Mike Doughty

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

Mike Doughty at the City Winery NYC Nov 24, 2012
Background information
Birth name Michael R. Doughty[1]
Also known as M. Doughty
Born (1970-06-10) June 10, 1970
Fort Knox, Kentucky
Genres Alternative rock, alternative hip hop, downtempo, trip hop, breakbeat
Instruments Vocals, guitar
Years active 1992–present
Labels ATO, MapleMusic Recordings (Canada), Megaforce Records
Associated acts Soul Coughing
Website www.mikedoughty.com

Michael R. "Mike" Doughty (/ˈdoʊtiː/ DOH-tee;[2] born June 10, 1970) is an American singer-songwriter and author. He founded the band Soul Coughing in 1992, and as of The Heart Watches While the Brain Burns (2016), has released 18 studio albums, live albums, and EPs, all since 2000.

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 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 singles "Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well" and "I Hear the Bells" were featured on episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Veronica Mars, respectively, and Doughty appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman, marking a return to the musical mainstream. He has since released a number of follow-up 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]

In 2015, he moved to Memphis, TN.[6]

Solo discography

Year Album Chart peaks Label Notes
US
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.
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 A subscription-based album consisting of acoustic versions of previously released songs as well as demos, outtakes, alternate takes and other rarities. 32 tracks in total, released once a week beginning in the spring of 2012.
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).
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 Live at Ken's House 130 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.
2015 Stellar Motel 66 − PledgeMusic
2016 The Heart Watches While the Brain Burns - - PledgeMusic

Music videos

References

  1. ↑ BMI Repertoire
  2. ↑ "Mike Doughty: The Making of the Small Rock, Aired on NPR May 4, 2005". Npr.org. Retrieved November 7, 2012.
  3. ↑ Mike at (July 20, 2007). "Super Special Questions Blog: Sekou Sundiata, 1948–2007". Mikedoughty.com. Retrieved November 7, 2012.
  4. ↑ "Robitussin for the soul – Music Feature – Music – September 7, 2006 – Sacramento News & Review". Newsreview.com. September 7, 2006. Retrieved November 7, 2012.
  5. ↑ Doughty, Mike (January 28, 2012). The Book of Drugs. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press. p. 252. ISBN 978-0-306-81877-6.
  6. ↑ https://www.instagram.com/p/97d9I2kWVn/
  7. ↑ Archived May 14, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
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