Scott McMicken: In The Company of Strangers
photo: Wyndham Garnett
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Scott McMicken truly thought his indie-hustle days were behind him. But, to paraphrase an enduring movie reference, every time he thinks he’s out, they pull him back in.
“I had a lot of experiences that I was hungry to try, but the idea of getting a record deal—and certainly the idea of going on tour—were things I was eager to set aside to just focus, in a pure way, on pursuing ideas and experiences,” the Dr. Dog co-founder and co-frontman says in mid-January, while checking in from his current homebase of Asheville, N.C. “But as this record developed, it landed me back into more traditional music biz stuff—seeking a record deal in order to simply make the thing happen. And then, of course, that comes with this implicit agreement that, if you help me do this record, then I’ll do everything I can to promote it. And that was a surprising turn of events. I did not expect myself, just a month or two after ending touring with Dr. Dog, to be out there shopping for a record deal.”
He’s talking about his Anti- LP Shabang, the songwriter’s first solo endeavor since Dr. Dog completed their last tour in late 2021 and first offering with his new ensemble, Scott McMicken and The Ever-Expanding. The 13-song set is a curious next step for McMicken—the work of a new combo filled with seasoned sidemen and studio vets, arriving just over a year after he and singer/bassist Toby Leaman decided to put their beloved indie band on the back burner.
McMicken first started tinkering with the songs that ended up on Shabang during the pandemic. At the time, he was living in Tucson, Ariz., and had recently moved into a larger house with ample space to record. Hunkered down for a prolonged period of time, he decided to up his engineering game. And while McMicken had consistently released solo and home recordings during his Dr. Dog days and even started Press On Records—which specializes in cassette and vinyl releases—he eventually began to feel like his latest batch of compositions were actually the beginning of something entirely new.
“I’ve always compartmentalized the home recordings as fundamentally low fidelity, low bar, more experimental— whatever I can pull off with whatever limited equipment I keep in the house,” he says. “I had been working on all this material for a long time, with a sense of ambition about wanting it to be better than anything I’d ever been able to make alone before. And that went on for a year and a half or so. It was easy to see how much things had changed for me—the way I was thinking about making music, the way I was going about recording it, the ways in which all of that was influencing what I was writing. So much inspiration came out of these realizations about the purity of music and its fundamental playfulness and soulfulness, which all ties in with a certain psychological backdrop. The process I put myself through was inspiring and educational.”
During that final Dr. Dog tour in the fall of 2021, McMicken connected with drummer and producer Nick Kinsey, an old friend who opened several shows as a member of Elvis Perkins in Dearland. Though McMicken had initially hoped to complete the LP on his own at home—raising the bar in terms of what he could accomplish when left to his own devices—he eventually decided that his new material would benefit from Kinsey’s touch.
“I was sitting and having a smoke with Toby and Scott in the alley behind the 9:30 Club in D.C. after they got offstage, and Scott said that he was working on a record,” Kinsey says. “And he said to me: ‘You’ll know what to do.’ I was flattered and, after the tour was over, I asked him to send me what he was working on. I listened immediately and that began several months of phone conversations— talking about music, trading playlists and getting our values and vision sorted out.”
“Ironically, what I really learned during this little woodshed session on my own was how incredibly beautiful spontaneity and collaboration can be— and how beautiful and refreshing it is when you’re not in control of the music and you’re just throwing your trust into a moment and being present,” McMicken adds of his thought process before reaching out to Kinsey. “But the music that taught me that lesson didn’t quite feel that way. It felt like one guy in control of everything. It did not embody that magical spontaneity and that alchemy of collaboration. And it took me a minute to just accept that maybe it wasn’t done.”
Kinsey and McMicken continued tossing around songs until they met up in June 2022. McMicken admits that he spent much of that period “letting the music mellow out some—letting the rigid design inside of all of that stuff wash away and creating a new space to reenter those tunes,” before they reconvened for seven days at The Chicken Shack, the drummer’s studio in Stanfordville, N.Y. Built on Kinsey’s family property in the Hudson Valley—against a backdrop of pastures, creeks and a saltwater pond—the beatific setting helped foster the recording sessions’ cozy, lo-fi family vibe.
