The Baseball Project, The Minus 5, and more on Mountain Stage at Culture Center Theater – Charleston , WV, WV

GUEST ARTISTS: The Baseball Project (feat. members of R.E.M. and The Dream Syndicate), The Minus 5, Bob Mould Solo Electric, Chris Stamey, Loose Cattle

Doors at 6:30pm
Show at 7pm

Ticket Information

All tickets to this show are e-tickets and will be emailed to you upon purchase. Open up the pdf and the QR code on your ticket will be scanned at the door. This event will also be offered as a livestream.

Watch the livestream!

Mountain Stage livestreams are free, however, there are some incredible folks out there who’d like to show their support through a donation-based, pay-what-you-want “ticket” for the livestream. This is a donation-based “ticket” to show some love for the program and is not a ticket to the live event.

You’ll be able to catch the show from the comfort of your home (or wherever you wish) Sunday, September 28, 2025 – at 7 PM ET at mountainstage.org.

Click here to learn more about Mountain Stage and the live show experience!

The Baseball Project

The Baseball Project are 5 friends who are veterans of the Alternative / Indie Rock scene (and who in fact helped create it), starting in the early 80’s. The band features members of R.E.M., The Dream Syndicate, The Minus 5, Young Fresh Fellows and Filthy Friends. These are just a FEW of the countless bands that Scott McCaughey, Steve Wynn, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Linda Pitmon perform in.

They come together in this “supergroup” to focus on the fascinating stories that baseball spawns – character studies of both the heroic and the oddball variety. You don’t need to be a student of the game to dig them though – often times baseball is just a jumping off point for deeper stories of triumph or failure….or hilarity – all while playing their infectious and rockin’ brand of power pop/ jangle folk / Indie Rock that they do so well!

The Baseball Project formed in 2007 when all 5 band members were attending a party for R.E.M.’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Steve and Linda were there as guests of Peter Buck but were only passing acquaintances of Scott, who was a touring member of R.E.M. At some point in the very wee hours of the party, McCaughey and Wynn found themselves leaning against the same bar and struck up a raucous conversation that ricocheted from music talk to baseball. They both confessed a longstanding and hitherto unrequited desire to write and record an entire album of songs that would dig deeper into the game and the psyche of the more eccentric characters that have played it. Linda (drummer in Steve’s band, The Miracle 3) wandered past and heard the promises being made to “maybe one day try to do it”. Being a huge baseball fan herself, she threw down a challenge to the pair to finally do it. They immediately set about writing and sharing tracks long distance (Steve and Linda live in NYC and Scott is in Portland, OR). Within a few weeks the trio of baseball fanatics with killer record collections had booked studio time at Jackpot Studios in Portland. After a couple of short writing and acoustic rehearsal sessions in Scott’s living room (Linda played a peach crate), they commenced recording and in 4 short days completed the 13 tracks that would soon become their first release, “Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails”.

The songs came together quickly but they were looking for some fairy dust, so Scott decided to call on brilliant R.E.M. buddy Peter Buck to contribute his famed 12-string sound. Despite being sick as a dog, he braved his 103-degree temperature and came down with Rickenbacker in hand (plus sitar, mandolin, etc.) and laid down tracks on all 13 songs in just over an hour. Little did he know that he’d just been indoctrinated into the band for life, even though the only baseball player he knew was Boog Powell!

The subject matter covered plenty of the game’s legends (Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, for example) but also players and stories that have been obscured by time, like Big Ed Delahanty. He was a massive star in the late 1800’s but he was apparently kicked off a train at midnight for being drunk and disorderly…and brandishing a straight razor! He mysteriously went over the International Bridge and was found a week later at the bottom of Niagara Falls. THESE are the stories that really fuel the Baseball Project!

