Mike Doughty

Mike Doughty is an American singer-songwriter, author, and Broadway performer born Michael Ross Doughty on June 10, 1970, in Fort Knox, Kentucky. The son of military historian and U.S. Army officer Robert A. Doughty, Doughty spent his childhood on army bases across the United States, including Fort Knox, Fort Hood, and Fort Leavenworth. His teenage years were spent on the grounds of the United States Military Academy at West Point, where his father was stationed as a teacher. At age 19, Doughty relocated to New York City to study poetry at The New School, where singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco was among his classmates in Sekou Sundiata's poetry course, "The Shape and Nature of Things to Come."

While working as a doorman at the New York club The Knitting Factory, Doughty founded Soul Coughing in 1992. The band went on to release three albums — Ruby Vroom (1994), Irresistible Bliss (1996), and El Oso (1998) — before a greatest hits collection, Lust in Phaze, appeared in 2002. Doughty dissolved Soul Coughing in 2000, citing personal difficulties including addiction to opiate painkillers, heroin, and alcohol. Following the breakup, he was dropped by Warner Brothers and launched an independent touring career, traveling roughly 9,000 miles on his first solo tour and selling copies of his acoustic album Skittish — a record Warner Brothers had rejected in 1996 — from the front of the stage on CD-Rs in plain white sleeves. Over three years of touring, Doughty sold 20,000 copies of Skittish and built a following separate from his Soul Coughing audience. He also contributed lyrics and vocals to BT's track "Never Gonna Come Back Down," which appeared on BT's 1999 album Movement in Still Life.

Doughty's path back to a record label began at the Bonnaroo music festival in 2004, where he encountered Dave Matthews, a longtime Soul Coughing fan who had previously booked the band as an opening act on two U.S. tours, including performances at Madison Square Garden. After Matthews expressed enthusiasm for Doughty's solo record Rockity Roll and the song "27 Jennifers," Doughty gave him rough mixes of an album he had been recording in Minneapolis with singer-songwriter and producer Dan Wilson, whom Doughty had met through their shared artist manager, Jim Grant. Matthews released the resulting album on his ATO label as Haughty Melodic — an anagram of "Michael Doughty." Singles from the record, "Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well" and "I Hear the Bells," were each featured on episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Veronica Mars, and Doughty appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman in support of the release.

Also in 2004, Doughty participated in The 24 Hour Plays on Broadway, marking his Broadway credit that year. As of his 2016 release The Heart Watches While the Brain Burns, Doughty had released 18 studio albums, live albums, and EPs since 2000. Several of his projects, including Circles, Super Bon Bon and The Very Best of Soul Coughing, Live at Ken's, and Stellar Motel, were financed through crowdfunding. He has additionally used Patreon to distribute weekly songs to subscribers.

In 2012, Doughty published the memoir The Book of Drugs, which addressed his early years as a musician, his characterization of Soul Coughing as a "dark, abusive marriage," and his experiences with addiction and recovery. That same year he published the poetry and song collection Slanky. In 2014, he created a rock opera based on the Book of Revelation titled Revelation. Doughty relocated to Memphis, Tennessee in 2015. In 2019, he toured the United States performing Soul Coughing's Ruby Vroom in its entirety to mark the album's 25th anniversary. His second memoir, I Die Each Time I Hear the Sound: A Memoir, was published in May 2020, focusing on his musical influences and their development. In August 2020, Doughty announced a new project, Ghost of Vroom, with longtime collaborator Andrew "Scrap" Livingston. A Soul Coughing reunion tour was announced in 2024, running from September through October of that year.