Mike Doughty - Career

Career

In 1992, Doughty, then a doorman at the New York avant-garde club The Knitting Factory founded Soul Coughing (billing himself as M. Doughty), and released the minor hit singles "Super Bon Bon" and "Circles".

Wearying of the band and addicted to heroin, Doughty broke up Soul Coughing in 2000, and was promptly dropped by Warner Brothers. A few weeks later, Doughty beat his addiction and started touring as a solo artist. He drove around the country in a rental car, covering 9,000 miles on his first tour, playing acoustic shows, often to crowds of Soul Coughing fans. After the 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 — a record that he had recorded for, and which was rejected by Warner Brothers in 1996. During his three-year tour, Doughty sold 20,000 copies of Skittish and gradually developed a following independent of Soul Coughing.

At 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 hit single, "Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well," received heavy airplay in 2005; Doughty made a music video for the song with director/photographer Danny Clinch, opened for DMB at Madison Square Garden, and appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman.

Founding Mike Doughty's Band, featuring Dan Chen (keyboard and synthesizer), Pete McNeal (drums), and Andrew "Scrap" Livingston (upright bass), Doughty toured extensively in 2005. In the summer of 2006 Dan Chen left the group, and was replaced by John Kirby.

In February 2008, Doughty released his fourth solo album, Golden Delicious, also produced by Dan Wilson. The album features a reworked version of "27 Jennifers", which received some radio attention following the release. The album was followed by a full-band tour in the spring.

Mike Doughty released his fifth album, Sad Man, Happy Man on October 6, 2009. It consists of 18 tracks including a version of "Casper the Friendly Ghost" and "Three is a Magic Number". While the album is not a solo record, its sound is reminiscent of his days as a solo acoustic performer and debut album, Skittish, when compared to the full band sounds of Haughty Melodic and Golden Delicious. Doughty embarked on a tour,"The Question Jar" tour, in the fall of 2009 to support the album, backed again by Andrew "Scrap" Livingston.

On July 6, 2010, Doughty debuted 14 new songs at the Rubin Museum of Art in NYC. Some of the song titles were "I Love Surprises", "Shine", and "Russell". Videos of these can be viewed on YouTube. During the performance, Doughty would read lyrics from a music stand, and then, when finished with each song, crumple the paper and throw it into the audience. He performed this show alone, stating his partner, Andrew "Scrap" Livingston, became a taxi driver. Whether or not this was a joke is unclear.

Doughty's album, Yes and Also Yes, was released in August 2011. It includes songs such as "The Huffer and The Cutter", "Hapless Dancer", "Day By Day By", and "Na Na Nothing".

In January 2012, The Book of Drugs, Doughty's memoir about his "ugly, drug-doing years", was published by Da Capo Press.

In 2012 Doughty recorded a version of "Take Me Home, Country Roads" for a fund raising cd titled "Super Hits Of The Seventies" for radio station WFMU.

Doughty's latest album, The Question Jar Show, was released in late January 2012. It is a two disc set containing highlights from his Question Jar tour.

Doughty started "The Lo-Fi Lodge", a subscription based album, where fans had the opportunity to sign up and receive a song a week for 32 weeks (for a total of 32 songs). The songs will include previously unreleased material, demos, and acoustic versions of released songs. Doughty mentioned that it will include songs from the Evenhand soundtrack. As of April 27th, fans can no longer sign up for the subscription.