Minus 5/Young Fresh Fellows frontman Scott McCaughey has been blurring the distinction between his two bands for a while, to the point where many of the songs on either group’s LPs would be appropriate for the other. Both return this week with new efforts: the Minus 5’s Killingsworth and the Fellows’ I Think This Is. The tunes are more divergent, with Killingsworth featuring a heavy alt-country vibe and I Think This Is being a typically funny garage-pop workout. When he’s not fronting his own combos, McCaughey is a sideman for R.E.M. and Robyn Hitchcock, the latter of whom produced I Think This Is. McCaughey is guest-editing magnetmagazine.com this week. Read our Q&A with him.
McCaughey: Even though being an indie rocker is both incredibly lucrative and time-consuming, it’s fun to have other interests and avenues of income. For instance, I breed goats in our backyard. (It’s Portland, man; everybody’s doing it.) A lot of musicians are handy with the brush, and I’m not talking housepainting. Walter Salas-Humara, the longtime singer/songwriter of the Silos (and check out I’m Not Jim, his fabulous 2008 collaboration with writer Jonathan Lethem), paints dogs. Lots of ’em. He’ll paint yours. He did one of our dog Wally, and it captured him perfectly. Rennie Sparks of the Handsome Family is another fave writer/musician and pet painter. With some of the lyrics she writes, you’d think her animal paintings might be terrifying, but they’re really nice, as she tries to figure out what heaven would be like for your particular mutt. You can also ride on a train with the Handsome Family, but that’s in November and it costs more. Sounds like fun, though!
