the stadium and those are really fun. But we haven’t done any of those for a little while. Although there’s a chance we might be playing in Dallas at the All-Star game. But I’m not sure if that’s going to be at the stadium or at a party outside or something like that. Hard to say. It’s usually a little bit better. We’re playing a venue that’s made for rock bands [rather] than playing in stadiums, but not that you can’t see great shows at stadiums. I saw Paul McCartney at Safeco Field and that was amazing. But that wasn’t part of a baseball game.
What did you think of the Texas Rangers winning the World Series recently?
I didn’t really have any investment. I wasn’t invested with the teams that were playing, but I was happy that the Rangers won because of Bruce Bochy. I like him a lot because I’m a Giants fan, and so he was the guy who brought us three pennants in the 2010s. So, I felt really good for him that he made that comeback, and it worked out for him. But typically, I don’t root for the Rangers because they’re in the same division as the Mariners and the A’s who are both two of my teams along with the Giants, those the teams I tend to root for. So, I tend to root against the Rangers because they’re in their divisional rivals with two of my teams. But once it got to that point, I was happy for them. I would’ve been okay with it if the Diamondbacks won too, because they haven’t won anything for a long time. But I was glad that the Rangers won. I was happy for Bochy, and The Baseball Project is friends with Eric Nadel, who is the Rangers Hall of Fame announcer, and so I was really, really happy for him. And our buddy Rhett Miller from Old 97s was super excited by them. So, there were reasons I could find to root for the Rangers. That was cool. It’s nice to have different teams too, so that was cool.
Are there any recent developments in baseball that you’ve gotten potential ideas for future songs?
Well, there always are, but I don’t know about recent developments. But we came up with a song about Shohei Ohtani. I felt really bad that his arm got blown out, but I don’t know what’s going to happen with him or where he’s going to go or anything. But hopefully he’ll land someplace and keep up with his amazing career because he’s just such a great player. It’s hard not to root for him.
I don’t know if there’s any going to be any major new overhauls with the rules. That was last year. I actually thought the rule changes were really good. They’re really healthy for the game, and make the games go faster. I was getting really sick of the shifts, and I’m glad they kind of cut down on the shifts and it made for a little more exciting games with the stolen bases and all that stuff. So those are all really good things, but I don’t know how exciting it’d be if we wrote a song about the pitch clock, but you never know. It’ll probably work its way in somehow, some way.
My home team, the Milwaukee Brewers, just went through a change with our coach, with Craig Council going to the Cubs.
That had to hurt a little bit.
Yeah. It’ll certainly be an interesting situation with Brewers-Cubs games next year.
He’ll probably do pretty well there. And I don’t think he’s going to get booed by Brewers fans. I think they liked him a lot. He did a lot of good things for the team. They just never could really get over the hump of winning more than one or if any playoff series. But I mean, he’s been a good manager for them. They don’t lot don’t do huge free agent acquisitions or anything like that. So, I think he’s done pretty well with what they’ve had there. But I think the Cubs are poised to possibly get better this next year too, depending on, well, they probably won’t have Bellinger, but they might be able to re-sign him. Hard to say. I haven’t been keeping up with the off-season news so far. I haven’t even been keeping up with the award winnings of Cy Young or MVP and stuff like that. I mean, once the season was over, I just kind of shifted gear. I had so many other things going on, so I haven’t been, haven’t been thinking about baseball for the last two or three weeks or whatever.
The band’s latest album was its first in nine years. Why did it feel like it was time to get back together?
First of all, we couldn’t believe that it had been nine years since our last record. We did play some shows here and there. In 2019, we played some shows at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and went to the All-Star game in Cleveland and everything. But we had tried to get together to record with Mitch a few times, and we’d had to blow it off because of various reasons. Record label stuff or the pandemic set us back for two or three years. So, I’m just glad we finally got it together to do it and make it happen when all five of us could be there with Mitch and it finally came together and we actually had some time to do a decent tour to do five or six weeks of actual touring with all five of us, which is a real rarity.
Schedules are so crazy. We’ve all got so many bands and so many different things going on that it’s hard to get together. And those nine years just flew right by somehow. I don’t think it’ll take us that long for the next one. We got a lot of momentum going on this last record, and the tour was really fantastic. The dates were amazing. So, I think hopefully we’ll be able to come back. We’re definitely going to do some shows next season, but I’m not sure when the next record will be. But I don’t think it will be nine years, maybe not even three years. Maybe. We’ll see.
It sounds like in your free time you were able to formulate and store ideas for this band.
Yeah. I’m always working on other bands and other music and stuff like that, but whenever an idea comes up for a baseball thing, I just start jotting down ideas. I have a ton. I had a bunch of songs that we didn’t even record on the last record that I had. I’ve got a lot of ideas floating around and they’re always coming up with new ideas, and we just kind of compile them. And then when we finally get to the studio, they’re there and we can flesh them out and work on them. And Steve and I and Liz, well, all five of us really worked a lot on the songs on this last record, and so that’s a good thing. And it was really nice to have everybody take a really active part in the songwriting on this last record. So, I think the next record will be even more collaborative maybe.