It was obvious the band were onto something when they were invited to play Late Night With David Letterman 6 months later — before their first record, Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails was even released in July of 2008! They followed up that auspicious first “gig” by playing their first full set the next month at a festival in a medieval city in the north of Spain (sure, why NOT?!). Peter wasn’t available to make the trip so Scott had the genius idea to ask R.E.M.’s masterful bass player, Mike Mills, to fill in. As an equally avid fan of the game he was a natural and after years of alternating on bass guitar duties, they eventually both joined as permanent members with Peter moving over to guitar duties.

Since those early days of showing up at Spring Training games in Arizona and Florida to play in parking lots for people trickling into the games, the band now appears IN MLB stadiums – including performances at Major League parks in Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, Denver, Minneapolis, Philadelphia as well as having thrown out some exceptional first pitches (nothing but strikes!)

Over the years the group has released almost 100 original songs and has recorded with Craig Finn (The Hold Steady), Ben Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie), Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo) and Chris Funk and John Moen (The Decemberists), among others, and performed a three-day residency at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, The Baseball Hall of Fame (Cooperstown), the National SABR Convention, Peter Gammons’ Hot Stove Benefit Event, the Chicago Cubs Fanfest and more.

The Baseball Project’s latest album, “Grand Salami Time” was recorded and co-produced by the band and Mitch Easter (who produced R.E.M.’s earliest records) at Easter’s fabled Fidelitorium Studios and includes contributions from Steve Berlin (Los Lobos) and Stephen McCarthy (The Long Ryders).

“A soundtrack for the season…The group mines nostalgia and esoterica to find fresh subject matter for 16 songs…most topics are paired with garage rock that gives Buck a chance to serve up some delightful guitar squall.”

—Associated Press

“A joyful and jubilant example of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s power pop…It makes for a celebratory sound that ricochets throughout. There’s an unceasing exuberance and enjoyment emitted from these grooves as if that near-decade spent in hibernation created pent-up agitation that was waiting to be unleashed at the earliest opportunity.”—American Songwriter

“Grand Salami Time is the fourth album from the Baseball Project, and it’s every bit as fun, engaging, and tuneful as their debut; these folks have shown they can go back to the well and not come up dry…It doesn’t hurt that Wynn, McCaughey, and Buck are all first-rate tunesmiths who are good with the music as well as the words, and the blend of their guitars is satisfying throughout. They also have a top-shelf rhythm section in bassist Mike Mills (Buck’s former R.E.M. bandmate) and drummer Linda Pitmon.”—AllMusic

“You don’t have to be a baseball nerd to enjoy these songs about journeymen players, doctored baseballs, and cinderella stories. Music nerds will find stuff to love, too.”—Brooklyn Vegan

Loose Cattle

Someone’s Monster, the new album from Loose Cattle produced by John Agnello, finds the band moving decisively on from their earlier countryfied reexaminations of other writers’ songs and taking on powerful new identities as songwriters, becoming a band with a broad sonic pallet wrapped around an urgently questioning core. Formed by co bandleaders Michael Cerveris and Kimberly Kaye, Loose Cattle has been part of New Orleans’ uniquely diverse and eclectic Americana roots music scene for over a decade. Its members individually bring rich and varied musical pedigrees to the band, having played with everyone from Alex Chilton and The Iguanas to Bob Mould and Pete Townshend, meanwhile collecting a Grammy, multiple Tony Awards, and a host of local music honors. Their 2017 holiday album, Seasonal Affective Disorder, appeared on numerous best-of lists, including Rolling Stone Country’s 10 New Country And Americana Christmas Songs To Hear Right Now, with No Depression declaring “This might be the best album of the season.” Appearances at New Orleans Jazz Fest and French Quarter Fest and repeat visits to NPR’s Mountain Stage and Lincoln Center’s American Songbook have garnered them fans and friends like Lucinda Williams, members of Drive By Truckers and the Grammy winning Lost Bayou Ramblers, all of whom guest on their upcoming debut on the famed Single Lock Records label, based in Muscle Shoals.

