Talkin' to the Zipcode Man: The Mike Doughty Interview

Anyone listening to “Alternative” music in the mid to late 1990s, heard Soul Coughing and the unique lyrics of its leader/singer/guitarist, M. Doughy. Well, as most of you know, the “M” stands for Mike who left Soul Coughing in 2000 amid difficult personal and band circumstances. Getting clean and renting a car and logging 9000 miles on the road, he played solo shows building a base of both former Soul Coughing and new fans. This base allowed him to sell 20,000 copies of his first solo album, Skittish. In 2003, Doughty released another album independently, the EP Rockity Roll. In 2004 he signed with Dave Matthews' ATO label for the release of Haughty Melodic and Golden Delicious (My review is here.) in 2008. Dynamic Meter got the opportunity to email Mike Doughty some questions about the new album and more.

Dynamic Meter: "Fort Hood's" words and music have an opposite feel, serious words melded with dancey music. In this song, about soldiers going to Iraq and coming home again, the way the music and the words work together seems to reflect the way our country is existing during this war. We're at war, but we all go about our jaunty existences without much thought about the price of the conflict. Did you intentionally try to contrast the feel of the music with the meaning of the words?

Mike Doughty: That's interesting, I've never thought about it. "Let the Sunshine In" is by nature a pretty uplifting chorus—but at the same time there's so much tragedy in the song. It seems like a poetic combination to me.

DM: Talk about using the "Let the sun shine in" sample from the musical Hair?

MD: I found a recording online of the Japanese cast from Hair. I thought it would be really funny, and it was—but when it got to the chorus they switched to English, and I found it incredibly moving and pertinent. I grew up on sample-based hiphop and house music, so it didn't seem outlandish to just gank the chorus and weld it to my own, new song.

DM: A lot of people have such a fondness for Soul Coughing. However, you left the band under difficult personal circumstances. Do you approach the way you make music differently now?

MD: Unfortunately, Soul Coughing was a pretty oppressive environment, and as time went by, it became very difficult to bring my songs in and get my bandmates to play them the way I needed them to. So I definitely feel freer to pursue my impulses. That's a big difference. In terms of who I am just as a creative individual, I'm more or less the same guy.

DM: What did you grow up listening to? There's always a funkiness to your music.

MD: Led Zeppelin was the first band I really loved, and then the Replacements, and then the Rolling Stones, and then A Tribe Called Quest—that's kind of my litany of favorite bands in order of appearance. It was in the early 90s when awesome hiphop was everywhere in New York that I started thinking about marrying the beat to a song-y-er type of thing.

DM: I really dig the sound of the new record. It has a real live-cut feel. Why did you choose to record Golden Delicious this way?

MD: I just had a band that I loved, and I wanted to play to their strengths, and make some space for their musical personalities. Interestingly, a lot of the reaction to Golden Delicious (and a lot of negative reaction) is that it's pretty slick and poppy. Which blows my mind, as I thought I was making this very rough, spontaneous-feeling record. So, thank you : )

DM: Compared to Soul Coughing, your solo work seems more lyrically direct. What do you think?

MD: Yeah, in the past eight years or so, my stuff has been more narrative, more about stories. I don't really know what that's about. My lyric writing process is essentially the same as it's always been.

DM: Tell me about our relationship with the poet, Sekou Sundiata and his influence on your writing.

MD: Sekou was my teacher, and he really galvanized me—made me take the music of language seriously, sort of showed me the sacredness of working with words. Also, Ani DiFranco was my classmate, and she was SO much better than I was—I really felt competitive, and learned a lot just trying to cop her tricks!

DM: How does your DJing as Mikey Dough influenced your Mike Doughty tunes and shows and vice versa?

MD: I've really gotten into making beats. I'm not sure exactly how that's going to affect my next record, but I'm very obsessive about it. At the moment it's separate from writing songs, which I still do on an acoustic guitar in the kitchen. But that might change.

DM: Are you a zipcode man, a homebody?

MD: Yeah, I kind of am. I live pretty far out there in Brooklyn, where there isn't a lot going on. I stay home and write and work on music. Out here you can get a pretty gigantic space, so not being cooped up in a Manhattan shoebox makes staying home and working much more fun.

