For he's a jolly good fellow

He's the frizzy-haired old dude who stands in front of the indie kids at Death Cab for Cutie shows. He's one of the crazy young guys onstage treating cheering old-timers to rockin' Sonics covers. He wears sunglasses at night. He has functioned as a relative unknown and a regional hero. He's never had a public battle with an illicit substance, a scandalous run-in with the law, or even a hit song. But he is our resident garage rock expert, our most accomplished pop musician, our own eccentric anomaly.

In the last few years Scott McCaughey (rhymes with "ahoy") has acted the role of Seattle music's elder statesman, presiding humbly and happily over all things rock and roll while cultivating a comfortable living as a full-time touring member of the hugely influential and commercially successful supergroup R.E.M. But because he's also such a tenacious character and prolific songwriter, the story is far from over. In a nearly unprecedented turn of events, Scott somehow managed to get major label-backed Mammoth Records to release a delightfully poppy, artfully preposterous double CD featuring one disc each by his two revered bands, the Minus 5 and the Young Fresh Fellows.

The individually titled collections, Let the War Against Music Begin (by the Minus 5) and Because We Hate You (by the Fellows), are steadily gaining national attention. This past Tuesday night, Scott and the ever-evolving team of rogue musicians in the Minus 5 appeared in front of millions of late night television junkies on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Now in his 40s, Scott may not be the most likely candidate for the Next Big Thing, but he's certainly pulled off a neat trick: making a living as a musician, having his albums released with wide distribution, and, at the end of the proverbial day, coming home to a city filled with people glad to call him a friend. How ever does he do it?

Never travel far without a little Big Star

In the '80s, the Replacements' Paul Westerberg turned a legion of post-punks on to the Young Fresh Fellows. Westerberg touted the Fellows in nearly every interview he did in support of his band's Pleased to Meet Me. In those days, the Replacements were a big deal, but there was nary a music fan east of the mountains who knew Seattle from sciatica.

"Nobody came to Seattle. Labels didn't come here; bands didn't come here," Scott tells me over beers at the Lava Lounge.

Spurred on by youthful, dogged energy, the Fellows faithfully put out their own records—with the help of Conrad Uno's Pop Llama label—and they soon became this area's do- it-yourself role models.

"We did kind of encourage a lot of bands because we'd say, 'We're going on tour.' And we'd come back six months later and say, 'It was great. We had so much fun.' And they were all like, 'Well, we can do it if those guys can do it,'" Scott remembers.

"We set a good example by just not caring whether anyone liked us or whether we were gonna get signed to a big label: 'We're a band, we're great, we're making records. We're writing songs, we're gonna go record them, and then we're gonna go play.' It was a good time. But that was something that really came out of being in Seattle. Bands like the Fastbacks, the Cheaters, and the U-Men would make 45s and put them out themselves, and we were like, 'That's cool.'"

And when the Fellows returned a favor and played Paul Westerberg's wedding, that was pretty cool too.

But your love don't pay the bills

The most amazing thing about Scott is that for the past 20 years he has subsisted, in one way or another, on rock and roll. And aside from the rubberized fools that MTV hawks, the list of those who can say the same is pretty small.

"Well, I did my eight years at Cellophane Square," he tells me with a smile, and divulges, with a careful measure of irony and pride, that they eventually made him a manager.

Relentless touring machines, the Fellows adhered to a strict DIY model and eventually made money out on the road. But rock and roll can be a fickle bitch. Once his daughter was born and the Fellows decided to disband in the late '80s, Scott's optimism about relying on pop music to pay his bills began to wane.

"I started booking the Crocodile," he says with a hint of resignation. Any struggling musician who has done time delivering the mail or washing dishes would have a pretty hard time feeling sorry for him on that one.

"Yeah, but that's not a good job for a musician. It was really hard for me to be the guy bartering with the bands. I just wanted to give them money so they could go on tour."

Pretty early on, Scott learned his lesson about making promises he wasn't sure he could keep. But what he learned was not that he couldn't take the risks, just that he should be damn sure what he was betting on.