Bob Mould Solo Electric

When he calls, Bob Mould is finishing work on his 15th solo album, Here We Go Crazy. A distillation of the unfailing melodic skill, the emotional lucidity and dynamic fluency he’s developed over more than four decades, it’s also a typically bold realignment of his sonic paradigm. Its turbulent vignettes are scored by Mould’s familiar bruised tunefulness, but the sound is pared back to its fundaments, 11 songs blistering past in just over 30 minutes. “I’ve stripped things back to what excited me as a young guitarist,” he explains. “The energy, the electricity.”

Part of the inspiration for this more primal aesthetic is the heavy itinerary of touring he’s lately undertaken, several years spent circling the globe, either in the company of bandmates Jon Wurster (drums) and Jason Narducy (bass) or just by himself. “I was really throwing myself in the songbook and feeling where the audience is at,” he says. “And they were really responding to this very simple, just-me-and-a-guitar setup. And I thought, maybe I shouldn’t be overcomplicating things, ‘word’-ing or ‘craft’-ing it up. Just grab for the simple bits of life we still have control over: our emotions, our relationships.”

After shows, Mould would hang out signing merch and talking to fans. “Sometimes people bring a lot of their lifetime emotional content to me,” he says, “like they’ve compressed all this coal into a tiny little diamond. Sometimes I’m surprised at the weight of it, the heaviness. I’m like, ‘I’m here for you. I’m listening.’ I’m shocked and grateful they share so readily with me. I don’t know what I did to earn that trust.”

Mould has earned that trust with every record he’s made, channelling his own “lifetime emotional content” for songs of wisdom, honesty and volcanic intensity. His first band, Hüsker Dü, bared his angst over furious noise and turbulent melody, an indelible influence on generations that followed. But by the time Nirvana infiltrated the mainstream, Bob Mould had already moved on, having sequestered himself in a farmhouse to lick his wounds and learn new ways to sing his songs. His solo debut, 1989’s folk-rock masterpiece Workbook, was a record of depth and sophistication. Then he pulled another sharp turn, his power-trio Sugar alloying his most melodic songs with his fiercest noise, yielding his most commercially successful work yet.

Over the solo career that followed Sugar’s own mid-90s flameout, he’s displayed a maturing gift for songwriting, transcending the ‘alternative’ tag and recognised alongside key influences like Pete Townshend and Pete Shelley. He’s adrenalized classic forms, alchemised angst into something addictive and powerful. “I’m just trying to figure myself out,” he says. “After 64 years of life – 55 spent writing songs – it’s what I do.” The concepts that shaped the songs of subsequent albums reflect those years. The ruminative Beauty & Ruin (2014) and Patch The Sky (2016) were written in the wake of losing his parents and other loved ones. 2019’s Sunshine Rock was a homage to the early Capitol singles of the Beatles and the Beach Boys, constant companions through his turbulent childhood. The terse, political Blue Hearts (2020) was written and recorded amid the dying days of the first Trump administration.

Here We Go Crazy, meanwhile, arrives at another moment of uncertainty, a time of disruption and fear. Mould sees the songs unfolding like the three acts of a play, each act exploring distinct but related themes. The first handful of songs concern “control versus chaos”, Mould explains. The opening title track contrasts images of nature – deserts, mountains, fault-lines – with the tumult of human life. Inspired by a riff that Mould says “sounded like a fistfight”, ‘Neanderthal’ is “a snapshot from inside my head as a young kid: growing up in a violent household, everything being unsettled, feeling that fight-or-flight response at all times,” while ‘Breathing Room’ is “about feeling isolated, cramped-up, and literally needing that breathing space”.

