Buzzsaw Haircut

Super Special Mike Doughty and the Art of Illogic

By Kate Sheppard

Soul Coughing's former front man Mike Doughty kicked his heroin habit, got a first name and is now finding quiet success with an acoustic solo career.

Two years after the break up of the most eclectic rock/jazz/electronic band of the '90s, Mike Doughty (previously known as M.) staked it out on his own, releasing first "Skittish," a set of songs originally recorded in 1996. When the sessions found their way onto Napster, Doughty decided to sell the disc at shows as he began a low-tech traipse across the country.

At 32, Doughty's songs have transformed into a muddle of jazz, folk and scat that have far more coherency than Soul Coughing songs could ever hope to. Where his previous work was an ache, his solo work is road rash, the raw verse lending substance to his Yamaha guitar. He began his solo shows before the band's demise, and has been touring for two and three week jaunts since.

In July 2002, Doughty released a second album, "Smofe & Smang: Live from Minneapolis," which includes Skittish tracks, new solo work and Soul Coughing collectables. Soft Skull Press published "Slanky", a volume of Doughty's poetry originally sold as a chapbook at SC shows in 1995, in July as well.

The live album was recorded at the Women's Club Theater in Minneapolis, a place characteristic of the venues Doughty's been hitting for the last few years.

"It was a beautiful little theater, and there was an engineer I knew of with which I knew I'd get a great recording," Doughty said.

While his stage shtick can get irritating after several listens, the live CD has all the intimacies of a Doughty show. Doughty cracks jokes about MTV's Cribs and inserts lines about forgotten 90's television characters. The crowd calls out requests for some of Soul Coughing's memorable songs like "Circles," "Softserve," and "True Dreams of Wichita," and the disc closes with an improvised sing-along to "Janine."

But crowds won't hear "Super Bon Bon," the band's most radio-friendly song from the early 90's, or "Screenwriter's Blues," which Doughty said he could never do justice in his solo act.

The problem with recreating Soul Coughing songs minus the band is the lack of keyboard and mixers on Doughty's solo road show. Before the band's collapse, Doughty would scrawl lyrics during half-hour highs. Songs often focused on one phrase over a synthesizer and drums. "Is Chicago, is not Chicago" repeated to a smooth bass and repetitive drumbeat was the basis of the front track to 1994's Ruby Vroom. Lyrics seemed like an afterthought to the random sounds and steady beat.

Doughty's shows, and songs, have an intimacy previously untouched. After shows Doughty sits on the edge to the stage, selling CDs and talking to fans that come from up to 10 hours away to see his shows. Crowds are often left over from Soul Coughing days but have been won by the new direction, singing along now with the same cult-like devotion they have to earlier work.

Among them is Skittish's "Rising Sign," a favorite of late. "I swear/I'd like/ to drink the fuel straight from your lighter/it's all inside the wrist/it's all inside the way you time it/I resent the way you make me like myself," he implores.

The intimacy of "Smofe & Smang" makes it an appropriate venue for new songs "Grey Grey Ghost" and "Sunken Eyed Girl." Doughty is the likely the only writer today who can weave "quadrilateral" and "the joints of free base" into his music with equal ease, and make the girl working behind KFC's sneeze guard sound exotic.

It's this simple yearning camouflaged by a perplexing lyrical structure that make Doughty's illogic sensual.

"All my life I've been slow and senseless/not struck dumb/I'm just dumb/that's all/I can give you the constellations/lay down here and we'll count them all," he rasps on "Madeline and Nine."

In "Busting Up a Starbux," Doughty decries the impossibility of escape from pop culture, although he also attests to a love of Starbucks coffee and Justin Timberlake.

Where "Skittish" and "Smofe & Smang" have shown tremendous growth for Doughty, "Slanky" returns to the darker days of his heroin addiction.

"This is my song in lieu of dreams/four a.m., no matches, no coffee, quarter moon," Doughty writes in "Insomnia." "Ketosis" is prose about the love affair of an anorexic and a coke addict, the former feeding off herself and the latter off the drug and sex. But, as always, Doughty's words are sparse and well selected; there's earnestness in his tacit pleas.

"There's just as much rock and roll in his poetry as there is poetry in his rock and roll," wrote Ben Folds.

Since he spurning his habit, there has been an obvious higher calling to Doughty's songs. Without the drugs, he said he had to turn to "whatever god happened to be on that day." Songs like "His Truth is Marching On" and "Sweet Lord in Heaven" almost beg to be called epistemological clichés, but Doughty's ethereal voice and dirty guitar chords intervene.

"Absolutely there has been a spiritual influence. There has always been-some times more than other times," Doughty said.

Doughty says one of the major stimuli in his solo career has been Ani DiFranco, with whom he attended Eugene Lang College in New York City from 1989 to 1991. The two were students of Sekou Sundiata, another influence on his work.

Doughty recently released four new songs that he wrote and recorded for "Evenhand," which had its premiere at the American Film Institute on November 14th. He also wrote several scripts for "24-Hour Plays" in New York and is planning on recording another album for release in 2003. He also maintains his website at www.superspecialquestions.com and handles most of his record sales.

It may still be a long haul before Doughty's one bedroom flat makes an appearance on Cribs, but as he attests in "Smofe & Smang," he already knows what he's going to show them:

"I have a bucket of shoes in my foyer…"

Kate Sheppard is a freshman journalism and politics major. Email her at geekgirlKS@aol.com.