Mike Doughty

About Mike Doughty:
Doughty is touring with the largest band he's ever toured with: a cello/bass player, drums, another guitar player, an organ player, and a backing vocalist--six people on stage.  The show consists of basically live remixing. Using hand gestures, Doughty improvises changes in what the musicians in the band are doing--stopping, starting, getting louder or quieter, changing their parts, repeating their parts. The songs are Soul Coughing songs and Doughty solo songs, but none are ever performed the same way twice.

It's a kind of simplified version of something Doughty saw John Zorn doing with avant-garde jazz in the 1990s, but adapted to be more along the lines of a dance music or hip-hop producer mixing tracks--bringing in the drums, dropping them out, juggling the musicians like samples.

Doughty's newest record, The Heart Watches While the Brain Burns, is his third collaboration with Queens, NY hip-hop producer Good Goose. The elegant, charming album swerves between lonesome country influences, and trap beats.  The title is from an off-the-cuff remark Marc Maron made on his podcast WTF.

About Wheatus:
Wheatus have been touring the world & making records since their year 2000 hit "Teenage Dirtbag." When asked about the story of the band, during sessions for their 7th album, singer/songwriter Brendan B. Brown responded nervously, "well, it involves 1980's Satan worship, in my hometown...hope that's not too weird?"