Photo by Blaine Schultz
The Baseball Project at Summerfest 2024
The Baseball Project at Summerfest 2024
Everyone knows a baseball game can be delayed and suspended due to rain, but what about a concert by The Baseball Project? Fortunately, that will remain a rhetorical question as the band’s Friday afternoon, July 5 show at Summerfest’s Uline Stage was bracketed by light rain and later a heavy downpour.
But in between, the veteran quintet filled out a scorecard of topical songs and sprayed not-quite hits—“you might have figured out we play songs about baseball,” guitarist-vocalist Steve Wynn quipped early in the set.
America’s pastime has been rich fodder for the group made up of members of The Dream Syndicate, Young Fresh Fellows, Zuzu’s Petals and half of R.E.M. With last year’s Grand Salami Time the group completed the cycle.
The set was peppered with references to Milwaukee’s baseball history: Gorman Thomas got a shoutout, as did star-crossed Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Harvey Haddix who gave up a no-hitter in the 13th inning in a 1959 game against the Braves, and of course Henry Aaron. Icons Willie Mays, “Ted Fucking Williams” and Shohei Ohtani where recognized. The game’s rich vocabulary was noted in “The Yips” as was the spitter-centric “Stuff.” Drummer Linda Pitmon played lead whistle on “Disco Demolition,” the band’s tribute to that infamous night of poor judgement in Chicago.
History
There was also more than baseball history on stage. As Wynn noted, it was 40 years ago on July 6 when his group The Dream Syndicate opened for R.E.M. at Summerfest; back then the rock stage was located on the south end of the grounds. (A recording from the following night in Chicago would be released as This Is Not The New Dream Syndicate Album... Live!).
At the time, The Dream Syndicate had just released the Medicine Show, their first album for a major label. It would sink among mixed reviews. That album, which history would later prove a gem, was informed by the influence of writers like Flannery O’Connor, James M. Cain and Jim Thompson. Turns out necrophilia, impotence, incest and arson—mayhem in general—was not exactly what “college rock” listeners wanted.
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Back in 1984, R.E.M.—the farm team for future Baseball Project players Pete Buck and Mick Mills—was ascendant. The album Reckoning would find the band on a path to sign with Warner Brothers for an amount reported to be between $6 million and $12 million, then re-sign in 1996 for $80 million.
But on Friday the lineup was simply a passionate side project fueled by Pitmon’s drumming and the overdriven guitar and keen vocals of Scott McCaughey. Maybe at the end of the game he gets the game ball. Scott McCaughey, who played recently in Madison with Young Fresh Fellows, spent a long stretch with R.E.M. while that band was active. In 2019 he was in Milwaukee fronting The Minus 5, touring to promote the album Stroke Manor, a gallows nod to the stroke McCaughey suffered in 2017.
