Mike Doughty and His Band Wonderful
Event on 2011-11-06 20:00:00

Mike Doughty and His Band Fantastic

When Mike Doughty released his second official solo album, 2008's Golden Tasty, the upshot from fans was intense. &quotOh, men and women despised it,&quot Doughty says. &quotThey renowned as it 'too pop,' 'garbage,' 'fluff.' The guy from The Onion said approximately thing about how it was like watching Allen Ginsberg toss aside his poetic genius to write scripts for The King of Queens.'&quot (The Onion guy also admitted: &quotOkay, maybe not that poor.&quot) Maybe the poppy, unrestrictive Golden Tasty didn't join with approximately of his fans because the diehards anticipate each thing Doughty releases to be cerebral, and, well, honestly complex. Right after all, a lot of 1st fell in tenderness the New York-based singer, songwriter, guitarist, and poet during his time leading New York's Soul Coughing, whose output prominently featured Doughty's bone-dry, half-rapped vocals, syncopated guitar-playing stylishness, and nimble, no cost-associative lyrics. When he broke up that band in 2000 and nature-released his solo debut, the entirely acoustic Skittish, Doughty's consultation was polarized. &quotSome despised it, approximately loved it far better than Soul Coughing,&quot Doughty says. &quotI tend to take sharp missing turns. Each time I place out a confirmation, the consultation appears to like what I did two years ago greater. You'd judge I could shrug it off simply because that's what often happens, but it often gets to me.&quot Doughty admits that his new album, Sad Man Pleased Man, is a upshot to his fans' upshot and that he's giving the individuals what they want. &quotI in fact went for the 'na-na-na's' and the simple choruses and stuff on Golden,&quot he says. &quotThe songs on Sad Man are more arcane and convoluted songwriting-sensible, although they're sparer in terms of instrumentation. Though my choruses are still simple – I be idiotic about taking phrases and repeating them ad infinitum.&quot The largely acoustic Sad Man Pleased Man is a premeditated return to each thing folks tenderness about Mike Doughty, so if you haven't dipped into his solo catalog (a lot more on that below), it's time to find out what his dedicated fanbase has recognized all along. Doughty makes albums that simmer with verbal wit, and Sad Man Pleased Man is no exclusion with its songs about nearly everything from link bust-ups (Doughty was going through 1 while he was recording it) to his astute observations about the American economy. &quotPleasure on Credit&quot is a celebratory tale of the American person paying in the face of the U.S.'s credit addiction crushing the world's markets &quotLord noble&quot is all sly drug references, like &quotTango and Money&quot and &quotDr. Nova,&quot which are both brand-names for bags of heroin. &quotThat song is sort of like my 'Walk on the Wild Feature,'&quot Doughty says. &quotI like how Reed's refrain is all about tranny whores and but is all over classic rock radio.&quot Doughty wrote &quotRising Up&quot soon after his girlfriend sent him a terse e-mail and, with his heart thumping, wrote five pages trying to exorcise his anxiety. &quotIt's my Gloria Gaynor second,&quot he says with a laugh. &quotThe message of the refrain is: 'You're fucked, but it doesn't matter. I'll maintain on with my spiritual journey.' Yes, I truly am that significantly of a hippie.&quot His break-up could have inspired the &quotpained, lost-be idiotic about stuff&quot (as he puts it), like &quotDiane&quot and &quotLorna Zauberberg,&quot but Doughty has also realized that his tenderness songs aren't necessarily about certain women. &quotThey're about a type of ghost, a shadow-woman, an ideal,&quot he says. &quot'Diane' is in fact my mother's name. Shows you how long I've been in therapy!&quot Musically, Sad Man Pleased Man finds Doughty returning to his acoustic roots thankfulness to its stripped-down arrangements that feature Doughty backing himself on guitar. He also did all the drum programming, as properly as played keyboards and what he calls the &quotweird noise stuff,&quot whilst his long-time touring partner Andrew &quotScrap&quot Livingston handles bass duties. &quotI wanted to go back to the acoustic way of life alternatives,&quot he says. &quotI intend to tour like this for a long time – it's what feels most comfortable to me. I like the way the songs are when I mess about them acoustically. I like how idiosyncratic my guitar rhythms are – that stuff tends to get straightened out when I mess about with a drummer.