E-Town

Mike Doughty

A couple weeks ago I went to a live taping of a radio program called E-Town. From what I gather, they normally tape it at the Boulder Theater and it typically includes a couple musical guests and some do-gooder type that they give an award to. The night I attended, one of the musical guests was Mike Doughty. He used to be the lead singer for the now-defunct band Soul Coughing, one of my favorite bands of all time, and has three solo albums out, the most recent of which is called Haughty Melodic. The album is hard to describe exactly. On the surface it seems like any of a number of singer/songwriter guitar-driven albums, but he has a sound and style that are distinctly his own. Whatever you call it, I love it.

The other musical guest was a band called Uncle Earl, an all-female old-time string band. They had an infectious energy and an amatuerish charm that made it imposiible not to like them. The whole show had an intimate and personal sitting-around-the-kitchen-table feel to it, and it was more enjoyable because of it, even though the musical set was shorter than what you'd see at a typical concert.

In the grand finale, where they had everyone on stage: Mike Doughty and his accomplished bassist Skip, the members of Uncle Earl, and the E-town house band, Mike starts out by strumming the opening strains of Duran Duran's Hungry Like the Wolf. I kid you not. Now, I had seen him and his band perform this song when I saw them at the Fox Theatre on the hill, but this time it's accompanied by banjo, mandolin, fiddle, contra-bass, and a little tap dancing. Unbelievable! It was one of the most inspiring and infectiously fun musical experiences I've ever had. I left the theater totally in love with the world and everyone in it, and really wanting to make some music. I need to go beat on my drum set for a while...