The furious, dynamic ‘Fur Mink Augurs’ signals the second act, where the darkness descends. The song channels claustrophobia, and “the cold, crazy, late-winter feeling I grew up with in the Adirondacks and in Minnesota. When the cabin fever really sets in deep – when the permafrost is set and it never gets warm – you become frayed, and things can really unravel, quickly.” ‘Lost Or Stolen’ chronicles lives undone by “people losing themselves in their phones,” Mould explains. From this focus, he pulls back and digs into “ideas about depression, addiction, self-medication and collapse… The words just fell out of me.” This anguished middle-passage of the album concludes with the cathartic ‘Sharp Little Pieces’, exploring “the end of innocence, the idea of a young child’s trust being violated. For those of us who lost trust as children, it disappears in a flash, and we spend years struggling to regain that innocence. And maybe it never comes back.”

The song ends bluntly (Mould says the album’s “lack of sophisticated ornamentation is key – I was trying to stay out of the way of the songs, to strip away all the things I used to think were important, all those extra colours and complexities. I didn’t want to get deep into decorating the tree. I wanted to keep it simple, to use the simplest words”), raising the curtain on the closing act. The theme here is lifting oneself out of the darkness; ‘You Need To Shine’ is a song about “looking for the bright sides, the good parts of life, despite everything that’s happened”, Mould says, a sentiment borne out by the song’s spirited holler that “all that madness doesn’t matter anymore”. ‘Thread So Thin’ is “about trying to protect the one you love, and trying to feel protected”, Mould explains, while the closing ‘Your Side’ is a powerful love song from the edge of the darkness, Mould howling “If the world is going down in flames, I want to be by your side”. “We’re heading into a great unknown here,” Mould says, of the wider geopolitical and climate anxieties that inspired these songs. The message here is, simply, focus on that which can save you and deliver you from this moment. “This album talks a lot about uncertainty, helplessness, being on edge,” Mould adds. “How much can we control? How much chaos can we handle? In the end, the answer, the remedy, is placing your trust in unconditional love.”

Mould knows Here We Go Crazy is an album freighted with darkness; “There’s soothing melodies, and there’s lyrical discomfort,” he deadpans. “It’s manic, frantic, complex.” But no one ever came to Bob Mould for good news, for the easy answers. Pop music runs through his veins, as surely as the electricity that drives his chiming hooks into the realms of distortion, but he’s here to give you the truth, his truth. To give you songs that ring true when howled against a tornado of guitar, that compress all that “lifetime emotional content” into some kind of sonic diamond. There’s eleven of those precious gems here, sculpted to make the heaviness easier to bear, somehow. Treasure them.

The Minus 5

… a rock/folk/pop collective captained by Scott McCaughey (see: “Scott McCaughey” c/o “The Internet”, for further reliable information), with Peter Buck often aboard as navigation officer. By design from its inception, the line-up for recordings and live appearances is completely fluid, dependent on musician availability, whim, and wind direction. Collaborators regularly feature friends from R.E.M. (as it once were), Wilco, Decemberists, Posies, and literally hundreds and hundreds of other recalcitrant comrade combos. Everyone gives their all, and no one need be counted on.

On Record Store Day, April 19, 2014, the Minus 5 released its ninth official long-player, the all-new five-LP, 57-song, 211-minute set Scott The Hoople In The Dungeon Of Horror, on long-time home Yep Roc Records. The sprawling but concise work benefits from the participation of both the usual and new suspects, like John Moen, Jeff Tweedy, Bill Rieflin, Linda Pitmon, Nate Query, Jenny Conlee, Ian McLagan, Laura Gibson, Joe Adragna, Ezra Holbrook, Wesley Stace, Casey Neill and more. It was limited to a 750-copy vinyl run (including 100 colored) in a deluxe book-style bound album. It was mined/plundered for two CD/LP releases, Dungeon Gold (2015), and Of Monkees And Men (2016). November 2017 saw the Minus 5’s entry in the holiday sweepstakes, Dear December, which was conveniently released a week after Scott fell down on Kearney Street in San Francisco.

