Mike Doughty

For the rally co-driver, see Mike Doughty (co-driver).
Mike Doughty

Mike Doughty at the City Winery NYC 11-24-2012
Background information
Birth name Michael R. Doughty[1]
Born June 10, 1970
Fort Knox, Kentucky
Genres Alternative Rock
Indie Rock
Alternative hip hop
Instruments Vocals
Guitar
Bass
Banjo
Sampler
Years active 1992–
Labels ATO, MapleMusic Recordings (Canada), Megaforce Records
Associated acts Soul Coughing
Website www.mikedoughty.com

Mike Doughty (/ˈdoʊtiː/ DOH-tee;[2] born June 10, 1970) is an American singer-songwriter and author. He founded the band Soul Coughing in the 1990s.

Early life

The son of an army officer — he spent his teenage years living on the grounds of the United States Military Academy at West Point — he came to New York City at age 19 to study poetry at the The New School, where singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco was one of his classmates in Sekou Sundiata's poetry course, "The Shape and Nature of Things to Come".[3]

Career

Soul Coughing

While a doorman at the New York club The Knitting Factory (in that era, a hotbed of avant-garde jazz), Doughty founded Soul Coughing. The band released three critically and commercially successful albums, Ruby Vroom (1994), Irresistible Bliss (1996) and El Oso (1998). The greatest hits album Lust in Phaze was released in 2002.

Solo career

Doughty broke up Soul Coughing in 2000 due to personal problems: He was wearying of the band, and he was addicted to opiate painkillers, heroin, and alcohol. He was promptly dropped by Warner Brothers, and began traveling in a rental car (covering 9,000 miles on his first tour) playing acoustic shows. After shows he would sit at the front of the stage and sell copies of his acoustic album Skittish — then on CD-Rs in plain white sleeves. Warner Brothers had rejected the record in 1996.[4] During his three-year tour, Doughty sold 20,000 copies of Skittish and gradually developed a following independent of Soul Coughing.

He remained without a label until, when playing the Bonnaroo music festival in 2004, Doughty bumped into Dave Matthews, a longtime Soul Coughing fan who had the band open for him on two US tours, including shows at Madison Square Garden. When Matthews professed to be a fan of Doughty's solo record Rockity Roll and the song "27 Jennifers", Doughty gave him a CD with rough mixes of an album he had been working on in Minneapolis with singer-songwriter and producer Dan Wilson. Matthews eventually released the album on his ATO label as Haughty Melodic (an anagram for 'Michael Doughty'.) Haughty Melodic‍ '​s single, "Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well," was featured on episodes of Veronica Mars and Grey's Anatomy, and appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, marking a return to the musical mainstream. He has since released a number of followup albums.

In 2012, Doughty published a memoir called The Book of Drugs, covering his formative years as a musician, what he called the "dark, abusive marriage" that was Soul Coughing, and his experiences with addiction and recovery.[5]

On September 17, 2013, Doughty released a crowd-funded album remaking a collection of old Soul Coughing songs. The official album name consists of the titles of all 13 songs on the album, but Doughty shortened it to Circles Super Bon Bon... on his website.[6]

On April 9, 2014, Doughty announced his next album, to be titled Stellar Motel which will also be crowd-funded.

Solo discography

Year Album details Chart peaks Label Notes
US UK
2000 Skittish − − self-released Recorded July 5, 1996
2002 Smofe + Smang: Live in Minneapolis − − self-released Live album recorded at the Woman's Club Theater in Minneapolis on February 27, 2002. Release in a limited edition of 2500.
2003 Rockity Roll − − self-released EP
2004 Skittish / Rockity Roll − − ATO Records, Snack Bar Two disc re-release
2005 Haughty Melodic 175 − ATO Records Doughty's first full-band album. Longtime friend Dave Matthews heard early demos and signed Doughty to his label.
2005 The Gambler − − ATO Records EP with several live songs as well as covers, including the titular Kenny Rogers hit. Released only on the iTunes Music Store.
2008 Golden Delicious 87 − ATO Records
2008 Busking − − ATO Records Limited edition Live LP sold only at shows. Contains 12 tracks from a 2007 busking performance in the 14th Street – Union Square station in New York City.[7]
2008 Busking EP − − ATO Records An EP, featuring five tracks from the Busking LP, released as a free add-on to Golden Delicious in Borders book stores.
2009 Sad Man Happy Man 138 − ATO Records
2011 Dubious Luxury − − − An electro/sampled/sonic-slice-and-dice album put out as an appetizer to the singer/songwriter album, Yes and Also Yes. A departure from Mike's style altogether, this was a commercial and critical

failure.[8]

2011 Yes and Also Yes 177 − Snack Bar
2012 The Question Jar Show − − Snack Bar A two disc album compiling the best recordings of his Question Jar tour.
2012 The Lo-Fi Lodge − − Snack Bar An album consisting of cover songs originally recorded by various artists such as Cheap Trick and John Denver intermingled with original material from Doughty.
2012 The Flip Is Another Honey − − Snack Bar An album consisting of cover songs originally recorded by various artists such as Cheap Trick and John Denver intermingled with original material from Doughty.
2013 Circles, Super Bon Bon, and The Very Best Of Soul Coughing 65 − MRI A crowd-funded album of Soul Coughing songs rerecorded as Doughty originally intended them prior to being altered for recording by Soul coughing. As expressed in The Book Of Drugs, he feels animosity toward the Soul Coughing versions. Fans had a mixed reaction to this, the more Doughty-inclined Soul Coughing fans supported the idea (racking up 100% on PledgeMusic, a crowdfunding platform, in a little over a few hours). The album did better commercially than any of his other solo albums, hitting #65 for two weeks (however, Soul Coughing's most successful album was El Oso, charting at #49).
2013 Water and Washington − − self−released A rare bonus album available to participants in his PledgeMusic campaign for Circles, Super Bon Bon, and The Very Best of Soul Coughing. The album, available as a download to pledgers who ordered a copy, consisted of 20 acoustic tracks, including acoustic versions of the Soul Coughing songs on the album, as well as several tracks that were not included on the album.
2014 Stellar Motel 66 − − Another album funded by a PledgeMusic campaign.
2014 Live at Ken's House − − MRI Doughty's third official live album. It is a compilation of the best cuts of his October/November US tour in support of Circles, Super Bon Bon, and The Very Best of Soul Coughing. The material is solely live performances of this album.

Music videos

References

  1. ↑ BMI Repertoire
  2. ↑ "Mike Doughty: The Making of the Small Rock, Aired on NPR May 4, 2005". Npr.org. Retrieved 2012-11-07.
  3. ↑ Mike at July 20, 2007 8:57 AM (July 20, 2007). "Super Special Questions Blog: Sekou Sundiata, 1948–2007". Mikedoughty.com. Retrieved 2012-11-07.
  4. ↑ "Robitussin for the soul – Music Feature – Music – September 7, 2006 – Sacramento News & Review". Newsreview.com. September 7, 2006. Retrieved 2012-11-07.
  5. ↑ Doughty, Mike (January 28, 2012). The Book of Drugs. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press. p. 252. ISBN 978-0-306-81877-6.
  6. ↑ http://www.mikedoughty.com/circles
  7. ↑
  8. ↑ "Immutable/Inscrutable, Urrbody! So, I did an". Mkdo.co. Retrieved 2012-11-07.

External links