Mike Doughty - Skittish Roughs

I know a lot of us here love Mike Doughty, be it with Soul Coughing, as a solo artist or collaborating with someone else. Since I haven't posted anything related to Mike or the Cough in a while, I thought it was about time for something wonderful from the house of Doughty.

If you missed it in the age of Napster, a rough tape of Mike's Skittish record leaked way back when. The album was recorded with studio-wiz, Kramer, while Soul Coughing were still together and Mike wanted to make a stripped-down, acoustic album all on his own. Being signed to Warner Bros. at the time, it was offered to them for release but they shot it down, leaving it shelved indefinitely. Wait a few years, the Cough have broken up and Mike isn't doing much, although he notices that the album somehow leaked onto the net and was being shared by fans with a lot of love for the material. As only can be expected of Mike, he decides to burn a bunch of CDRs of the finished album, get his guitar, rent a car and go traveling across the country, booking shows where he would show up, play Soul Coughing classics and his own new songs, all completely solo and sell a bunch of copies of the album. Mike proceeded to clean up his life, win back his audience, get a lot of new fans in the process and eventually land a deal with ATO Records which is owned by his buddy, Dave Matthews.

After years of selling the finished Skittish album at shows along with a live CD and the original pressings of the Rockity Roll EP, ATO released Skittish and Rockity Roll as a double CD with some unreleased cuts. It's a great release and you should grab it if you haven't heard it, and it is available digitally at iTunes or Amazon for your digital needs, although several of the tracks from Skittish still have not seen the light of day, at least officially.

So, in case you didn't catch them when Napster was still around, here are the rough versions of the Skittish recordings that are circulating. Despite the simplicity of Mike's mostly acoustic set-up you can hear interesting differences between these versions and the finished ones.

If you like this, please buy the official Skittish/Rockity Roll release. Despite being signed to a label, ATO Records isn't a massive, multi-national corporation, it's kind of like an indie with major label distribution. So please support an artist who can benefit from your purchase, especially one who lives and breathes the music they're making. I know I placed the links for digital purchase above, but again, you can grab them at iTunes or Amazon. Also, if you like this and haven't heard Mike's other solo releases, he has three other great albums, Haughty Melodic, Golden Delicious and Sad Man, Happy Man, all also available digitally. The most recent, Sad Man, Happy Man, is REALLY EXCELLENT and you get a TON of bonus tracks with the iTunes release, all of which are quality!


Mike Doughty - Skittish Roughs

01 The Pink Life
02 Real Love/It's Only Life
03 No Peace, Los Angeles
04 Mean Curl
05 Where Have You Gone?
06 All The Dirt
07 Unluckier
08 World Of Suck
09 Shunned + Falsified
10 Skittish
11 Thank You, Lord, For Sending Me The F Train
12 Mr. Bitterness
13 Laundrytown
14 Looks
15 Rising Sign
16 I Failed To Use It
17 Cobain's Sarcoma
18 Language Barrier