The next night, I’m sitting in a Portland bar with Malkmus and his Jicks: drummer John Moen, bassist Joanna Bolme and back-up singer Larimer. It’s a running joke around Portland that Larimer is Malkmus’ Yoko Ono, in part for her singing style, which, shall we say, has a very casual relationship with the notion of being in key. But she’s much more than just the candy cane on Malkmus’ tree; she’s probably given him the confidence, if not the itch, to strike out on his own. That’s a beautiful thing for one human being to pass along to another.

(This is the part of the story that’s in parentheses. It’s just a theory, and Malkmus, notoriously reluctant to reveal himself in his songs, would never admit this, but I think the song “Jenny & The Ess-Dog” from his solo album is really about their relationship. Some of the names have been changed, but you don’t need a secret decoder ring to figure out who the “S” Dog is. Even though the facts have been disarranged—“She’s a rich girl, he’s the son of a Coca-Cola middleman”—the song has the same vibe Malkmus and Larimer give off when they’re together. It sounds like summer, like falling in love. It’s the catchiest song he’s written since “Cut Your Hair.”)

Moen has pulled drum duty for the Fastbacks and Dharma Bums. He has his own band called the Maroons, which, he says, “doesn’t get off its ass much.” At 32, he looks like a regular-joe version of actor Greg Kinnear, exuding the same disarming niceness and likability. They used to call guys like him “happy go lucky,” but nobody is this happy or lucky anymore. Moen once made his living as a tree surgeon, but “it just didn’t go well with rock ‘n’ roll,” he says. “You gotta be alert when you are running a chipper and climbing trees with a chainsaw in your hand.” Moen owns exactly two Pavement albums: Wowee Zowee and another one he can’t quite remember. “I’m a poor record buyer,” he says, as if his casual Pavement fan status somehow undermines his legitimacy as Malkmus’ drummer.

Moen met Bolme when they played together in one of the latter incarnations of the Spinanes. Before that, Bolme was in Calamity Jane. “It was pre-riot-grrrl, all-girl punk rock,” she says, adding she first heard Pavement on tour with Calamity Jane, listening to Slanted And Enchanted over and over in the tour van. Until recently, she played bass in the Minders, a Portland psych/pop outfit with Elephant 6 connections. Oh yeah, one more thing (and she’ll likely want to strangle me for printing this): She was, on and off for years, the love of Elliott Smith’s life. It’s a safe bet many of Smith’s songs are, in some way, about her. Bolme met Malkmus when the Spinanes’ Rebecca Gates brought her around to his place to play Scrabble.

The next day, the Jicks are rehearsing in the basement of the house Malkmus shares with Larimer, a charming Victorian two-story skirted with a spacious yard. It’s located in a much more modest neighborhood than his last digs. Malkmus is looking to buy, but he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for.

The Jicks have yet to play a proper gig, and they’re a little nervous about their impending live debut in New York. The basement is small and cramped and barely fits the band, so I sit alone up in the living room, listening through the heating vent. I hear Malkmus explaining to touring keyboardist Mike Clark exactly which sounds from the album he’ll be expected to play and which ones will be sampled from the record—which turns out to be quite a few.

“That’s cheating,” says Clark.

“That’s OK,” says Malkmus.

As the Jicks run through the material from Malkmus’ solo album, I visually catalog the contents of the living room. On the turntable: Swaddling Songs by Mellow Candle, an obscure, late-‘60s Irish psych/folk outfit that sounds a bit like Jefferson Airplane. According to Malkmus, an original copy of Swaddling Songs fetches $900. (He has a less-valuable later pressing.) Sitting on deck: Fairport Convention’s What We Did On Our Holidays, R.E.M.’s Fables Of The Reconstruction, Thin Lizzy’s Johnny The Fox and an album of Greek cooking tips. Stacks and stacks of precious vinyl sit nearby. On the bookshelf: In Touch by Paul Bowles, Force Majeure by Bruce Wagner, Collected Poems by Philip Larkin, Vectors And Smoothable Curves by William Bronk, Mexico City Blues by Jack Kerouac and a book about Japanese film directors. The shelves are full, and there are still boxes and boxes of books waiting to be unpacked. On the refrigerator hangs a Christmas card from Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and her husband, Lance Bangs, who directed two of Pavement’s videos. Inside the card is a photocopy of Tucker’s sonogram above the words, “From Corin & Lance And The Little Guy.” There are a few Steve Keene paintings scattered about the house, the collector’s edition of Scrabble and an eight-track player.