DM: I like the downloader amnesty you have on your website, where you are absolved of your illegal downloading sins by making a donation to Doctors Without Borders. Do you do many benefits?

MD: I do some benefits once in a while. But I feel conflicted being very public about charity—I prefer to make donations privately, without being ostentatious about it.

DM: What are you listening to and digging that might not be on most people's radar screens?

MD: Well, lately, Celia Cruz, this Japanese band called Uhnellys, and some of John Cage's "prepared piano" music. But that might be a little too far off anybody's radar screen. I don't know, I oscillate between some pretty out stuff, and very poppy kind of hit-single things—DMB and Kelly Clarkson and the like. I'm kind of woefully ignorant of the current state of indie rock.

Below, please enjoy some great sounds from Mike Doughty.

The Gambler Cover


Fort Hood

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Fort Hood and The Things That Carried Him

So here's a quick Friday post. I am still totally digging Mike Doughty's latest Golden Delicious. He just released the video for Fort Hood, a song about soldiers in the Iraq War. Also, please check out this article from Esquire Magazine called, "The Things That Carried Him." It is the amazingly powerful true story of the return of a soldier's remains to his family. It certainly helped me remember why I oppose the war.

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The Felice Brothers to get Rockin’ and Rowdy at Castaways

The Felice Brothers are a four-piece band the fits into the broad categories of Americana and perhaps alt-country. But with a band this great, categories don’t matter, the music does. When I got the chance to ask James Felice some questions he gave me his take on categorization. “Ray Charles said that there are two kinds of music. Good music and bad music. I'd like to think ours is the good kind.”

One of the elements integral to making the music really work is the way each band members’ part comes together to form the whole. James told me that the writing and arranging is “all about what sounds good. And what we can play, or figure out how to sort of play it for that part or song.” Well it works and man, can these guys play and rock. And they rock really hard. If you don’t think some combination of accordion, acoustic bass, banjo, acoustic guitar, piano, washboard, fiddle and drums can make you dance, I challenge you to go to The Felice Brothers Show at Castaways on April 24 and stand still. That said, they also play some seriously lovely tunes that make you want to grab your sweetie and dance slow. The show starts at 8 PM and tickets are available at the door.

Part of what makes their live shows so fun is that after they moved from the Catskills to New York City they played on the streets and subways in the city to make a living. In fact, they were discovered while busking in the Brooklyn Farmers Market. “When you busk you have to draw people's attention to make money. You have to be aggressive and a little rowdy,” James Felice said. In addition, they don’t plan out what songs they are going to play during their shows. “We don't write set lists. That’s like wearing briefs. . . .” There was an additional line from James in this quote, but as this is a family paper, I had to leave it out. Use your imagination.

I wanted to know if the fact the band’s three Felice Brothers (James, Simone, & Ian) grew up in the Catskills had any influence on their music. “I don't know, to tell you the truth. We never grew up anywhere else, so I couldn't tell you if it influenced us. It probably did. It's a great place to grow up, though. I'll tell you that.” The forth member and bass player is simply known as Christmas.

While I don’t generally like to use comparisons with other bands, I am going to go against my general rule here. If you like the Horseflies, The Sim Redmond Band, or Old Crow Medicine Show, you’re sure to dig The Felice Brothers. This is also an incredible opportunity to see these guys in an intimate venue, as they will be heading to Europe in May and then playing large festivals in the US all summer. And at $10.00, it is a bargain. I, for one, am looking for a baby sitter.

Also Noteworthy:

There are some bands you remember exactly where you were the first time you heard them. For me Soul Coughing is one of those bands. I was living in Chicago and a friend of mine hipped me to them. The first song I heard was, “Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago.” I was hooked and I have been listening to Mike Doughty’s work ever since. That said, it was with great anticipation that I opened Doughty’s latest solo CD, Golden Delicious, (released February 19 of ATO Records) and popped into the CD player. I was brought back to the hooks and turns of phrase that initially grabbed me back in, gulp, 1995. The album’s most powerful track is the sublime anti-war track, “Fort Hood,” a song about soldiers going to Iraq and returning home. The power of this song is increased by the melding of serious lyrics with very danceable music and contains a “sample” of “The Flesh Failures (Let the Sun Shine In),” from Hair. One of the major strengths of Mike Doughty is he brings a super eclectic blend of music to the mix. You never know where he is going to take you on his journey—but it’s always going to be a good and funky and rockin’ place.

