I'm working on setting up an interview with Scott McCaughey (frontman for the Young Fresh Fellows, longtime sideman for and unofficial member of R.E.M.) about his newest musical endeavor, the Baseball Project.

McCaughey and Steve Wynn (those of you in my age cohort remember Steve as having fronted the Dream Syndicate in the '80s) got together with R.E.M.'s Peter Buck and Wynn's Miracle 3 drummer Linda Pitmon to record an album of original baseball songs. I've been listening to Volume One: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails pretty much non-stop the last two weeks -- it's really fantastic. The music is pretty much as you might expect (especially since they apparently knocked the thing together in one week): a mix of McCaughey's and Buck's '60s garage rock and psychedelia influences with Wynn's more blues-via-the-Velvet Underground sensibility.

But the lyrics -- oh, mercy. The lyrics are freakin' fantastic. If my Poetic Interludes are lucky Crosby groundball-doubles up the third-base line, their songs are epic Cust homeruns. I really can't overstate how clever and ... well ... insightful they are. There's also a song that lays bare the sordid, hilarious tale behind Black Jack McDowell's legendary bird-flipping of the fans at Yankee Stadium in '95.

Anyhow, McCaughey grew up a Bay Area A's and Giants fan (and graduated from Saratoga High School), so I figured he'd be an entertaining and apposite guest at AN.

I'm working with his label to submit a set of interview questions via email. Any suggestions or requests? Shout 'em out in the thread below.

As a taste of the album, here's the group's appearance from last Friday's Letterman show: