Mike_Doughty

Mike Doughty

Mike Doughty

American singer-songwriter and author

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

Michael Ross Doughty (/ˈdoʊti/ 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.

Quick Facts Background information, Birth name ...

Early life

Doughty is the son of military historian and U.S. Army officer Robert A. Doughty. He grew up on army bases throughout the United States, including Fort Knox, Fort Hood, and Fort Leavenworth, and spent his teenage years living on the grounds of the United States Military Academy at West Point where his father taught.[3] He came to New York City at age 19 to study poetry at The New School. Singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco was one of his classmates in Sekou Sundiata's poetry course, "The Shape and Nature of Things to Come".[4]

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.[5] During his three-year tour, Doughty sold 20,000 copies of Skittish and gradually developed a following independent of Soul Coughing. Doughty collaborated with BT on "Never Gonna Come Back Down" providing lyrics and vocals. "Never Gonna Come Back Down" was contained on BT's album Movement in Still Life, released in 1999.

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. Doughty had been introduced to Wilson through their mutual artist manager, Jim Grant. 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 each featured on episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Veronica Mars, 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. Some of Doughty's albums, including Circles, Super Bon Bon and The Very Best of Soul Coughing, Live at Ken’s, and Stellar Motel, have used crowdfunding to finance their creation. He has also used Patreon to release a song every week for those paying $5 a month.[6]

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.[7]

In 2014, Mike Doughty created a rock opera based on the Book of Revelation called Revelation.[8]

In 2015, he moved to Memphis, Tennessee.[9]

In 2019, Doughty mounted a U.S. tour in honor of the 25th anniversary of Ruby Vroom in which he played the album in its entirety.

In May 2020, Doughty published his second memoir titled I Die Each Time I Hear The Sound: A Memoir, which he wrote to expound upon his musical tastes and how they came to be.[10]

In August 2020, Doughty announced his new project Ghost of Vroom with longtime collaborator Andrew "Scrap" Livingston.

Solo discography

More information Year, Album ...

With Ghost of Vroom

In collaboration with Andrew "Scrap" Livingston.

More information Year, Album ...

Music videos

Written work

  • Slanky: Poems and Songs (2012, ISBN 1-59376-504-5)
  • The Book of Drugs (2012, ISBN 0-30681-877-9)
  • I Die Each Time I Hear the Sound: A Memoir (2020, ISBN 0-30682-531-7)

References

  1. [1]
    BMI Repertoire Archived October 19, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
  2. [2]
    "Mike Doughty: The Making of the Small Rock, Aired on NPR May 4, 2005". Npr.org. Retrieved November 7, 2012.
  3. [3]
    Doughty, Mike (January 28, 2012). The Book of Drugs. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press. pp. 252. ISBN 978-0-306-81877-6.
  4. [4]
    Mike at (July 20, 2007). "Super Special Questions Blog: Sekou Sundiata, 1948–2007". Mikedoughty.com. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved November 7, 2012.
  5. [5]
    "Robitussin for the soul – Music Feature – Music – September 7, 2006 – Sacramento News & Review". Newsreview.com. September 7, 2006. Retrieved November 7, 2012.
  6. [6]
    "Get a New Song Every Week on Patreon". Mike Doughty.
  7. [7]
    Doughty, Mike (January 28, 2012). The Book of Drugs. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press. pp. 252. ISBN 978-0-306-81877-6.
  8. [8]
    "Mike Doughty's "Revelation: A Rock Opera"". WNYC New York Public Radio. Public Radio International and WNYC. Retrieved January 9, 2018.
  9. [9]
    "Instagram post by Mike Doughty • Nov 11, 2015 at 3:19am UTC". Instagram.com. November 11, 2015. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021. Retrieved April 5, 2020.
  10. [10]
    ["https://www.hachettebooks.com/titles/mike-doughty/i-die-each-time-i-hear-the-sound/9780306825316/" ""I Die Each Time I Hear The Sound: A Memoir""]. Hachette Books. Retrieved December 3, 2019. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  11. [11]
    Archived May 14, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  12. [12]
    Stereogum (2020). "Soul Coughing's Mike Doughty on his new EP Ghost of Vroom 2". Retrieved March 21, 2023.
  13. [13]
    Mike Doughty (2023). "Ghost of Vroom 3 Home". Retrieved April 26, 2023.
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