‘A moment of serenity’

I helped Mike Doughty and his band load their equipment into a minivan before they departed for the 900-mile drive to Dallas. It was the least I could do. Sure it was cool (though painfully close to groupie status) and tell Doughty it was a great show, but honestly, after the $10 admission and $12 cd I felt guilty, like I was stealing something.
Long a favorite band of mine, Soul Coughing has filled a strange niche for me. Both abstractly literate and abstractly funky, the band caught my ear from the first. Jumpy baselines, snappy hip-hop drumming, a slew of weird sounds - birds swooping to doors creaking - from the keyboard sampler and loopy, half-rap vocals made for purely unique listening.
And the lyrics... Most easily described as dream-scape beat poetry, Mike Doughty’s near-always compelling lines deliver absurd imagery in haphazard rhyme schemes.
In November 1996, six of us loaded into the General’s Crown Vic for a trip to Tempe: destination Soul Coughing at Gibson’s. One of my first concert (and road trip) experiences, the whole day was enjoyable and all of it memorable. The freedom was barely big enough to hold our teen-age energy. Ridiculous for the most part, the trip hinged around the show. One-hit (?) wonder Geggy Tah opened.
Soul Coughing just plain floored us. I’d love to have a tape of us talking about the show, a bunch of kids throwing every superlative description they know at a band that really deserves it. We ran into Doughty walking back to the car after getting coffee after the show. I think we startled him; he spilled about half of his coffee, mostly on his hand. The moment galvanized for us the fact that Doughty could be the perfect anti-hero, the anti-role model.
The band broke up far too soon, as far as I was concerned at the time. Sure their last album veered way too far into drum+bass territory, but what would we possibly do without more Soul Coughing?
There was no answer, and in coming years my tastes grew more into country-rock styles. While Soul Coughing remained in high regard, I stopped thinking more output was necessary. Then last fall I heard Doughty’s first solo album, a simple one-man on acoustic guitar collection that instantly reaffirmed my fandom.
Several months of heavy listening to Skittish later, Doughty hit Solar Culture on Sunday night.
The crew and I unfortunately missed the first two songs, but walked in during “The Only Answer,” Skittish’s opening track. Drums and piano backed Doughty, playing a Strat, clear and straightforward.
Song to song to song to song... a great show, a purely happy moment.
One tune by the name of “Madeleine and Nine” again made me think of a Long Lost Friend, one who shared with me, inspired by Doughty, in fits of writing bad beat poetry, some of which I still have saved on my computer in a folder named “Rolling Over Jack Kerouac.”
Doughty hit on Super Bon Bon, in a vastly different arrangement, signature bass line removed in favor of a funk guitar strum.
After saying the band learned it during soundcheck, Doughtly launched into a mostly spot on version of Kenny Rogers' the Gambler, singing a series of blah blah's for one verse after he forgot the words.
Ever the banterer, Doughty paused at one point to tell a story about the Bonaroo festival in Tennessee. He joined a float, a giant Mr. T head, journeying around the camping area tossing beads out. Then William Hung emerged on the same float, singing, while far in the distance, Bucket Head stood on the stage, staring at what he most certainly must have considered a hallucination.
A slate of new songs, including an overtly political one set for a Move On benefit album produced by John Flansburg of They Might Be Giants, were all amazing.
But proof that an old fan likes the old tunes, the encore of “True Dreams of Wichita” and “Janine” absolutely floored me. Again.