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Mike Doughty’s Golden Delicious Sounds

There are some bands you remember exactly where you were the first time you heard them. For me Soul Coughing is one of those bands. I was living in Chicago and a friend of mine hipped me to them. The first song I heard was, “Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago.” I was hooked and I have been listening to Mike Doughty’s work ever since.

That said, it was with great anticipation that I opened Doughty’s latest solo CD, Golden Delicious, (released February 19 of ATO Records) and popped into the CD player. I was brought back to the hooks and turns of phrase that initially grabbed me back in, gulp, 1995.

The album leads off with the sublime anti-war track, “Fort Hood,” a song about soldiers going to Iraq and returning home. The power of this song is increased by the melding of serious lyrics with very danceable music and contains a “sample” of “The Flesh Failures (Let the Sun Shine In),” from Hair. “Fort Hood is the Texas Army base that has lost the most troops in the Iraq War,” Doughty says. “I visited some of the wounded troops at Walter Reed Hospital in D.C. and wondered what was going through their minds. When I first thought about using ‘Let the sunshine in…’ as the chorus, I thought it would be funny, but when I sang it, I felt myself tearing up. [‘Let the Sunshine In’] draws an obvious parallel to past quagmires, and all the vets who are suffering from PTSD. Once again the damage being done will not only be in lives lost, but in how those losses affect family, friends and society as a whole. The bridge laments the fact that instead of going to the prom, they’ve been given a burden they’re going to have to live with forever.”

While some Soul Coughing fans have criticized the direction of his solo work, it is hard to deny that “Fort Hood” is possibly the most moving song Mike Doughty has recorded. It also proves, as George Clinton has often demonstrated, that you can shake your booty at the protest rally. And to bash him for moving forward and trying new sounds and feels to his music is unfair. In addition, it smacks of the unpleasant hipper-than-thou-attitude that some music fans have—if it becomes somewhat popular, it no longer has any artistic merit. And that’s just plain wrong.

The first single off the album is “27 Jennifers.” This playful track is about how at Doughty’s High School all the girls seemed to have the same name. As Mike Doughty and I are the same age, I remember my town’s version of the 27 Jennifers. One of the highlights of this tune is John Kirby’s (From The Black Eyed Peas) keyboard playing. There is also a video of this track available, right here.



While I genuinely dig the whole album, other stand out tracks include, “I Wrote a Song About Your Car,” “I Just Want the Girl in the Blue Dress to Keep on Dancing,” and “Like a Luminous Girl.” These three songs really highlight Mike Doughty’s ability to craft catchy and meaningful songs. For example, “I Just Want the Girl . . .” is a great song about seeing someone he wants to meet in the audience at one of his shows, and the ultimate futility of that. What really clinches this song, though, is his use of the “brrmbpdpdmdm” drum sound lyrics from the song, “The Little Drummer Boy.”

John Kirby is not the only outstanding player in Mike Doughty’s band. Pete McNeal (From Cake) is on drums and John Munson (From Semisonic) plays bass. Percussionist, Ken Chastain, and singer, Mankwe Ndosi, round out the band. This is a great band, which is demonstrated by the fact Golden Delicious was largely recorded live. The live recording gives immediacy to the songs. This feel is often lost when songs are built in layers in the studio.

One of the major strengths of Mike Doughty is he brings a super eclectic blend of music to the mix. His syncopated guitar style is a result of trying to play the rhythms of Public Enemy on guitar. On the lyrics front, Doughty studied with the poet Sekou Sundiata at the New School in New York. “Sundiata told me to let the poem, or the song, do what it wanted to do,” Doughty explains. “He spoke about how to be musical, how words exist within time and transcend time. I’m rhythmically driven; it’s my blessing and my curse. The rhythms of my guitar, the nature of my voice and the strange cadence of the lyrics aren’t funky enough to be funk, but they’re too funky to be rock.” To my mind, this conflict of the funky is what really makes Mike Doughty worth listening to. You never know where he is going to take you on his journey—but it’s always going to be a good and funky and rockin’ place.

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