Right now, I’m trying to finish a Minus 5 record, and I’m doing some stuff with the Young Fresh Fellows and of course, Scott The Hoople, my thing. I did a Neil Young theme album, and I did a Halloween themed record. I’m just constantly doing stuff. But yeah, we’ll be ready when it comes time for another Baseball Project record for sure.
It’s been about 15 years since the band’s debut album came out. What does it mean to see the band have such staying power?
We do have some staying power. We do. I mean, when we started and made the first record, we didn’t even know it was going to be a band. Steve and I just thought, let’s just do a record of songs about baseball. And we didn’t even know it was going to be a band. We didn’t even have a name for it when we recorded it. And so, yeah, it really turned into a thing, and I don’t think we’re ready to let it go. There are always more songs to be written. There’s so much history of the game, and there’s always new stories unfolding constantly. So, I don’t see any reason to slow down or to stop doing it because people really enjoy it.
That was the one thing I found out the most on this last tour was when we were playing shows, people were really, really happy. We just look out at the people. Everybody is smiling and having a great time, and that means a lot. So, there’s no reason to not do that because we’re having fun and people are having fun. It really feels good to be able to be a band that can go out and just people really have a good time with us. So yeah, I think we’ll definitely keep it up 15 years, maybe another 15. Who knows?
What do you like most about Grand Salami Time!, the album’s title?
I usually don’t like to use a song title for the title of a record because it feels like it’s cheating a little bit. It’s too easy. But this time, Grand Salami Time! just made so much sense because it was our fourth record, and it’s like you get the first one, the second third, and then you’re coming home for the fourth one. So Grand Salami Time! made sense because I mean, we actually wrote a song called “Home” for the record that we didn’t end up recording, which would’ve been a good song title or album title too. But Grand Salami Time! made sense because it’s a Grand Slam, it’s a home run, just made too much sense to use it.
It was kind of a full circle too. That song actually started as an idea I had for the song for the first record called “Can of Corn.” And then it kind of gradually got kicked around and kicked around and changed a whole bunch, and then it turned into “Grand Salami Time!” and that just seemed to be perfect for this record. And it’s a funny title too. It’s pretty catchy. I’d like to thank Dave Niehaus, the Mariners broadcaster for that phrase.
What did you like most about working on the song “Disco Demolition”?
Oh, that was a blast. That was Steve’s song, and it was tailor made for a Baseball Project kind of song. But Steve had the idea a long time ago to do a disco song, and I was like, “wow. I’ve never really played disco before.” But it was really fun doing it. Linda really threw a lot into that, and we got a great track, a great live track, and it was really just super, super fun to play that music and play that song every night was really great with Linda on the police whistle. That was a great song.
People loved it, and it turned out really, really good. And it is great too, because we kind of addressed the problem with the whole disco demolition thing. It was not just that it became a riot and the White Sox had to forfeit a game and all that stuff, and it went completely out of control. But just the fact that in hindsight, there’s a lot of overtones of racism or classism or something. So, we had to address that a little bit too, but still keep it somehow a fun song. And I think Steve did a really good job of bridging that gap or walking that line a little bit. That was a super fun song to do though. It was really amazing.
What was the inspiration for the song “The Yips”?
That was a great one that Steve had. It was an idea he came up with a long time ago, and had been kicking around for years. He brought it in once we were trying to get together to do this record. That’s just a really funny, funny thing. It’s just so hard you can’t even explain it, that people who have just spent their whole lives doing these things that are just totally automatic and suddenly they can’t do it at all. And I think it’s kind of a tragic thing to happen to the players that it happened to. It’s kind of a tragedy, so it’s not really funny, but the whole idea of it and the fact it’s called the yips, just sounds really funny. So, we went for it and made it into a really fun rock and roll song, and that was a blast to record that and to play that every night was super fun too. So, I hope the guys who suffered from that disease, or whatever you want to call it, didn’t mind.
AI and other advanced technologies are shaping music and baseball. What do you think of the state of things in baseball?
The technology, as far as the pitch clocks and all that stuff, I’m fine with that. I think those are doing a good thing for the game. The whole thing with using umpires as opposed to the automatic strike zone, I’m not sure what I feel about that. I’m kind of torn on that. I like having the umpires, but I really don’t enjoy the human element of them calling balls that are a foot outside strikes. And I feel like the strike zone could be much more regulated and much more, it is like the umpires still have inclinations to call pitches that aren’t strikes, strikes. And I don’t know, it’s a tough one. I don’t love the idea of eliminating the home plate umpire, but I could see that it might make sense in the long run, but I don’t know. I’m going to reserve my judgment on that one yet and see what happens.
What do you think about the use of AI in music?
I don’t understand any of that. I guess if you’re talking about The Beatles remixes where they separate the tracks and all that stuff, that’s one thing. But I don’t really care about that stuff. I’m kind of happy with the original versions of the albums. I don’t think you need to redo them or anything like that. And I hate the whole AI writing thing where people are just programming things, and they get these really poorly written songs or books or paragraphs from AI. I don’t really see how that is good for anybody or anything really. But I’m 69 years old, so I mean, how would I get into that? Maybe young people think that’s cool. I think it’s stupid, but that’s me.
What did you like most about getting to work with Mitch Easter?
He’s just an amazing guy, and he’s just got a great ear and he’s a great musician, and he’s not a typical old-school producer who’s going to tell you what to do. He’ll try to get you to perform to your best, and he’ll capture it. And if you ask him what he thinks or what he might advise, he’ll be very forthcoming with that. But he’s not like a guy with an iron fist, and he’s just a fun guy to work with. He’s got a really laid-back studio kind of out in the country a little bit.
We stayed there, which was really nice. We could just throw ourselves fully into doing the record. And he’s just a really fun guy, and he’s got great stories, and he loves rock and roll, and we do too. We all knew him to a degree, and so we knew we’d get along, and we are all of course fans of his work, and it was really cool to have Peter and Mike back there after 40 years since they made their earlier R.E.M. records with him. That was just a no brainer for us. It was so much fun.
I imagine it was exciting to see them rekindle that connection with him.
Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, Peter hadn’t recorded with Mitch since, I guess [1984’s] Reckoning, and Mike had done recording at Mitch’s studio over the years doing some singles and things like that, some side projects and stuff like that. But Peter hadn’t been there for 40 years. Of course, he’d seen Mitch and we’d seen him along the line and all that stuff. It was really exciting. They fell right back into it immediately. It was like no time had gone by. So, it was really, really fun. Really fantastic.
How do you think the band grew most sonically and lyrically on this album compared to past ones?
Well, I think it’s just a continuing line. I mean, like I said, I think all four of our records have been exceptional. I think they all sound amazing. I think the writing on all four of them is just exceptional. We’re really good songwriters and we’re really good lyricists and we’re good musicians. I mean, the other guys are probably better musicians than me, but I got my thing that I can add in. I’m good at just adding little different instruments, keyboards, and stuff like that. I played organ a fair amount on this new record, and all the guitar solos I did were live. We did live takes, so it really just felt like we were firing on all cylinders on this one. But like I said, it’s a straight line from the first record to the last one. I think all the songs have always been good, and our playing has been great.
And sonically, it took a little different bend with Mitch because Mitch has a really cool arsenal of instruments and just a great ear and stuff like that. So that was really fun to tap into that. And there’s something about this one that does sound a little bit different than the other one, but he did help mix a lot of the third record. We didn’t go to the studio, we did a long distance, but he did do a lot of the mixing on that record, so it made sense for progression just to do the whole record with him. I think sonically, it’s a fantastic record too.
R.E.M.’s album Accelerate celebrated its 15th anniversary this year. What’s one of your favorite memories of working on that album?
Oh, man, that was just a blast. That was really good because we kind of bogged down a little bit on the three records before. They were all really, really good records, but they’ve kind of taken longer and longer to finish them. Accelerate was comparatively really quick, and it was mostly just two guitars, bass, and drums. So, we stripped back a lot of the instruments and layers that we put on with the previous records. And so that one really just had a really direct kick in the stomach kind of feel to it. We just track it with two guitars, bass, and drums, and that would pretty much sound like a record. It was really good.
And I think Michael got inspired, came up with great lyrics. That was a good turning point for R.E.M. just because, I mean, we’d made these amazing studio records, but then that one kind of felt more like a live record. And I just really got into playing. Peter would write a lot of those songs and we’d play them on his classic Rickenbacker rhythm guitar thing, and I would just not play chords. He’d say, “don’t play chords, just make crazy noises and play fuzzy guitar lines” and stuff like that. So that was really, really fun for me to do. And I think it came across really well on the record. It’s a really, really great rock and roll record, I think.
You mentioned earlier about working on new music for the Young Fresh Fellows. What’s in the works?
Yeah, well, we’re in kind of a weird spot. I can’t really say too much about it, but we’ve been together for 40 years since our first record, and we haven’t really done any kind of big retrospective or anything. We haven’t done a box set or anything like that, just kind of, not really that kind of person. We don’t really get together to do that. But we’ve got a couple archival projects in the mix, and we’ll probably play some shows next year.
