The Thirsty Bird Of The Pacific Northwest Speaks: Q & A With Scott McCaughey Of The Minus 5

It has been three years since Scott McCaughey and I chatted over the phone for an interview. The last time was a month prior to his appearance at the Abbey Pub in April 2003 to perform with Wilco as the latest version of McCaughey's band The Minus 5, a band which he and Peter Buck of R.E.M. started.

The album he was promoting at the time was going to be called Down With Wilco as a joke referring to all the trouble Wilco went through privately and publicly the previous two years; the band's problems were a laundry list filled with major label rejection, band members fired, and a finished album called Yankee Hotel Foxtrot waiting for an official release.

Now, three years later, McCaughey returns this month with The Minus 5 for a show at the Abbey Pub. The band's new album The Minus Five (aka The Gun Album) was recently released on February 7 by Yep Roc Records. In an interview for the March issue of Chicago Innerview (now available), McCaughey and I chatted on a grey Sunday (2/12) afternoon about the new album, his partnership with Peter Buck, and the true value of his autograph.

Chris Castaneda: Of all the songs on the album, "Cemetery Row" is my absolute favorite. It's a song that's as good as anything R.E.M. has written. How did Colin Meloy of The Decemberists become involved with that song?

Scott McCaughey: I was lucky he was able to sing it. It would have been okay if I sang it, but I wasn’t really happy with my vocal on it; it was a difficult song for me to sing because I was a co-writer. I wrote the words to it but didn’t write the melody. It was a little challenging for my limited vocal capabilities. Then I thought, “Colin’s voice would sound great on this.” He was happy to come over and do it the day before he was leaving on a tour with The Decemberists. It came out great.

CC: How did the album come together?

SM: It’s kind of a typical Minus 5 story, sit-in sessions in between other stuff. The first tracks that were recorded were “With A Gun” and “Hotel Senator,” which I did in Chicago with Wilco on a day off from the R.E.M. tour (Fall 2004). “Original Luke” and “Bought A Rope” I recorded with my buddies in Oregon. John Moen played drums--he’s the drummer in The Decemberists now and Stephen Malkmus and The Jinks. I’ve known him for a long time. His old band The Dharma Bums were really good friends with The Young Fresh Fellows; we toured a lot together. I basically used three of those guys, and we did some songs in a living room on an 8-track.

The rest of them were Bill (Rieflin), Peter (Buck), John (Ramberg), and I whenever we had a couple of weeks off from R.E.M. stuff. We would do a session in Seattle where we would do four or five songs and pick the best out of those; the songs I really wanted on the record that went together conceptually and lyrically. These were the ones I felt really had to be on the record. It’s kind of the typical piecemeal approach of The Minus 5, but I think it sounds really cohesive.

Kurt (Bloch) and I mixed it all together at the same time. I think the songs flow pretty well together. The sound is compatible, even the ones that were done in different studios. With Minus 5 stuff—especially the last couple of years when R.E.M. has been so busy—we have to pick out spots when we can work on a record. It all came together pretty quickly once the R.E.M. tour was over.

CC: Has there ever been a time when The Minus 5 had the time to sit down and make an album on some kind of schedule?

SM: Not really. [Laughs] The closest would be In Rock (re-released in 2004 by Yep Roc); we basically recorded that in a day, and then I added some overdubs at home, later, and mixed really, really quickly. That’s not a scheduled one where you record the whole album in a day. Down With Wilco was probably as close to that where I had five straight days in the studio and another four a couple months later. We’ve never really had that…it would be pretty amazing if we had a couple of weeks or a month to go do a record from start to finish. That would be pretty amazing, but we never really had that opportunity.

CC: Basically you take the time you can get. Right?

SM: Yeah. It’s funny because I’ve probably spent more time in the studio on the last couple R.E.M. records than I have all The Young Fresh Fellows and Minus 5 records put together. It’s kind of ridiculous but that’s just the way it works. I wouldn’t want to take as long as it takes to do an R.E.M. record though. I don’t think I could do that, to get myself to operate on that time schedule.

CC: What was the earliest song written?

SM: “Twilight Distillery” is definitely the earliest. We’ve actually been playing that song live for four or five years. I remember not wanting to put it on Down With Wilco because I’d been playing it already with the band, with Peter, Bill, and John. I thought we should record that one together. We actually ended up recording two versions of it. The first session we did, last December, with Bill, John, and Peter for this record, we did “Twilight Distillery” and banged it out. But we had been playing it for so long that it had gotten really revved up, really rocking. It was really good; we did it in one take. We had time to reassess because we went back on the road with R.E.M. for four months until the next session.

I might have played it for Wes (John Wesley Harding). He did some backing vocals on the early versions. He talked about how it got rocked out and was really fast. When we first starting doing it with Wes, it was more Dylan-y and a little more folk rock. We thought the version was really cool, but we thought it would be cool to slow it back down again. So, we ended up re-cutting it at the last session for this record and decided that was the version to go with. I’ll definitely release the other version, the rocker, because it’s really cool. But this version, the folk one, was the right one for the record.