&quot Recorded at New York's Kampo Studios, the album was co-bent by Doughty and engineer Pat Dillett (They May possibly Be Giants, David Byrne, Arto Lindsay). &quotI met Pat Dillett working with Soul Coughing years ago, and he bent my 'Rockity Roll' EP&quot, adding, &quothe's the only guy I know that's worked with both David Byrne and Mary J. Blige.&quot The album's first single, &quotDoubly Gratified,&quot was bent by David Kahne, who helmed Soul Coughing's 1996 album Irresistible Bliss, as well as albums by Paul McCartney, Sugar Ray, and Tony Bennett. &quotI wanted a song that would get played on the radio, and David's the king when it comes to that,&quot Doughty says. &quotHis range is deep. But David's various than your median guy-that-produces-the-single simply because he truly thinks like an experimental musician. If you listen closely to 'Doubly Gratified' here's all kinds of weird stuff that he played happening solely under the surface. It's very cool what he gets gone with.&quot A bio about Mike Doughty wouldn't be complete without mentioning his live show, after all, he tours four months out of the time and his fans turn out in force. Final time he launched the Question Jar show in which Doughty and Livingston meadow crowd queries and song requests (written on paper and place in a jar) from consultation members between songs, answering each small thing from &quotDo chicks still dig robots?&quot (Answer: &quotI judge it's pirates now&quot) to what he considers his preferred speech (&quotinscrutable&quot). The intimate, anything-goes format is a splendid fit for Doughty, permitting him to &quotshow off his various facets with equal vigor – his confidence and his weakness, his rage and his remorse, his romanticism and his cynicism, his apathy and his bleeding heart, his seriousness and his humor,&quot as one reviewer place it, adding: &quotIt's all in here, the nicely-rounded human condition locating voice via an expressive artist. This is a man 1 may well truly get to know by way of his music.&quot Born into a military family in Fort Knox, KY, Doughty got his start off playing bass in a high-school band in Highland Falls, NY, and writing songs as soon as he picked up the bass. &quotWhen I could mess about two notes, I'd scream a touch over it and call it a song,&quot he says. &quotHe credits the in the dead of night African-American poet and performer Sekou Sundiata's poetry class at New York City's New School with sparking his interest in the craft of songwriting. &quotHe educated me that I'm working for the poem, song, or lyric, it's not working for me. That I have to listen to it to get it to be what it wants to be, rather than attempting to disturb my will on it,&quot Doughty says. Following eight years fronting Soul Coughing, Doughty launched his solo career with Skittish, which sold much more than 20,000 copies through his web site on the strength of constant grass-roots touring. Becoming on the road sent Doughty's creativity into overdrive. He released a live album renowned as Smofe + Smang in 2002, followed by the Rockity Roll EP in 2003. In 2005, Doughty signed with ATO Records, an independent mark founded by Dave Matthews, a massive Soul Coughing fan. ATO released Doughty's very first satiated-band album Haughty Melodic, which went Best five at Triple-A radio thankfulness to its hit single &quotLooking at the Globe from the Bottom of A Well.&quot That song was featured on the soundtrack to Grey's Anatomy, as well as on Bones and What About Brian. Through it all, Doughty has maintained a widely scan blog (mikedoughty.com/blog) that chronicles his distinctive shows, international travels, and creative endeavors. He's at present writing a memoir, recording an electronic album entitled Dubious Luxury, and working on a photo book about Eritrea's capital city of Asmara, for Yeti Books. He also recently published a mess about, Ray Slape is Dead, in 24 by 24: The 24 Hour Plays Anthology, alongside Terrence McNally and Theresa Rebeck. But for now, Doughty is seeking forward to a fall Question Jar tour with his friend Scrap and releasing Sad Man Pleased Man. &quotBasically I'm trying to make stuff I want to listen to,&quot he says of the album. &quotAnd I median that in a literal significance, not like, &quotWere I a listener, I would like this,&quot but rather a touch I can listen to on the subway on headset and in fact dig. This is my life, this is what I do. That sounds matter-of-reality, but I really do appear at it as a sort of calling – and becoming an artist at its greatest is self-sacrificing. I'm working for the language, I'm working for the music, I'm working for the songs. I'm a more pleased guy when I'm conscious of that.&quot

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