Serious question, Tacoma: Do you realize Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck will be at Hell’s Kitchen Friday, with their band the Minus 5?



Yes, that Scott McCaughey, he of Young Fresh Fellows fame — he of the seemingly endless rock ‘n’ roll resume.



And, YES, that Peter Buck. R.E.M., dude. Is there really any other Peter Buck?

I only ask because, if you do realize Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck will be in Tacoma and on stage when the Minus 5 sets up musical shop at Hell’s Kitchen on Friday, I feel like the excitement should be palpable. I feel like the buzz should be strong. I feel like — whatever your situation is — the babysitter should be booked, your parole officer should be warned or your AA sponsor should be put into speed dial.



As far as shows goes, the Minus 5 at Hell’s Kitchen is sure to be one of those nights people talk about, a spectacle and experience people remember — a rare opportunity.

But instead of palpable buzz, or frothing excitement or even mildly exuberant anticipation, what I see is a Tacoma trudging through the paces, a Tacoma wilted by circumstance, a Tacoma just struggling to find its way in this cruel ass world we find ourselves in. 



Now more than ever, Tacoma, what you need is what the Minus 5 will bring to Hell’s Kitchen on Friday — honest, decent, from the heart rock ‘n’ roll, the kind of names like Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck were built on.



Perhaps a quick refresher course is in order. Surely, as the good child of Northwest rock that you are, you know the Young Fresh Fellows. From ‘84’s The Fabulous Sounds of the Pacific Northwest, through the rest of the seminal band’s impressive and heralded recording career, the Fellows — and McCaughey — have etched an indelible place in the annals of rock.

Without the Fellows, really, there’s no telling how it all would have played out.



And the Minus 5, as you may recall, was started by McCaughey in 1993 as a “side project” — an outlet for his more acoustic, folky, psychedelic and just plain strange material, stuff that didn’t fit the Young Fresh Fellows mold. It was an idea more than a definitive band, a collective of sorts whose one constant, other than McCaughey, has been R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck. Over time, the band has taken up more and more of McCaughey’s time, to the point where calling it a side project just seems absurd — even though McCaughey is still active in the sporadic Fellows, not to mention the unofficial fifth member of R.E.M., and not to mention his eleventy-seven other musical vehicles.

Dude is busy. If you need proof, consider the fact that the Minus 5 released its eighth studio record, the Portland-centric Killingsworth, on the same day in July that the Fellows released the Robyn Hitchcock produced I Think This Is – which, by my estimation at least, marks the band’s 1,300th release.



“I would have liked to do them separately,” confides McCaughey of the two albums, I Think This Is having been recorded in November of ‘07, and Killingsworth in February of ‘08.



However, with an extremely interested Yep Rock — a label with a long working history with the Minus 5 — showing interest in releasing both efforts simultaneously, and not asking the Fellows to hit the road in support of I Think This Is, it was an offer too good for McCaughey to pass up.



“Initially we thought we might press 1,000 copies of the Fellows record and maybe release it in Spain,” says McCaughey. “One of the ways (Yep Rock) said they could do it is if they put both records out at the same time.”



And so they did.



But this column isn’t about the Fellows, really, it’s about the Minus 5 — the side project that’s more than a side project. As the eerily homey, somewhat downtrodden, PDX inspired sounds of Killingsworth play through my computer speakers, this is easy to remember and impossible to ignore. On it, McCaughey has managed to capture a town on tape, create a sonic vibe that replicates the feeling of cruising helmet-less on a Schwinn 10-speed through the Portland’s Alberta neighborhood, or grabbing coffee at Extracto — or venturing out a little further than all of this and seeing firsthand the pockets of Portland where the gentrification has yet to be televised.



For those that know Portland this is why the record wasn’t called Hawthorne, or Belmont, or Burnside or Couch. Killingsworth, a street in Portland with such pleasant enunciation — not to mention a rather down-and-out reputation and a little blight to spare — is a place that captures and epitomizes nearly every emotion this latest Minus 5 effort holds in its grasp.



“I definitely feel like I was making my first Portland record,” says McCaughey of Killingsworth. “It’s devoted to the city I now live in. The record has a little bit of a dismal tone, not that the songs are all downers. Killingsworth just seemed to fit. It’s a pretty rough spot sometimes.”



Much like Tacoma — just one more reasons why the Minus 5 show at Hell’s Kitchen on Friday is one not to miss.



[Hell’s Kitchen, with Canon Canyon, the Joshua Cain Band, James Hilborne and the Painkillers, Friday, July 17, 9 p.m., $10, 3829 Sixth Ave., Tacoma, 253.759.6003]