Doughty finds himself in a 'good situation'
By Chris Nixon
For The Union-Tribune
November 30, 2006
When listening to singer-songwriter Mike Doughty in his music and his manner of speech, you get the sense he likes words. His ability to run rampant through the syllabic rhythms of the English language evokes a grin from even the most starchy collared professorial wordsmiths.
Doughty seems to enjoy playfully plying his lingual talents more than anyone else within ear's reach. But mention two words and the smile drains from his voice: “Soul Coughing.”
With his eight-plus years fronting tech-inflected, alt-pop band Soul Coughing in the 1990s, Doughty added his beat poetry, spoken word and talk/sing to the band's sound. The NYC-base quartet gained a serious foothold on college radio with singles like “Circles” and “Super Bon Bon” verging on mainstream success. But it's a period in Doughty's life he only grudgingly speaks about.
“I'm not crazy talking about Soul Coughing,” said the 36-year-old singer from a tour bus headed toward Denver recently. “I left Soul Coughing so I could do what I'm doing now. I really dig the band I have now. I've been digging the records I've been making. It's a good situation.”
During his Soul Coughing stint, he helped redefine a lead singer's role in a band. If anything, Doughty played the role of rhythm singer. The guitar strapped around his neck provided a rhythmic counterpoint to his vocal spiels, while Mark De Gli Antoni's swirling samples, Yuval Gabay's beats and Sebastian Steinberg's bass took the musical forefront. Doughty's certainly no Pavarotti, but his lyrics served as another instrument.
The rail-thin singer made Soul Coughing one of the most original bands in the 1990s through style and sheer intelligence. His words transformed Soul Coughing's slam-boom-bombastic sound into a journey, with each song a trek into the mind of a lyrical genius. And the Cosmo-sipping hipsters of the NYC scene loved it.
After the traveling Soul Coughing carnival came to a halt in 1998, Doughty (pronounced dough-tee) hit the road solo. Without the sonic chaos of Soul Coughing, Doughty's performances lead to his strength: weaving polyrhythmic, staccato word associations into a meaningful whole.
“When I split up the band, I hit the road in the most lo-fi, grass-roots way I could,” said Doughty, currently on a big-time arena tour with the Barenaked Ladies. “I got in a rental car. I threw a guitar in the trunk. And I did the smallest shows possible.”
After starting from scratch and releasing a few low-profile recordings sold out of the back of his rental, Doughty returned to the world of high-profile album releases in 2005. Doughty stripped away the bells and whistles of Soul Coughing songs to create the 12 tracks on “Haughty Melodic.”
With the help of Dave Matthews and his label, ATO, the record reached new audiences with catchy songs like “Looking at the World From the Bottom of a Well” and “Tremendous Brunettes” (the latter features guest vocals by Matthews). The album sets him up nicely for mainstream success greater than his taste with Soul Coughing.
“The only way I could do it was to start over,” said Doughty. “To this day, I do a Soul Coughing song in the show, but I don't really play the hits. If you really want to move on you have to fight. And I'm fighting.”
Chris Nixon is a San Diego music writer.