CC: You toured with John Wesley Harding and Dag Juhlin of Poi Dog Pondering as the All-Male Threesome in the summer of 2004. Some of the new album appeared in your sets. The sweetness and simplicity that came across in your solo performances from that tour really carried over to the album.

SM: The performances are a lot simpler, a lot more direct; there’s less going on in a way. This record has a lot more songs that are just kind of, “We just played this song, and now it’s done” [Laughs], whereas with Down With Wilco there’s a lot of crazy shit on there. We didn’t really go into it thinking it was going to be that way. Jeff (Tweedy) really encouraged me to keep that record simple, but I probably ended up ladling on some extra things just ‘cause I had time. I think it came out fantastic; I love the way it came out.

We made more of a conscious decision to keep this one pretty straightforward just as far as being songs you perform and sing and people can just hear them as songs. I didn’t blend all the songs together like I tend to do lots of times on records where I run one into each other and they overlap and make little sweeps. The songs all go together. To me, they sort of tell a story, but I tried to keep it just a little more direct. It’s kind of an old-fashioned record for me.

CC: What songs on this album really pleased you in terms of traveling from the demo stage to final mix?

SM: That’s hard to say. I guess “Out There On the Maroon” is one that came out kind of exactly like I envisioned it to come out. That’s sort of rare; that doesn’t happen very often. I felt like that one was played the way I hoped we would play it; we did a mix of it that sounded like just how I wanted it to sound. That’s one that came out really, really nicely. Lots of times you envision a song a certain way and it comes out completely different, and that can be great! But that one came out just as I thought it should. That’s a good feeling.

I think “Bought A Rope” came out really good. That was one where I really didn’t know what it would sound like. I wasn’t sure about the arrangement; even the chords got simplified when I ended up recording with John, Eric (Lovre) and Jim Talstra. We did it on an 8-track, and somehow it still ended up sounding really amazing. It might have sounded amazing because of that. I really had no idea how that one would turn out. I’m happy with all of them.

CC: Does the album come out in March?

SM: It came out on Tuesday. I’ll be getting those big SoundScan figures in a few days. [Laughs]

CC: Now, John Wesley Harding has already worked within The Minus 5 world. Chicago's own Kelly Hogan makes her first appearance on a Minus 5 album. What track did you use them on?

SM: “Twilight Distillery.” They’re doing the backing vocals on there, which were great. I recorded them when Kelly was on tour with Wes for the Love Hall Tryst tour. When they played in Portland I went down, took my laptop and a microphone to the Econo Lodge they were staying at and recorded them doing backing vocals in about a half hour to an hour. Kelly (Hogan) never heard the song before, but she’s so damn good; she just nailed it. She’s the greatest.

CC: How was it working with Wilco this time around? They appear notably on "With A Gun."

SM: It was awesome. Back when Wilco played as the Minus 5 after Down With Wilco came out I had just written that song; we learned it and played it at those shows. So, I just knew I had to record it with them. When we recorded we hadn’t played for six months, but everyone remembered what they were doing on it. It’s all live, even the vocals. The only overdubs on it are Jeff’s multiple lead guitars. It was on a day off on the R.E.M. tour. Peter came down and played; he played 12-string. So, it was Wilco with Peter and me; it’s just a live performance.

The only thing that I always intended to add was Jesse Greene because she played violin on it. Leroy (Bach) had quit the band since we last played together. He wasn’t around. He did this cool thing when we would play it live where he would start the song with these handclaps. It was really cool. I could have put it on, but I wasn’t going to put it on unless Leroy does it. We were never able to get that together. I just left it the way it was; I didn’t want to have someone else playing violin or doing the handclaps. I think it came out great. That’s a really rare thing for me to use a live vocal in the studio because I usually think they kind of suck ‘cause I’m not that good of a singer. For some reason, we really captured it.

CC: After all these years you're still really self-conscious about your voice?

SM: Well, I’m pretty used to it. I don’t mean to be denigrating my vocal talents so much. I just know they’re fairly limited. I’ve come to work with that. With The Minus 5, I’ve always kind of been interested in having other people sing the songs. Whenever I try to do it I am usually met with resistance. The guys I play with seem to think I should just sing it. When I said I was thinking of getting someone else to sing “Cemetery Row,” I don’t think Peter and Bill really liked the idea. But when they heard it they thought it was probably the right idea since Colin did such a great job. They weren’t really into it at first.

On Down With Wilco, I wanted John Stirratt to sing lead on a couple of songs; I wanted Jeff to sing lead on some. Jeff did “Family Gardener,” but he wasn’t for spreading the vocals around that much; he thought I should sing the songs. Usually, I’m lucky to get one other person per record to sing a song. I got Ken Stringfellow to sing one on Let The War Against Music Begin (2001), he sang “A Thousand Years Away.” I’d like to do more of that. I like singing them, too. [Laughs] But I think it’s fun to get other voices on there.

CC: You must have loved it when Tweedy began to incorporate “Dear Employer” early on into his solo shows. He sort of debuted the song in Chicago at his solo shows at the Vic Theatre in January '03.