“Initially, when I thought about how much time I had until we met up, I was stressed,” McMicken says. “That was always the case when Dr. Dog had a project coming up. That little interim period can be weird and anxiety-inducing. But, by the time we met, what we had was not so faithful to the versions I had done on my own.”
McMicken shared approximately 40 ideas with Kinsey for him to sift through, before whittling that list down to the 13 that made Shabang. “The vision morphed and evolved as we went,” Kinsey says. “I’ve never spent so much time in this preproduction mode on a record and it helped us out. By the time we were actually in the studio together, we were completely on the same page about the objectives and didn’t need to have any sort of existential conversations.”
And, after playing with his lifelong friends in Dr. Dog for decades, McMicken was eager to hand over the reins to Kinsey, charging him with the task of putting together a band of “complete strangers.” The drummer brought together a core group of players who exist in a constellation connecting the disparate worlds of Sean Lennon, Kevin Morby and Daptone Records: Elizabeth Pupo-Walker, Neil Ochoa, Jared Samuel, Zach Tenorio and Paul Castelluzzo, as well as one of McMicken’s associates, Michael Nau. Not only had McMicken never played with any of the musicians besides Nau before, but the rest of his collaborators also found themselves in a first-date situation.
“That was a big variable factor, man,” McMicken says. “I’m interested in having new experiences. None of us had really played together so we were all on our best behavior. In that traditionally stressful situation of the studio, anything that will foster your best behavior and objectivity— your most ego-lessness—is a virtue. You’re more inclined to be open-minded and there’s no weird resentments. There’s no imbalance of power, there’s just the purity of ‘Here we are in this wild thing. What kind of joy can we get out of this?’”
“Scott and I talked a lot about how we wanted the process to be focused around a live ensemble and how we wanted to leave as little overdubs as possible. So I wanted players I trusted on a personal level— people who not only have strong creative voices but also generous collaborative instincts and manageable egos. I wanted people who I thought would understand the aesthetic we were going for and who would get along well,” Kinsey says. “I wanted to call my squad—my folks, my friends. I basically wanted to assemble a team that could do anything and have a great time.”
Dap-Kings saxophonist Cochemea Gastelum and Antibalas trumpeter Jordan McLean also contributed the sessions, and McMicken quickly found that the loose atmosphere rubbed off on tunes like the breezy “Letters to the Editor,” the swampy “Mountain Lion” and the groovy “Restart,” whose title can be seen as McMicken’s current mission statement.
“It was so potent meeting all these people in the hot seat and setting so many strong parameters,” McMicken says. “I could start to look around and see that the same thing was happening for everybody— not just the songwriter guy whose name was going to be on this thing. Everybody seemed to be getting a lot out of the experience in a pure, simple and beautiful way, and that’s when it opened up. Over the years, I’ve had plenty of experiences that nodded in that direction—as far as having done a lot of work with Dr. Dog, where we recorded live and we were looking for that type of goal. But this was the boldest print version of ‘We have chosen this methodology in the service of our deeper goals about what we want this music to feel like.’ We just wanted it to feel real and inviting—easy to access and easy to understand. So we said, ‘Let’s just try to make that happen among ourselves and throw some mics around.’”
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In certain ways Dr. Dog lived out the ultimate rock-and-roll fantasy. Formed by childhood friends and collaborators McMicken and Leaman in the late ‘90s, the Philadelphia-bred group started gaining traction while opening for My Morning Jacket in 2004—after they slipped Jim James at CD outside a show. Dr. Dog went on to release 10 critically acclaimed albums, signing with Anti-, playing mega-festivals like Bonnaroo and Coachella and making multiple late-night television appearances. (They also graced the cover of Relix in 2008.) With both McMicken and Leaman contributing original material and a versatile band supporting them, they quickly carved out their own place on the post-jam circuit, thanks to their Beach Boys harmonies, rootsy instrumentation and old-school aesthetic.