Stroke Manor came to life in a dazzling 2019 Record Store Day package, followed soonly by CD and “regular” vinyl, as well as a summer spate of touring, with M5 line-ups including Peter Buck, Linda Pitmon, Kurt Bloch, Mike Mills, Casey Neill, Jenny Conlee, Jim Talstra, Alia Farah, Paulie Pulvirenti, Steve Drizos, and guests Steve Wynn, Kelli Hogan, Mike Giblin, Mike Ritt, John Perrin… etc. Solid Sound was epic. Camper’s Camp-out was smoldering. Chicago was twice vanquished. Portland was quite honestly magical. As were most other stops along the way.

And now Mott (’74 version) is back for more. The Minus 5 is all IN. Still, Scott The Hoople’s future remains uncertain. As does YOURS.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-minus-5-mn0000898161

Chris Stamey

Anything Is Possible is the latest collection of original material (and one affectionate cover) from North Carolina songwriter / vocalist / guitarist / producer Chris Stamey, an indie rock icon with a long and illustrious history that’s encompassed co-founding seminal avant-pop band the dBs, playing with Alex Chilton in the 70s and more recently with Jody Stephens’s Big Star Quintet, and recording with the all-star smart-pop outfit the Salt Collective. The new album features special guests such as the Lemon Twigs, Pat Sansone (Wilco), Probyn Gregory (Brian Wilson band), and Marshall Crenshaw among others. The album was produced by Stamey at Modern Recording in Chapel Hill, NC. Anything Is Possible is being released by Label 51 Recordings on digital download and streaming platforms on July 11 and 12” LP vinyl, CD, August 8.

“This album is a love letter to the kind of harmonically rich yet often lyrically innocent pop music I heard, on the family turntable and especially on AM radio, growing up in the late 50s and mid-60s in the American South. I have since come to understand more about the nuts and bolts of those songs, but the magic of those first encounters remains,” explains Stamey.

Anything Is Possible’s music was first workshopped in L.A. with members of the Wild Honey Orchestra reading from written scores. The initial basic tracks were then recorded at Overdub Lane (Durham, NC) with Dan Davis (drums), Jason Foureman (acoustic bass), and Charles Cleaver (piano), with Chris singing, playing additional keyboards, guitars, and bass as well as writing the orchestrations. The record was then shaped and completed over the course of a year at Modern Recording with contributions from the Lemon Twigs, Matt Douglas (Mountain Goats), long-time collaborator Mitch Easter, Probyn Gregory (Brian Wilson Band), Marshall Crenshaw, Don Dixon, Brett Harris, Rachel Kiel, Matt McMichaels (Mayflies USA), Kelly Pratt (War On Drugs arranger), Pat Sansone, Robert Sledge (Ben Folds Five), and the Modrec Orchestra. Wes Lachot, NC musician/engineer and internationally lauded studio designer, came on board in the final stages with fresh ears and invaluable advice.

Among the album’s highlights is “I’d Be Lost Without You.” Chris describes the song’s development: “It started with me pounding out the chords on piano, to which Mitch Easter then added a great twangy, reverbed-out Fender Bass VI à la Carol Kaye, aside Rob Ladd’s distinctive ‘orchestral’ snare drum and drumkit flourishes. But when the Lemon Twigs came into the picture with all those harmonies, it morphed into something bigger . . . much bigger. Then Probyn Gregory (flugelhorn, trombone) knew just what icing this cake needed. Although this production evokes the summery sixties L.A. sound, it began differently: with my fascination for Jerome Kern’s ‘All the Things You Are,’ a song that winds through ever-shifting key centers but seems melodically inevitable all the while. Originally, as written on piano, it sounded like a song Chet Baker might have sung, sparse, nocturnal, and intimate. I learned a lot about the Beach Boys recording style from studio work with Alex Chilton, something else I have to thank him for.”