A couple hours later, practice ends and everyone sits around the living room sipping herbal tea. Malkmus is ridiculously attired in a misshapen Stetson (not unlike the one Hoss wore on Gunsmoke), an Evergreen T-shirt, sweatpants, beige running shoes worn like slippers and ugly brown-tinted shades that even David Hasselhoff couldn’t pull off back in the Knight Rider days. Larimer gives him shit for the sweatpants.

“This is my practice outfit,” Malkmus says with mild defensiveness. “(Black Flag guitarist) Greg Ginn always wore sweatpants, and he looked good.”

Malkmus plays DJ: Mellow Candle’s “Silversong” (which he wants the Jicks to cover), Sparks’ “Wonder Girl,” an obscure ‘60s L.A. group called Touch and Buzz Martin (a local logger who made two country albums of modest kitsch value). Malkmus and Larimer have been taking yoga classes, and he shows off some moves. He assumes a perfect Tree Pose, then The Rabbit, and then he curves his body into a little donut hole.

Malkmus is 34, but he’s just now getting around to looking late 20s. He still dresses like an untucked tennis pro. If he was a car, he would be a Volvo with ancient plates. He’s still an inside joke. On record, Malkmus sounds like he’s talking when he sings, but he’s actually singing. His speaking voice is a few notches flatter in affect and even more devoid of emotion. He’s nearly impossible to read—“inscrutable” is Webster’s word for it—which is only compounded by his habit of looking away from you when he speaks. If you look up “laconic” in the dictionary, in some editions you’ll see his picture next to the definition: “concise to the point of seeming rude or mysterious.” He lolls about contentedly on the floor, but when he becomes aware I’m taking notes, he spins the conversation into verbal blind alleys. He gets out a book by Ronald Firbank.

“He wrote a book in the ‘20s called Prancing Nigger—he shouldn’t have done that,” says Malkmus, with an impish grin. “W.H. Auden said he judged people on the basis of whether or not they liked Firbank. I have to decide whether or not I like him.”

Are you a big fan of W.H. Auden?

“Not really,” he says dismissively, getting up to put the Psychedelic Furs’ debut on the turntable.

Being Stephen Malkmus is ... hard to figure out when you’re the guy writing this article. Malkmus really isn’t much help. So I ring up the Pavement guys. Bassist Mark Ibold doesn’t return my phone calls. The wife of drummer Steve West calls to say he’s on tour in Europe with his band Marble Valley and probably won’t be available. Original Pavement drummer Gary Young, who recorded all the band’s stuff up until 1994’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, agrees to talk but isn’t home when I call at the agreed-upon time; his wife will call back to say Young is out of town and won’t be available for comment.

Good ol’ Nastanovich—Pavement’s percussionist, Moogist and designated shouter—is happy to talk. He’s remained friends with Malkmus and will be road-managing the Jicks, a duty he performed for Pavement’s Crooked Rain tour. “I earned the nickname Harsh Harold,” he says. “I was kind of a slave driver.” Nastanovich (AOL Keyword: The Nas) could see the end of Pavement coming a long way off. He’s just surprised it lasted as long as it did.

“Each tour would end, and it would pretty much be the end of the band,” he says. “And then we would regroup again 10 months later. After the Terror Twilight tour, it was left that it would be on hiatus for a long, long time, if not forever. It was left that we might get back together one day, but it was gonna take a lot longer than just 10 months. I have no regrets. We were an extremely fortunate rock band that got to do things our way and still have a career. It was a great way to spend the ‘90s.”

So, Bob, who is Stephen Malkmus?

“An unusually talented guitarist and songwriter,” he says. “I remember back in college being pretty confident that I was friends with one of the best songwriters in the country in Malkmus and one of the best writers in America in Berman. Not that they both weren’t huge pains in the ass.”

Thanks, Nas.

Kannberg answers the phone, and although he’s a little wary at first, he agrees to talk. Kannberg (AOL Keyword: Spiral Stairs) is finishing up work on the debut album by his band the Preston School Of Industry. Kannberg first met Malkmus in the third grade, though they wouldn’t actually become friends until after high school when they bonded over a mutual love of British post-punk. His first impression of Malkmus: “He was the bratty rich kid.” I ask him how he learned Pavement was breaking up.

“Six months after the Terror Twilight tour, Steve sent me this email that he wanted me to put up on the Pavement website saying that we broke up,” says Kannberg. “I was like, ‘Oh, we broke up!?’ I spoke with the other guys, and they were surprised. Steve’s whole thing was, ‘They should have known. They should have read between the lines.’ I told Steve that I wouldn’t put [the break-up announcement] up on the website until he talked to the rest of the band first. He never got back to me ... I’m proud of what we did with Pavement. The way it ended left a bad taste in my mouth, but I’ll get over it. I want to stay positive and leave the negativity to Steve Malkmus.”

