Song Of The Day - John Barleycorn Must Live

One of my favorite authors is Nick Hornby and one of his brilliant pieces of work is a collection of essays called, "Songbook." Hornby picks favorite tracks and writes about them in a brilliant, funny and sometimes incredibly poignant way. The stories go off in various directions with the only rule seemingly being that at the beginning of his thought process is that particular song. Cool idea. So in the best tradition of mediocre non-writers stealing the ideas of far superior writers I thought it would be cool to do this sometimes. So with apologies to Nick Hornby...


On October 1st, 1994 my buddy Trevor stopped by the pizza place where we both worked - he was off - and asked me if I wanted to hit the Robyn Hitchcock show with him that night. I had moved to Seattle after college about four months earlier and Trevor was pretty much my first friend there. We had already bonded over a shared love of the indie music (though Trevor's knowledge far surpassed mine and he was a guitar player himself who knew the Seattle scene really well). He was one of the rare people I met that actually knew who Robyn Hitchcock was and he was also a big fan. He had an extra ticket to Robyn's show that night at the Backstage, which I would discover that night was the best music venue in Seattle (sadly, no longer there).

This would be the first of many shows that Trevor and I would see together while I lived in Seattle, he would turn out to be my favorite concert buddy.

When we got to the Backstage we went straight to the bar and got some beer. Trevor asked the bartender who was opening and the guy told him, "Scott McCoy". I asked who and Trevor said it was the guy from Young Fresh Fellows. I'm pretty sure I said something like, Oh, cool. Yeah" but in reality had no fucking idea what he was talking about. But being 24-years-old I did not want to expose my relative lack of indie rock knowledge.

I would learn later, of course, that his name was spelled Scott McCaughey and just sounds like McCoy. He was great that night in his short set he did with Ken Stringfellow from The Posies, but I mostly remember the awesome Robyn Hitchcock show. I had seen him before but it was with his band in bigger venues opening for REM. This was my first Robyn show in a small club with him on stage by himself, I didn't know then I would see him dozens of times over the next 20 years; by himself, with a band, with violinist Deni Bonet, with Peter Buck from REM, with Scott McCaughey, and many other combinations.

Over the next few years going to concerts in Seattle I would see McCaughey all the time playing with other musicians I had gone to see, including when he became REM's permanent sideman on the Monster tour.

One year I got a job at a law firm - one of those great 90s slacker jobs that were so abundant in Seattle where I didn't have to actually do that much work. My favorite co-worker at the firm was this great guy named Gary. Gary was around 40 while I was in my late 20s and he had a wife and kids. I would discover that Gary was Scott's best friend since high school and that they had once been in a band together. I believe they also followed Mott the Hoople on tour through Europe.

Gary would be something of a role model for me during my time there. First of all he loved music, and despite being over 30-years-old he still loved hearing new bands. He also took his kids to concerts, introduced them to cool stuff, but also didn't begrudge them for liking some pop stuff he couldn't stand listening to. Gary showed me you could actually grow up without becoming "old." He was the first parent I ever met that made me think that it was possible to breed without becoming an asshole or a boring shithead. He had a lot to do with my thinking that having a kid might not be so bad after all. He is exactly the kind of dad I'm trying to be today

Through these years I had actually become more familiar with Scott McCaughey's music and had become quite a fan, especially of his project The Minus 5. I didn't realize it at the time, but that first show I saw him play back in 1994 was pretty much an early version of The Minus 5 since Ken Stringfellow and Peter Buck were his main collaborators on it back when he put together the first version of the group, which has had a rotating cast of characters through the years (including all the members of Wilco and The Decemberists as well as Robyn Hitchcock at various times, among many others).

Seems to me that people love to work with Scott for several reasons. It looks like he can play just about any instrument well, which is a great guy to have in your band. He also seems to have an insane musical knowledge when it comes to the history of rock-and-roll. Having talked to him a few times after shows over the years, I also know he's a hell of a nice guy. (I'm sure the number of times I've dropped Gary's name to him over the years  - "Hey remember me, I used to work with Gary in Seattle..." - has gotten a little annoying but he is always very cool to me).

And most of all, the guy knows how to craft a song. Seriously, how he has not become a bigger star has always surprised me since he can craft a pop song like nobody's business. Listen to John Barleycorn Must Live (off the excellent record Let the War Against Music Begin) and you are listening to a pop gem as good as anything The Beatles put out. Catchy, with lots of cool instrumentation going on underneath, it is also both an homage to music history - John Barleycorn being a British folk tune famously recorded by Traffic in 1970 - and a kind of redemption for the poor Barleycorn, who in the original song, "...should die." Scott McCaughey just decided that somebody must finally stand up for poor John Barleycorn, so this catchy tune is the result.

