My appreciation of Mike Doughty's music started much later than most fans, as I first became aware of his work with his 2005 album, Haughty Melodic. When I found he had a new album, Yes and Also Yes, set for release on August 30, I immediately set up an email interview to find out what was in store for fans of his work.
If you've never seen Doughty live, take a spin around YouTube for a bit and you quickly will realize that you should see him live as soon as possible. To best frame the album in proper context, I quote Doughty himself: "I recorded it in a studio in Koreatown, Manhattan, from July '10 to April '11.
"Produced by Pat Dillett. Notable musicians included my trusty factotum Andrew 'Scrap' Livingston on bass, and the pianist Thomas Bartlett, a.k.a. Doveman, who basically plays with everybody who's groovy (Justin Bond, Antony and the Johnsons, Glen Hansard, The National, David Byrne, Yoko Ono). I'm releasing it on my own label, Snack Bar, through Megaforce. I split with Dave Matthews' label ATO so I could run my own shop and have more control, business-wise."
I had a chance to listen to the album in preparation for this interview, and I was pleased to find there's not a bad cut among any of the 14 songs. One song that I hope will garner a lot of attention is "Holiday", a Christmas duet with singer/songwriter great Rosanne Cash. About Cash, Doughty said: " I did a show with her, and she said, onstage, 'I feel nervous playing my new songs, because Mike Doughty is here, and he's such a great songwriter.' That blew my mind." Honestly, to borrow a phrase from Doughty, their duet blows my mind. I am the kind of person that hates hearing Christmas music anytime other than December. But this song has such an amazing hook (as most of Doughty's songs do), I ended up playing it seven times in a row the first time I heard it.
The whole album pulled me in just as much and it was a pleasure to interview Doughty. We also got to discuss another recent Doughty musical project, Dubious Luxury, released earlier this month. My thanks to Doughty for his time and thoughts, as well as Rob Moore for facilitating the interview.
Article comments
1 - Julie
Sorry, but this is most disappointing. I was the hugest fan of Mike and Soul Coughing. I bought every release, but this is just the end for me. We'll see this on the soundtrack to Grey's Anatomy or some other lame show. Do your thing and good for you, but you were poised to be an eternal musical force and now you release these things? Ugh.