Kannberg calls me a week later, concerned he came across as bitter. Not to worry, Scott.

I phone Malkmus’ dad, Stephen Sr., knowing full well Junior probably won’t be pleased. The elder Malkmus is, understandably, very proud of his son, even if Pavement’s music isn’t exactly his cup of tea. “He’s so darn talented,” he says.

How would he describe his son?

“Kinda quiet, very intellectual. He thinks about things a little differently than other people in his line of work.”

Yes, I suppose he does.

Next, I call Chris Lombardi, who along with Gerard Cosloy, owns and operates Matador Records, Malkmus’ label. Yes, it’s true, Lombardi says, that Matador dissuaded Malkmus from calling his new project the Jicks, at least on the album cover. “We kind of freaked out,” says Lombardi. “It was going to be this Carter Family thing: Stephen Jick, Joanna Jick, John Jick. I was like, ‘Stephen, you have to understand that people know who Pavement is, but they don’t necessarily know who Stephen Malkmus is. And they certainly don’t know who the Jicks are.’ I mean, if you listen to it, it’s Stephen’s record. He’s exuding this new confidence, you can see it in the cover photos. In the old Pavement photos, he’s hiding behind the other guys half the time. He’s stepping out.”

And just who is Stephen Malkmus?

“That’s a tough one,” says Lombardi. “He’s a cryptic guy, to start with. One of the smartest and most talented people I know. He’s confused me many times.”

Finally, I email Berman. Sensing the direct approach is getting me nowhere, I send him this question: What epitaph should be written on Malkmus’ headstone, god forbid?

Berman emails back: “Being dead’s OK. It’s alright. I don’t mind much.”

It’s a few weeks later, and Malkmus’ Jicks are making their New York City debut at the Bowery Ballroom. The show sold out almost as soon as it was announced. The crowd is heavily weighted with industry insiders, media types, Matador friends and family, various hipster hangers-on and guys who are the coolest dudes in their dormitory. There are also some in the audience who would like nothing more than to be able to report that indie rock’s emperor has no clothes. By now, the critics’ verdicts on Stephen Malkmus have begun to come in, and the consensus is a solid B-plus from anyone who’s been paying attention since Slanted and four-star hyperbole from anyone who’s just trying to look hip with “the kids.” Ibold is in the crowd, as is Jon Spencer. Matador’s solution to the brand-name recognition problem presented by Malkmus going solo is to hand out T-shirts to everyone in attendance that read: Who The Fuck Is Stephen Malkmus? Good question. By this point I, too, have been putting the “fuck” in there whenever I ask it.

Malkmus elects to begin the set with “Jo Jo’s Jacket,” and maybe it’s just opening-night jitters, but his Jicks look and sound like extras in the movie adaptation of the sequel to Pavement. Though the crowd responds warmly, Malkmus asks that the audience keep in mind that this is their first show. Someone semi-seriously calls out “Judas!” which, like everything Malkmus/Pavement-related, seems to come with those little quotation-mark hand gestures attached, as in, “This is sort of my generation’s Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall, but not really.” I ask the stranger next to me what he thinks.

“Pretty good,” he says, “although the chick singing is kind of a distraction.”

Actually, that’s Malkmus’ girlfriend.

“Right on! I’m all for having a girlfriend that looks 17!”

Rumor has it Elastica’s Justine Frischmann was supposed to play guitar with the Jicks tonight, but it didn’t work out. Malkmus and Frischmann have been “just friends” for years. The Ess-Dog always stayed at her London flat whenever Pavement was in town. “I remember one morning we came by to pick him up,” said Nastanovich. “He comes walking out, and our roadie says, ‘It looks like she did his hair with her thighs.’” You almost have to wonder if she didn’t befriend Malkmus just to piss off Blur’s Damon Albarn, her ex-boyfriend and an avowed Pavement fan. I think back to the first night I met Malkmus for this story, in Seattle on New Year’s Eve, and how he was wearing a Mogwai T-shirt that read: Blur Are Shite.

Truth be told, the Jicks could use a second guitarist right about now. With his voice and guitar pushed high in the sound mix, Malkmus seems, at first, a little naked without some Pavement to surround him, diffusing attention and spreading out the blame. But Malkmus has always cloaked himself in good tunes, and by the time the Jicks get to “Church On White,” a song with miles and miles of style, he seems impeccably attired. Adorned. Imperial. Like the Grace Kelly of indie rock.

It’s then I realize that being Stephen Malkmus ... is, well, something only he can do. Something he has to do all by himself.