Yet, during their ascent through the club and theater ranks, they remained a working band who faced the same financial obstacles that plague many groups who never make it to the arena[1]superstar level—and the occasional communication issues that any group of creative individuals must navigate.
The band was actually hoping to retire from the road in 2020, before the pandemic forced them to punt their announcement. In fact, the musicians had just completed a run of shows right before the live-music world shut down and were formally planning to bring things to a halt after a few more summer dates and festival appearances.
“In our minds, it was our last tour,” McMicken says. “We had already spent a year or so hypothesizing about if that might be a good idea and were going to make it known that our upcoming shows were ‘our last shows.’ And, of course, all that got canceled. But meanwhile, in this weird twist of fate, the pandemic essentially landed us in a new reality of what life would be like when you are not on tour. It was a dress rehearsal.
“It’s become hard to be in a band that tours a lot, for obvious reasons,” he adds. “And even as things have opened back up, I’m aware these days of how challenging and expensive and harrowing it can be to tour, just as I experienced when we did the last tour that we ended up putting together. We are fortunate that Dr. Dog took this particular time on earth to take a break from touring.”
While McMicken admits that Dr. Dog’s brotherhood remained strong, he and Leaman both agreed that it was time for a change. And in the summer of 2021, the group issued a frank statement while simultaneously announcing a final round of shows leading up to a hometown New Year’s run: “Firstly, we are touring in the fall! Lastly, we are done touring after that. Done touring for good! It is a disturbing thing to read, I’m sure, and trust me, an equally unsettling thing to write, but it’s all good. It’s important to us that you understand that this is not a breakup or anything like that. We don’t know what Dr. Dog will do, we just know it won’t include going on tour, except the tour we’re announcing now, which is going to rule.”
“Initially, it just felt like the intuitive thing to do,” McMicken explains. “Toby said, ‘I think making this decision to stop touring feels like the most Dr. Dog thing to do.’ Which was essentially his way of saying that if we’re operating according to what feels right—as we have been doing for a number of years, guided by our own insular logic—then this feels like the right thing to do. There was no single dramatic element that forced the hand of that decision. It was just one of those things where you sense the need for a change, and you take some time to talk about it and try out a few possible plans. And so we fumbled our way into this vague sense of wanting to make a change within the structure of the band.”
He goes on to note that the decision was also a way for the members of the band to shake up some preexisting patterns.
“We had just been in such a very well-worn path, not so much creatively, but structurally—this cyclical nature,” McMicken admits. “Toby and I would each get to do five or six songs every year and a half and then tour that a whole bunch. We don’t drag our heels through any facet of it. But, in a most zoomed-out, objective sense, that is a strongly demanding structure on your creative essence. For he and I, around the same time, the sparkle was wearing off and the curiosities about what other structures life might offer us as songwriters and musicians started to emerge.”
During the past eight years, McMicken experienced some personal changes as well. In 2015, he met his now wife, who was living in Tucson at the time. He had already moved out of Philadelphia to Connecticut, where his family was, and, after being bi-coastal for a bit, relocated across the country. In Arizona, he immersed himself in the local arts community, where he notes former Dr. Dog member Dimitri Manos had also relocated.
“My wife’s sister is Dimitri’s partner, so it was all within this group of friends that things unfolded,” he says. “It was a new and surprising twist of fate but I also felt at home there. And it was intriguing to really settle into the desert in terms of it being such a wildly different way of life, environmentally. And I found that affecting my relationship with music. That, along with my wife’s musical tastes and how much I’ve absorbed from her musicality, ushered in a new era—a lot of interesting musical twists came about through that.”