Scott's sense of humor as resulted in other beautiful pop numbers like With a Gun and also serious rockers like Aw, Shit Man. The man can make a song that makes you think of The Monkees and then turn right around and rock out with his cock out.

People who know how much I go see live music will ask me who I've seen the most and my answer is always, Robyn Hitchcock, Billy Bragg, and Jeff Tweedy/Wilco; all of whom I've seen between 40-60 each, with Robyn being the most for sure. But it dawned on me a couple years ago that I've probably seen Scott McCaughey almost as much as any of them, maybe even more than Billy Bragg or Tweedy. I've seen him play with Tweedy. I've seen him many times with Robyn Hitchcock - especially after he was a part of Robyn's backing band for a few years. I've seen The Minus 5. I've seen him in Tuatara, a kind of Seattle indie super group. I've seen him play with Peter Buck and Alejandro Escovedo. And for the past few years I've been loving seeing Scott play in The Baseball Project, a band composed of him with Steve Wynn (ex-Dream Syndicate) as the songwriters and guitarists along with Peter Buck and Mike Mills from REM, and excellent drummer Linda Pitmon. And as the name suggest, all the songs are about baseball.

Scott McCaughey has very stealthily become a major part of the soundtrack of my life. There are many artist/albums/songs that I think of when looking back on parts of my history and without my noticing Scott McCaughey became one of the dominant artists on that list. I really didn't even realize it until recently. On Record Store Day this year my number one target was The Minus 5 record called Scott the Hoople in the Dungeon of Horror, a sprawling, ambitious 5-LP boxed set of all new music with each disc playing on a theme (one of them being all songs about the band The Monkees, including a 9-minute track called Michael Nesmith, which just may be Scott McCaughey's American Pie and it is just as good if not better).

One of my favorite musicians, even though I didn't know that for years. Makes me think of seeing shows with Trevor, hanging out with the coolest dad I've ever known - which in turn reminds me that I'm happy I married my wife and had our daughter, and how much I love a well-crafted song and a great night out in a club watching great musicians.

Scott also reminds me that life is good.

A Concert Life

OK, the move has happened and we are just about settled, so maybe I can get back to doing this on a little bit more of a regular basis. We'll see, I'm still responsible for taking care of a kid that is right now just about 11 months old.

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I moved back to Chicago earlier this month after six years living on the East Coast, with the last three being in New York and it was really hard leaving Manhattan. We got really used to how great it is to live in The City. Great vegetarian restaurants, the best public transportation in the U.S. and a lot of really cool music venues to see some of my favorite acts who seemed to be coming through town all the time (I saw Robyn Hitchcock five times in 2008 alone). And

So being back in Chicago will take some getting used to. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of great memories living here. I saw the very last Replacements concert from the front row in Grant Park and walked away with a guitar pick. I met my wife here (well, in the 'burbs) and some of my favorite friends still live here. And of all the places I've seen live music, my favorite for a long time was The Hideout, though in NYC I really fell in love with Barbes and The Bell House, both in Brooklyn, and the Concert Hall on the Upper West Side. Of course, none of those compare to seeing a show at The Turning Point in Piermont, about an hour north of Manhattan. Seriously, if you like live music at all, do yourself a favor and see a show there before you die.

But Chicago is a really good town for live music, and I got to be reminded of that pretty quickly after I got here. I went to another of my favorite Chicago venues, Martyrs, for The Baseball Project/Minus 5/Steve Wynn show. If you haven't heard of The Baseball Project, here's a quick description: Scott McCaughey, leader of both the Young Fresh Fellows and Minus 5 and a permanent sideman of REM for more than a decade, and Steve Wynn, formerly of the Dream Syndicate, got together and wrote a bunch of songs about baseball. They were joined by Linda Pitmon, a drummer for lots of different bands, and Peter Buck from REM to record a great album.

These are some of my favorite musicians. I grew up an REM fanatic, and Scott and Peter also play in The Venus 3, Robyn Hitchcock's (my absolute favorite musician) current backing band. Scott McCaughey plays with so many of my favorite people - Wilco, REM, Decemberists, Robyn Hitchcock - and is such a great songwriter. He really should be a lot more famous than he is. There is really no more proof needed in how unjust the world is than the fact that Hannah Montana plays in packed stadiums and Scott McCaughey only gets to by hanging out with REM.

And The Baseball Project album is fantastic. Rather than write songs that just celebrate their love of the game, ala Centerfield (don't get me wrong, I LOVE that John Fogerty ditty), they made some tunes about specific players and incidents, some based on fact and others based more on folklore. There's Ted Fucking Williams, based what Teddy Ballgame supposedly used to scream out during batting practice ("I'm Ted Fucking Williams and I'm the greatest hitter in baseball!"), Gratitude, about Curt Flood, who fought on his own for players' right to free agency and who is largely forgotten by today's players who owe their million-dollar paychecks to him, Satchel Paige Said, a celebration of the man who may have been the best pitcher in the history of the game; among the songs about players from the game's history.

