Hummingbird

Wow. Here's a band I'm sure you haven't heard yet. They're called Hummingbird and they were just formed by my 5-year-old son and my 15-month-old daughter. My son came up with the name. He was very clear that the name of the band is Hummingbird and not The Hummingbirds. I'm not sure when they will release their first album. But I can tell you this: Unlike the White Stripes, they're really siblings. I have also posted their album cover.

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Time Warp Wednesday: Sleater-Kinney

For this week’s Time Warp Wednesday, I wanted to feature Sleater-Kinney. They were such a totally amazing band and I still listen to their music regularly. I have provided below some great live clips. If that’s not enough you can jump on over to NPR and download the band’s August 3, 2006 show at Washington, DC’s 9:30 Club. Enjoy!

Modern Girl


Entertain


Dig Me Out


Rockin’ In The Free World (With Pearl Jam)


Sympathy


I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone

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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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Time Warp Wednesday: A History of Oh Death

So here's a little twist on Time Warp Wednesday courtesy of The Horse Flies. In my review of their recent album I talked about them covering Ralph Stanley's version of "Oh Death" from The Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Well it turns out I was little off on my knowlege of "Oh Death." But thanks to The Horse Flies, now I know. Here's what they emailed me.

"Tx so much. Looks great. Much appreciated. A little background ... we first recorded O Death in 1983 ... made 300 copies of a 45 ... so for us this was a return to that (a cover of ourselves! :--) ) rather than a cover of the version on O Brother. A band called the Thirteenth Floor Elevators recorded it before us. Camper Van Beethoven recorded it after us. Both of those pre-date O Brother. But I believe we all (including Ralph Stanley) got it from the same source: Doc Boggs, who I believe wrote it and recorded it around the late '20s. It's true title is 'Conversation with Death.'"

Ralph Stanley's Version:


Camper Van Beethoven's Version:


A version by The Horseflies found on the 1994 record, The Young Fogies, can be streamed here.

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Vacation Is Over

Pick up the dogs from the kennel? Check. Unpack the van? Check. Find something for dinner after a week away and not going to the store? Check. Get the kids to bed? Check. Open the Netflix envelope that contains the first DVD of season 2 of Deadwood? Check.

Vacation was great and relaxing. And it was certainly hard to come back to reality which will begin at 5:45 AM tomorrow. But in the meantime my wife and I can feed our addiction to Deadwood. It is just such a great series.

One of the highlights of Deadwood is the music, especially the tunes that run during the credits. I'm talking about artists such as June Carter Cash, Lyle Lovett, Jelly Roll Morton, and Bob Dylan, to name a few. It's hard to top that.

If you haven’t delved into Deadwood, I can’t recommend it enough.

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