As he discussed Dr. Dog’s next steps with Leaman, McMicken was also itching to spend more time closer to home, expanding his studio to be more than simply “maximizing a living room or guest bedroom.” Eventually, those same desires brought him to Asheville, where he spent time polishing up Shabang.
“It’s a catalyst that changed my life, with where everything was at with Dr. Dog and making those changes,” he says of his decision to move forward on his new solo release. “Generally speaking, the way I was looking at my future was much less music business-oriented. Dr. Dog planned out our albums well in advance. After a while, it felt like, ‘Oh, man, the time between when you make the plan and when you actually get to go to work is harrowing because you’re just left with your thoughts and you’re developing all of these ideas and visions.’ You feel as though you’re alienating yourself from the collective aspect of what a band is. And then there’s also this pressure to keep everybody informed on where your mind’s going.”
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As he prepares to drop Shabang, McMicken once again finds himself at a musical crossroads. So far, The Ever-Expanding have only played one show, at Levon Helm’s Woodstock, N.Y.-area barn this past fall. McMicken will regroup the ensemble for a brief run in April, though he laughs off any lofty notions of taking the band out in a van for a six-week tour.
“That show at Levon’s revealed just how much more life there is in there to explore,” he says. “It felt truly inspiring and open. Being a performer in that context, having only been a performer in one other context my entire life, was really radical for me—just the simple thing of feeling a sense of myself within the collaborative group. I felt much more a part of an ensemble. Because of how big the band is and how much sound is happening and the improvisation, it’s very easy to lose your ego and just feel like one little, tiny piece of something. And to be able to have felt that, as the guy singing the songs that he wrote, was an incredibly inspiring thing.”
He’s also excited to continue recording with Dr. Dog and says that they are currently working on new music.
“I actually think it’s to the benefit of whatever we do creatively moving forward,” he says of retiring from touring. “It’s not that we are exhausted of one another. But getting out of this structure has been so rewarding and wonderful. I’m this guy who’s worked with this band for so long and we’ve worked to this point where we understand the demand for Dr. Dog. We know what types of venues to book, and we can anticipate how many tickets we might expect to sell. We can use all that info to frame a structure around our tour and production and what we can afford. But just because I achieved that within the context of this band doesn’t really say a lot about what I’ve achieved as an individual on this planet. Because me going out trying to play shows isn’t just like, ‘Well, anyone who’d go see Dr. Dog will go see me.’ It needs time to develop and, as it grows, we can do more.”
He sees The Ever-Expanding as both the name of his new solo vehicle and an umbrella term for his future projects—a loose collective that can draw in his current collaborators and other potential creative partners as needed. Nau suggested the moniker while they were in the studio working on what would become the eponymous tune, “Ever Expanding.”
“It was one of those moments where you have a visceral positive reaction,” McMicken says. “The more I thought about it in the days that followed, the more I was like, ‘I’m definitely at a point where I have so many things I want to do and so many things that I wanna try. And all of that is within this empirical context of a solo guy coming out of the band thing. But I would like to somehow unify all of my efforts and all of these varying different ideas and experiments.’ It felt like Ever[1]Expanding was the perfect title for me to proceed with.”
Closer to home, McMicken has a local gig playing with The Hypos; the ensemble also features Southeastern garage-punk legend Greg Cartwright, known for his long tenure on Merge, and other area players. After working the Smoky Mountain circuit for a bit, they’ve already started jamming together in the studio.
“I’m putting things in two lanes,” McMicken says. “I’ve got my solo career based around Scott McMicken and The Ever-Expanding, and there’s the potential for that to become anything it might need to become, depending on the vision of a certain project. And then I have a group of people I can play with locally that doesn’t require planning or financial backing. We can just play together often and explore our sound in the shed in my yard. So I have my day-to-day workhorse band, and then my bigger dream/open-ended The Ever-Expanding concept. I’ve been writing a whole lot. So many things have fortified my relationship with songwriting these days—a big affirmation that has left me feeling like I can access music in some pretty holistic ways that feel sustainable and productive.”