In fact, we played a couple shows [recently] with Alejandro Escovedo, but those are kind of a little offshoot of the YFF. It’s without our drummer and with Kurt [Bloch], our guitar player playing drums. But we’ll be playing some Fellows songs this week for sure, and then we’ll see what happens in the next year. We’ll definitely play some shows and probably do some re-release or something like that. I’m not sure if we’ll be doing a new record or not, but we’ll see about that. I would like to, honestly.
There’s just so many other things going on, and it’s always like the Fellows always get kind of pushed to the back sometimes. We never know what we’re doing. Everybody’s been busy with other projects. But we do hold the Fellows very dear, and they’re kind of my first real band, and I still love the Fellows, and I think we’re kind of an underrated band in the history of New Wave or whatever you want to call it.
Some of the Fellows albums have been celebrating anniversaries in recent years.
Yeah, there’s a lot of that, a lot of anniversaries. So yeah, I mean, 2024 will be our 40th anniversary of our first record, first Fellows record. So, we’ll see if we do something with that. But I dunno, we’re not really the best at commemorating ourselves. We’re not so good at that, and nobody else is making us do it. No label leading on us saying, “Hey, let’s do a fantastic reissue of that,” that it all has to come from us, and we’re a little lazy, a little lame. I mean, we’re not lame or lazy, those are the wrong words. But we just don’t really get it together to work on our back catalog as much as we probably should, because it’s always more fun just to record new music, really.
What’s one of your favorite memories recording the band’s debut?
Oh, man, that was really exciting. I’d never really made a record before, really. We just were new. Conrad Uno had a track recording thing in his basement, and he got excited because Chuck [Carroll] and I had been talking about doing this record for a long time. And when we finally were doing it with his cousin Tad Hutchison came out to play drums, Conrad just said, “well, I’ve got a label. I’d like to put it out. I’ll record your record for free if you put it on my label.” We’re like, “well, that sounds like a great deal.”
So, it was just so much fun because we were just silly. We were just having so much fun recording the songs and just having a blast. We didn’t have any idea of how to make a record really, or any concept of what we were doing, but that made it really kind of perfect. And the record sounds really funny when you listen to it now, it sounds like a toy record or something like that. But I think it’s really, it’s kind of got a niche because of that, because it sounds so unlike anything else. I don’t think there’s ever been another record that sounded anything like it, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, but I think in this case, it was kind of cool.
Anything new in the works for The Minus 5?
Yeah, I’ve got a new record that we’ve recorded. I’ve got 12 or 14 new songs that we recorded over the last year, and it’s going to be great. It’s going to be great. It’ll probably come out in July, I think, next year on YepRock. We’re still mixing it and still polishing it up and deciding which songs are going to go on the record. I’m really happy with it. I went in with Linda [Pitmon] on drums and Peter [Buck] on Bass and Kurt [Bloch] on guitar, and we just tracked some songs really live, and they sounded amazing.
We got a few other little sessions in there too, with a couple songs I did with Spencer Tweedy on drums. And then we just did more stuff with Peter and Linda. So yeah, it’s going to be a fairly tight, tight rock and roll record, I think. It’s not going to be too orchestrated or anything like that. I don’t think you’re going to get a lot of Pet Sounds vibe on this one.
How do you think you’ve been able to find balance with all the projects you’ve been part of?
My balance is just to keep going and just do whatever every day. I’ve got a list of things in my head that I need to get done and do, and I just try to punch away at them. And I’m never really very organized as I should be. But I’ve always got so many musical ideas and so many things happening in my life with shows and tours and records, so I just kind of keep at it. So, I don’t know if it’s a balance or not. I should probably just stop and go on vacation or something like that, but I don’t really like doing that.
Anything else that you’re looking forward to in the year ahead?
Yeah, well, I’m going to play shows in some form or another. I’m going to play at Solid Sound, Wilco’s festival. That’s going to be great. And we’ve got some Baseball Project stuff shows and I’ll do the Fellows and I got TheMinus 5 record coming out. And I’m going to play a big festival above the Arctic Circle in Norway in March, which we’ve done a couple times. And this one has been postponed since 2020, but we’re going to finally get that going, and that’ll be really fun.
I’m also talking about trying to do another record with Alejandro Escovedo, which would be amazing. And Peter’s going to be in Brazil apparently a lot of the year playing with a Brazilian singer songwriter Nando Reis. There are just all kinds of stuff going on. I’m looking forward to all of it.
I’m just happy to be alive and to be able to make music and there’s enough people out there that continue to support me as a musician, and I can never get over that, that I’m here. I’m approaching 70, and I still have people who seem to care about what I do musically. So that seems insane to me. But it’s pretty nice. I’m really lucky as far as that goes.
—
McCaughey would probably agree with the following Hank Aaron quote: “In playing ball, and in life, a person occasionally gets the opportunity to do something great. When that time comes, only two things matter: being prepared to seize the moment and having the courage to take your best swing.”
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
