Scott McCaughey Recovering From Stroke

Scott McCaughey is surely one of the friendliest and funniest fellows – young, fresh or otherwise – I’ve ever crossed paths with in my decades in the music biz trenches. He has been in my thoughts, in the thoughts of a lot of us here at S&S, since word spread that he suffered a major stroke on November 15th, while on a West Coast tour backing up Alejandro Escovedo (along with Peter Buck, Kurt Bloch and Linda Pitmon, longtime friends all). He’s since been receiving care in a San Francisco hospital.

As of right now, the latest info from Scott’s wife Mary Winzig is that “he was in ICU for a week and will need to stay in the hospital for additional days as they work to stabilize him physically. He has also started physical and speech therapy and we have been told that he will require daily speech therapy for the foreseeable future in order to regain his communication abilities.” She added that “he has a long, difficult road ahead to recovery, but with his unsinkable spirit (and with time and hard work), we know that he’ll come back from this and be back in your town rocking soon.”

While we are assuming the tour from Filthy Friends (McCaughey, Buck, Bloch, Pitmon and Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker) scheduled for early next year (including dates at The EARL and the 40 Watt in early February) will be postponed, there’s been no official announcement regarding it yet, so who knows. It’s possible they’ll do it without Scott, although that seems unlikely. In the meantime, The Minus 5’s Christmas album Dear December is just out – loads of fancy guests are on it, including Kelly Hogan, Mike Mills, Colin Meloy, Chuck Prophet, The Posies and Ben Gibbard, just for starters.

If you’re feeling generous, there’s a GoFundMe set up to help cover the costs of Scott’s treatment and therapy (gofundme.com/c3npfr-scott-mccaughey-medical-fund). And also a mailbox if you’d like to send a card or something: Scott McCaughey, PO Box 11500, Portland, OR 97211. You can afford a stamp, can’t you?