You don’t necessarily have to be a lifelong baseball fan to appreciate the music of the Baseball Project, but it’d definitely help your listening experience. On its far-flung fourth release, “Grand Salami Time,” the band’s back to examining weird and wonderful sidebars about baseball history, with no pun about America’s pastime safe from a bit of lyrical tweaking from this notable collection of indie rockers that includes Steve Wynn (the Dream Syndicate) as well as Peter Buck and Mike Mills from legendary Athens, Georgia rock band, R.E.M.
Singer and guitarist, Scott McCaughey, has been around since the beginning, “Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails,” the 2008 album that found a baseball-obsessed group of friends leaning deeply into songs that sang the praises of a sport that’s risen and fallen in public consciousness over years. Lyrically, the band had already worked through three albums worth of material, so this fourth pandemic-delayed outing saw the group hitting the history books.
“You write about all these famous things and famous people, then it gets a little harder,” McCaughey says. “Luckily, baseball is an ongoing process, new things are happening all the time. There’s no shortage of inspiration.”
McCaughey explains that “a baseball song can happen at any time. We had nine years since the last record, so a lot of things that didn’t come to fruition on the last one were replaced by newer things. Like (Angels all-star pitcher/designated hitter) Shohei Ohtani. I thought it’d be really silly to not have a song about Ohtani, so I wrote that one at the last minute. In typical fashion, I reached too high and worked in [legendary Japanese hitter] Sadaharu Oh, too. That’s what I do! We went back and wrote new lyrics to that one, just with Ohtani, so there’s an alternative version of that.”
All-star lineup
Before getting too deep in the weeds about the band’s ability to wed lyrics about various generations of Japanese superstars, we should note that the particular group of friends that comprise the Baseball Project are a bit different than the average group of friends trading audio files of song ideas. This band’s got pedigree and then some.
If McCaughey’s name sounds familiar, it could be from his work with Pacific Northwest fixtures like the Minus 5 or Young Fresh Fellows. Or, as likely, from his 17-year run as a studio-and-touring member of the band R.E.M., the influential group that also counted the Baseball Project’s Mike Mills and Peter Buck among its founders. Steve Wynn of the recently-resurgent the Dream Syndicate is, along with McCaughey, the band’s other, primary songwriter. Rounding out the quintet is drummer Linda Pitmon, who counts a number of classic alternative rock bands on her credits list, from A (Alejandro Escovedo) to Z ( Zuzu’s Petals).
Those names would make any fan of ‘80s- and ‘90s-era college rock swoon, but the band didn’t stop there, with Mitch Easter handling the recording and production duties. The founder of Let’s Active and producer of dozens of solid rock ’n’ roll albums, including classic early work by R.E.M., Easter opened his homebase studio to the group after several COVID-era delays. The process, McCaughey says, went as well as could be hoped, with Easter’s Fidelitorium Studios in Kernersville, North Carolina providing both a great human host and an array of toys the band utilized on “Grand Salami Time.”
McCaughey traveled to the session with little more than his pedal board, preferring to go crazy with Easter’s collections of guitars, keyboards, percussion and more.
“It was such an easy session in a way,” he says. “It was amazing, the five of us in the room and Mitch recording. As soon as we got a first take, the track was pretty much done. We didn’t need a lot of overdubs and most of it is just the five of us live, giving us a really live-sounding record. It sounds so good, so organic with the way Mitch worked.”
Obviously, the news hook here is that Easter worked on some of the earliest R.E.M. recordings – and guitarist Buck hadn’t worked with him in over 40 years. And though that string of Baseball Project familiarity existed, McCaughey was getting his first taste of real-time work with this recording master.
“It was just fantastic,” he recalls. “I’ve known Mitch over the years, I’d been onstage with him, but I’d never really worked with him. Linda was gung-ho to record there and we wanted to get Mitch back with Peter and Mike. They hadn’t recorded together in 40 years, for the first two R.E.M. albums, though Mike had done some one-off things with Mitch in Carolina over the years. But Peter hadn’t been there since then. So there was kind of a reunion thing. But what was really cool and exciting was being in a room with people, which we hadn’t been able to do for a couple of years. And with all of us in North Carolina in this great room, filled with amazing instruments and with a great guy at the helm, we were really able to let it fly.”
The band brought songs in various degrees of completion to the session, with all the members contributing bits-and-bobs, even on tracks they didn’t originate. To that degree, The Baseball Project functions like a lot of bands, writers bringing songs to the broader group for a last ‘go round.
“Steve, Linda and I got together for a day or two before North Carolina,” McCaughey remembers, “and we hashed out about 20 songs, just the three of us. Everything changed when Peter and Mike got there and we were faced with all of the amazing instruments we found there. They came out really amazing.”
As noted, the process of getting ready to record was slowed by everything from COVID to the fact that the Dream Syndicate enjoyed a real blossoming of recent attention, decades after their initial formation and dissolution. Several sessions with Easter were scrapped for various reasons. It took some time and luck for everyone to coordinate a recording and a tour schedule that would allow the five to go out on the road as a unit.
That time is now, with Buck’s commitments lightening up just enough for the band to push their August live dates into September. A couple of high-profile opening slots are on the docket, with the group supporting Jason Isbell for a pair for dates, but the band is otherwise headlining shows with songs from all four of their Baseball Project albums.
Noting that Buck and Mills have also contributed tracks over The Baseball Project’s lifespan, McCaughey says he and Wynn initially “came up with a list of 15 songs that each of us had written. Then we had a couple of Mike’s on the list, so starting with over 30 songs to pick from gave us a lot to learn. Then Steve and I cut it to four or five of ours from the new record, which left about 10 songs from the first three albums. So it’ll be a career-spanning retrospective featuring a lot of new songs.”
Playing these sport-specific songs is obviously still fun for McCaughey and crew.
“I won’t say that The Baseball Project is first on anyone’s agenda,” he admits. “But it’s always been around, from when we first said ‘Let’s do a record about baseball.’ But it is our priority right now. So we’re setting August and September aside for it, no small feat.”
The Baseball Project performs on Wednesday, Aug. 16 at the Broadberry. Doors open at 7 p.m. and tickets are $25.
