Driving past Tim McCoy’s turn-of-the-century Victorian home in Dover, where he lives with his family, wouldn’t give anyone the impression that there is some serious rocking going on in there.

But inside the shed behind the house is a music practice space, a casual shrine to rock ’n’ roll. Posters of many greats adorn the deep red walls—Cash, The Who, The Beatles, The Stones, Dylan, The Kinks and The King, to name a few. The old sign from The Elvis Room lives there, too, along with a leaning stack of cool vintage basses and six-string guitars, amps and musical doodads strewn across the black and white checkered floor. This is a man who loves music. It’s hard to talk about our music scene without almost immediately mentioning Tim McCoy. You’re not likely to find a bigger cheerleader for local music anywhere, and Tim McCoy’s 15-plus years of playing and watching music in the region give him a unique perspective on it all.

What’s more, after years of playing the sideman as bassist, Tim McCoy is finally stepping out to center stage.

In February, McCoy undertook the RPM Challenge to write and record an album in a month and came away with his first solo CD. The final cut is due out this fall, and his first solo performance happens at The Red Door on Monday, May 22.

Other changes are afoot, as well. While his band of almost 10 years, Lemon Fresh Kids, recently decided to take a hiatus, his first band, Heavens to Murgatroid, has reunited and plan to put out a new record of their own. It’ll be the first since they called it a day in 1998. This Thursday, HTM plays with Boston’s The Gentlemen and The Dents at the Stone Church in Newmarket.

The imposing McCoy throws himself around the stage with reckless abandon, and his energetic and animated approach to playing has endeared him to many a music fan through the years. In fact, it was this full-bore approach that appealed to me when I invited him two years ago to play bass in my band, Hokum. He credits his on-stage presence to The Clash and a tennis racket.

“The first time I heard the first Clash record coming from my older brother’s bedroom, I thought ‘Holy shit! This is the best thing I’ve ever heard!” McCoy says with animation. “When he’d leave, I’d go into his bedroom and play it over and over and jump around with a tennis racket, like it was a guitar.”
McCoy happily devoured music whenever he could through high school and college, regularly attending shows by bigger regional acts like Boston’s The Neighborhoods and national acts like The Stray Cats.
“I was a massive Stray Cats fan,” he says. “Huge.”

His uncle Nathan’s house was a magical and influential musical place, too.

“I always remember going to the farm, my Uncle Nathan’s. He had stacks and stacks of vinyl leaning up against his bed, just everywhere. We’d pick through them and pick out Sabbath or Lou Reed,” says McCoy, who always seems to be wearing his old school black leather Ramones-style jacket when out on the town. “When you’re 12 or 13 you don’t know what you like, and that was a part of it for me.”

When he got old enough go to clubs, he says that all in all there weren’t more than a handful of local venues that would have rock music in the 1980s, and there were perhaps 5-10 local rock acts total—bands like Gandhi’s Lunchbox, Hard Rain (Rod Picott’s old group), Slaid Cleaves’ Moxie Men, and The Queers. “The Meadowbrook was more like The Metal-brook,” he jokes, “It was a place to see hair bands or hair metal cover bands.”

“The Press Room was happening. And the Ranger Club, which was where Spin was,” he says, “That was kind of a metal place too, kind of a rock club. There were a lot of cheesy spandex-y bands. A lot of ’em.”

There was one rock band, though, that was particularly memorable.

“I went to Market Square Day for the first time, like in the mid 1980s,” says McCoy, “and I came across this band playing across from the North Church. I was like “Holy shit, who are these guys?’ They sounded just like The Jam to me.”

The band was It Figures, featuring guitarist/singer Rick Twombly.

“I started going to the shows, became friends with Rick and eventually managed the band,” he says.

McCoy lent his contagious enthusiasm and ever-positive attitude to securing the band gigs or radio shows, whatever they needed. His great passion for music didn’t escape Twombly’s eye. When the group disbanded in the late 1980s, Twombly told McCoy he should pick up the bass. The two started Heavens to Murgatroid shortly after.

By 1992, HTM had expanded from a trio to a quartet, adding new drummer Al Jordan and second guitarist Tim Nelson to the mix. The band had put out a single EP by that point, but wanted to hit the road with a new record. So, they took a new batch of songs and headed south to Boston’s legendary Fort Apache in a big pink school bus that they purchased and turned into a touring vehicle.

“We had a plan, and with everything we did, we went for it,” says McCoy. “We thought ‘Let’s completely go for it a hundred miles an hour. We’re going to go on tour and we’re gonna be happening.’ Not only did we not know any better, but I’m glad we didn’t. It was phenomenal.”

The band spent tens of thousands of dollars on the CD, entitled “!.” The album is a brilliant power-pop collection with jangly guitars and catchy punk/pop choruses, like on the band’s trademark song “EMM.” It’s still one of the best CDs ever put out locally.

The band played a bazillion shows around the area and got plenty of good press nationally for “!” when they toured from coast to coast. By the mid 1990s, HTM was part of a promising and thriving Seacoast music scene, fueled by bands like Groovechild, Thanks to Gravity, Truffle and Percy Hill.

“In ’93 you could play at 10 clubs (in) downtown (Portsmouth). You could play everywhere from UNH Fieldhouse to The Rosa, The Brewery, The Elvis Room, Nortons (a now defunct club in Kittery), The Stone Church. That was the heyday of when you could play—oddly enough none of ’em were in Dover,” which McCoy notes has traded places with the Portsmouth of old, hosting loads of bands in its now-numerous clubs.

Ultimately though, like many bands, HTM ran their course and bowed out gracefully (which is to say raucously) with a packed show at The Stone Church featuring the band’s many past members.

“It was an electric night. It ended up being 2 a.m., and the place is still rocking. It was a classic Church night. It was bittersweet. We left on a good note.” They’re starting back up on that note, too. With Twombly and McCoy reunited, their new HTM record is due out in the fall.

“Creatively I’ve had an awakening over the last few months,” says McCoy when asked about Lemon Fresh Kids, the band he formed with Leo Ganley and Norm Fuller after the demise of Murgatroid. The band played together for 10 years and produced an EP and three full-length releases—first as Weed, then Weed Inc. and finally as Lemon Fresh Kids.

“We just got to a point where it had plateaued a little bit and interest had waned a little bit,” he says, “So, instead of getting pissed off at each other, we just decided to have a conversation, and take a break.”

As for his RPM album? McCoy couldn’t be happier.

“The month of February was a complete clusterfuck,” he says, chuckling. “Living life, writing and recording every night until the wee hours, then having work, and babies—it was 24/7 all month.”

Fans of McCoy’s projects through the years will surely find it fascinating to hear his undiluted songwriting sensibility. “Born With a Face for Radio” is both poppier and more rock all at the same time. There are shades of Elvis Costello, The Replacements and The Ramones throughout.

“ I haven’t written in that kind of a pressure atmosphere,” says McCoy of his RPM experience. “I want that kind of experience again. You can take 10 years to write a record, tell people you’re working on it. You can never get it done. There’s always a reason to say no. There’s always a million reasons why you can’t get something done.”

Tim McCoy proves that there’s also a million reasons why you can.