SM: That was thrilling! It was amazing when I heard him playing it in Chicago and the whole crowd singing along with him at the end.

CC: Was this album easy to record compared to Down With Wilco? Wilco seemed like the black sheep of albums at that time. You and the band had a session in Chicago the day before the World Trade Center attack on September 11, and then later on the album faced a delayed release.

SM: That was pretty fucked up, that’s for sure. I couldn’t say this was an easy one. I guess compared to that we didn’t go through any of the traumas with the record company. I was kind of going through a lot of shit. The R.E.M. touring was pretty grueling in a way; it was super fun, the music was amazing, but it was really, really long. I think for Bill, Peter, and I it was a difficult time in a lot of ways. When it came down to the actual recording of it, yes, it was easy. Kurt did a fantastic job in the studio. Everything just sounded good.

CC: One of the new songs is called "All Worn Out." Is that the best description of how you must have felt after the R.E.M. tour?

SM: Ummm…yeah. [Laughs] I really liked the way it came out, too. We played it once or twice and it sounded really cool. Peter said, “All you need to put on this is to get someone to play pedal steel on the chorus.” Ok! [Laughs] That’s what I did, and it was great. I love how it sounds.

CC: The Minus 5 has been around for ten years now. Is my math right?

SM: The first record came out in ’95, Old Liquidator. I think it came out in Germany first in ’95, and then maybe it was January ’96 when it came out in the U.S. Peter and I probably started working on it in ’93. That was recorded very piecemeal as well in typical Minus 5 fashion; we set the template up right there—recording with people whenever certain people were in town in between tours. [Laughs]

CC: I certainly don't know the story, and I don't remember asking you the last time we chatted. But how did you and Peter Buck meet?

SM: I probably met him in ’85 or ’86. I can’t remember if I met him at an R.E.M. show or if it was Peter coming to a Young Fresh Fellows show in Athens. I’m not really sure where the initial thing started. We started seeing each other at shows. I knew he bought our records. I think I met him outside an R.E.M. show and gave him The Squirrels record we had just released. Then he would come to our shows in Athens. We didn’t really start hanging out until ’92 when R.E.M. was recording Automatic For The People in Seattle.

CC: How's the relationship grown musically?

SM: It’s been awesome. He and I just love playing music together. We’ve played in so many bands together now, not just R.E.M., but The Minus 5 and Tuatara. We’ve done records with a lot of other people. We did the Mark Eitzel. We’re doing a Robyn Hitchcock record right now, and we’re going to do the next John Wesley Harding record, it’s going to be as The Minus 5. We just love doing that; we love backing other people. He and I also almost always demo his stuff for R.E.M. together. Whenever he’s got new music for a song he and I usually record it together, and that’s really exciting. He’s just a great guy to play music with. He plays bass in The Minus 5 all the time, but it’s funny when we back up someone else and he’ll play 12-string and I’ll play bass. We’re pretty versatile with each other. It’s a cool thing.

We did that whole record where he wrote the music and I wrote the words, The Lonesome Death of Buck McCoy (1997), and that was a really good experience for me because I had never really done that before. It was really difficult for me, but it was a good experience. I probably got a little better at doing that through that. For instance, “Cemetery Row” was a song where someone gave me the music and I really had no problem writing the right words for it. Probably a lot of that was because of learning how to do that with Peter.

He comes up with way more stuff than R.E.M. could possibly use. There’s usually 15 or 20 that he gives to R.E.M. with every record that end up not used. There are tons of great tracks with no vocals on them from the last three R.E.M. albums. Oh my god, there’s some amazing stuff from Up (1998), stuff that I think is so fucking great. We had tons and tons of material for that record. Some of them Michael (Stipe) just didn’t quite finish, but we recorded so much stuff. There are some really cool instrumentals from that record.

CC: How else has Peter broadened your horizons?

SM: Peter almost has this sense of duty to do something good. He just has certain standards to live up to; he’s very conscious about putting out something good. I won’t say that’s necessarily a new thing for me; I wouldn’t set out only to put out crappy stuff. His kind of attitude is that he’s a musician and he works. I find that really inspiring because I’ve always thought I was a musician by luck, by chance. I feel like I don’t have to apologize for being a musician. This is what I do; I like to work, we want to work hard, and we want to make good music. I get a lot of that from Peter.

His guitar playing is so precise and so melodic. I could say the same thing about Mike Mills from playing with him. He’s really taught me a lot about keyboard playing. I’ve probably changed how I play the organ, especially, from Mills teaching me stuff he had put on record.

CC: The band is keeping it simple as just the four-piece with you, Peter, Bill Rieflin on drums, and John Ramberg on guitar. What can we expect from this upcoming Minus 5 tour?

SM: Rock ‘n’ Roll with The Minus 5. [Laughs] Lots of times Peter and I go out and sign stuff afterwards, which is great, not that anybody cares if I sign it, but people seem to like to get his autograph. [Laughs]

Photo Taken July 10, 2004 At The Club Cafe, Pittsburgh, PA