Two of my favorites are Steve Wynn's Harvey Haddix and Scott McCaughey's Broken Man. The first tells the story of the pitcher who may have pitched the best game in the history of Major League Baseball, 12 perfect innings, but is not in the record books because his Pirate teammates could not score and he lost the game in the 13th. The latter song is about Mark McGwire's fall from the man who helped "save baseball" after the strike to the disgraced steroid user. Scott McCaughey has an amazing talent for writing really catchy songs (listen to John Barleycorn Must Live, Town That Lost Its Groove Supply, Cigarettes, Coffee and Booze or With A Gun and you'll see what I mean) but Broken Man might be his catchiest yet. It has a hook that just pulls you in.

I walked in to Martys on the night of the show and it felt like I had been there yesterday, even though the last time I saw a show there was back in May of 2003 for a Jeff Tweedy solo gig. The place was as cool as I remembered it. It didn't seem like anything had changed, except I think there might be better beer choices now. And despite good beer on the menu most people there still seemed to be drinking Bud, Coors, PBR or some other swill. What is it with Chicagoans and their love of shitty beer?

I was at the show by myself, a common occurrence. I see a lot of shows on my own, not that many of my friends are in to the same music as me or are as interested in seeing shows as often as I like to. In the last couple of years in New York I had met some people at a couple of Robyn Hitchcock shows that became my concert-going posse. I did wish they were there, a fun group of music geeks that I really liked hitting shows with in NYC.

But no matter. I was in my element. Around my people. Indy-rock music dorks, oh how I love them so. This was the kind of crowd that, had I struck up a conversation with anyone, many of them might have been impressed with me saying, "So I saw Scott McCaughey and Ken Stringfellow opening for Robyn Hitchcock at the Backstage in Seattle back in 1994," or "I was at the Crocodile Cafe in 1995 when Peter Buck played with Kevn Kinney, that included the most amazing cover of Leaving On A Jet Plane." (I went to both shows with my favorite all-time concert-going buddy Trevor) I didn't need to have these conversations that night, it was just enough knowing I was around a crowd who might appreciate the experiences.

I was not really prepared this night on just how great this show was going to be. There was no division in the sets between each band, it was the four members of The Baseball Project playing for the whole night, doing songs from Baseball Project, Minus 5 (and one Young Fresh Fellows song), Steve Wynn's various incarnations (Dream Syndicate, Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3, etc.) and a few covers.

They absolutely brought the house down with an incredible high energy show that went for two full sets and an encore. By the time they were done it had been almost three hours since they took the stage. I've seen Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey play dozens of times, in many different projects, but I'd never been to a Steve Wynn show before so I didn't know what to expect. Well Steve Wynn is one hell of an impressive guitar player, but Linda Pitmon really stole the show for me. She plays her drums with an incredible energy of wild abandon yet completely focused at the same time. She is the funnest drummer I've seen play since Bill Berry from REM. I was mesmerized by her stick work and her flailing hair as she banged her kit.

A truly fantastic night, maybe my favorite concert of the year so far, going neck-and-neck with Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 at the Bell House in Brooklyn. And that show had half of the same people playing.

I really enjoy two things more than anything else in the world - traveling and live music. My dream is to combine the two some day and do some rock and roll tourism. I'd love to see one of my favorite musicians in a club somewhere like London or Spain or Germany or Tokyo. The one I want to do the most is see Robyn Hitchcock do one of his benefit shows at the Three Kings pub in the Clerkenwell neighborhood in London. That's how much of a music geek I am.

Why I like to travel seems pretty obvious. Seeing different cultures, sights and people is something a lot of people like to do.

But it has always been hard to explain why I am so in love with live music to the point I'll spend my last dollar on a band instead of food.

I was thinking about this when I was leaving Martyrs that night, why I feel such pure joy at a show. It kind of finally dawned on me.

I'm not the most "in the moment" kind of person. Ask anybody who knows me. I tend to over think just about everything and always be in my head. But not at shows by bands that I really love. I am so in the moment when I'm standing there taking in the music, I just let it flow over me and suck me in its world. No thinking, just feeling. No worries, just happiness.

Is my career where I want it to be? Am I a good husband? A good father? Am I doing enough to make a difference in the world? These thoughts go away for a time and are not a part of it.

But what is "it?" I don't know how to put it without sounding incredibly gooberistic and dweeby. At one with myself? With the universe? An out of body experience? Religious experience? See what I mean? Very stupid sounding, all of them.

I guess I'm just.....me.

And it seems that on those occasions I'm OK with being just that. And that is no small thing.