Another standout is the title track. “I began writing this record while listening regularly to the gentle, whimsical music of Harry Nilsson and Brian Wilson.” recalls Stamey, “It all changed when in 2023 I played some shows with the Twigs. Their electric energy reminded me how much fun it was to plug in a guitar and crank it up. I asked Mitch Easter to play drums like he’d play back in high school, when we listened to 60s Brit hitmakers the Move constantly. It was so much fun for me to play Roy Wood bass riffs once again against his Bev Bevan fills and flams. Once Pat Sansone, Michael and Brian D’Addario, and Wes sang the soaring harmonies, I knew we were into something good.”

Chris envisions “When My Ship Comes In” as “a lullaby in the tradition of songs popular in WWII, such as ‘I’ll Be Seeing You,’ a time when couples were separated by war, by distance, not knowing if their ‘ships’ would ever really return home.”

There’s one non-original tune on Anything Is Possible, “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder.” Chris reminisces, “This was a very minimal track in Brian Wilson’s original Pet Sounds version, but that ride cymbal mesmerized me in high school. Here, it’s arranged more as if it were a full-on Wrecking Crew adventure, with Jennifer Curtis playing a million string parts. Again it’s Wes and the Lemon Twigs in the choir, singing parts that were arranged and recorded for the original version, but then left on the cutting-room floor during its mixing. Darian Sahanaja, Wilson’s musical director, kindly let me see the concert scores for these original harmonies and for the original string parts as well, and Probyn advised on some crucial details.”

Chris Stamey began writing and playing music in grade school in Winston-Salem, NC, in the mid 1960s, in what is known now as the Combo Corner scene. In 1976, while studying music composition at UNC-Chapel Hill, he self-released Sneakers, one of the very first American “indie” records. The following year, he relocated to Manhattan to play and record with Alex Chilton in the burgeoning CBGB rock scene, then formed The dB’s with fellow Carolinians Will Rigby, Gene Holder, and Peter Holsapple, with whom he made several acclaimed records of original material, including Stands for deciBels (self-produced with Alan Betrock) and Repercussion (produced by Scott Litt).

During the next decade and a half in New York, Stamey worked with a wide variety of musicians. He recorded well-received solo records for A&M and Warners and was a part of Anton Fier’s Golden Palominos project, alongside an international touring cast that included Michael Stipe (R.E.M.), Jack Bruce (Cream), Carla Bley, and Bernie Worrell (Talking Heads, George Clinton). He continued recording and producing upon returning to NC in 1993.

His recent releases include The Great Escape, Lovesick Blues and Euphoria, as well as Falling Off the Sky with The dB’s and A Brand-New Shade of Blue with the Fellow Travelers. As a producer and a featured singer/songwriter with the Paris-based Salt Collective project, he collaborated with Matthew Caws (Nada Surf), Juliana Hatfield, Richard Lloyd (Television), Matthew Sweet, Peter Holsapple, and Susan Cowsill, among others. As a producer, arranger, and mixer, he has worked with over a hundred artists, including Ryan Adams, Alejandro Escovedo, Kronos Quartet, Flat Duo Jets, Skylar Gudasz, Branford Marsalis, Tift Merritt, Le Tigre, Those Pretty Wrongs, and Yo La Tengo.

From 2010-2018, Stamey was orchestrator and musical director for an international series of concert performances of Big Star’s classic album Third, alongside Big Star’s Jody Stephens, Ray Davies, members of the Posies, R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub, Wilco, and Yo La Tengo; Thank You, Friends, a concert film of these arrangements, was released by Concord in March 2017. He currently tours as a member of Jody Stephens’s Big Star Quintet, whose line-up includes Mike Mills (R.E.M), Pat Sansone (Wilco), and Jon Auer (Posies). His original radio musical about the early ’60s in Manhattan, Occasional Shivers, premiered nationwide on Christmas Day 2016. A “songwriting memoir,” A Spy in the House of Loud (Univ. of Texas Press), was published in 2018, followed in 2019 by his first printed collection, New Songs for the 20th Century, with a companion two-disc CD (Omnivore Recordings).