What The Music Wants To Be: An Interview with Mike Doughty

Popshifter: The impression we get in Canada is that people in the Army tend to be a little more right-wing. MoveOn is a very left-wing organization. Not that you’re very political, but the feeling I get from some of your albums is that you’re a little more left-wing. Does that cause a conflict with what you grew up with, or with your family, or is it easy to bring those two sorts of ideas together?

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall

Mike Doughty: In the Army there are a lot more apolitical people than you might necessarily think. I grew up in the Reagan Era and it was a sort of “Morning in America.” Fascinatingly the whole “Morning in America”/Reagan thing was kind of a veiled, “let’s get over Vietnam” thing. Now that I think of it, it’s a pretty interesting cultural juxtaposition.

It’s not necessarily across-the-board right wing in terms of the people you meet in the Army and in fact, I’ve been kinda surprised by the reaction I’ve gotten in emails and MySpace mails from people who’ve been in the Iraq War and have come back, or are about to re-deploy or about to deploy, or their wives, their girlfriends . . . just really surprised and humbled.

But I think the song is essentially apolitical. I think we’re a lot smarter in differentiating between the war and the warrior than we were in the Vietnam Era. I mean, my dad was insulted, spit upon, called names, when he came back from the war.

I think I’m speaking specifically to my own guilt in being able to have a functional, normal life while this is going on thousands of miles away from me. And like I said, trauma, and what happens to somebody who loses their innocence over there? What happens to a teenager who goes over there, so early in life and encounters this kind of horror. . .

So I think you can yell all day about the origins of the war—which are at best, delusion and at worst, treason—but the fact is that we’re over there. And I think people in the military have the sense that I’m not just shaking my finger at something that happened six years ago. Whether its stupidity or arrogance, we can’t get in a time machine and go back and change it.

Popshifter: So we can get a little lighter now. I would like to talk a little bit about the feel of the new album. It’s got a whole range of subjects. But—and you can tell me if I’m wrong here—I kind of felt something a little sunnier, a little more 1970s funk in there.

Golden Delicious

Mike Doughty: Yeah! Pete [McNeal], who you just saw grumpily make a cup of coffee, is my drummer and his worldview as a rhythm player has really influenced me, as well as John Kirby, the guy who was wearing shorts, You get to see my band as they wake up!

John is just amazing at all the electric piano stuff, and organ stuff and clavinet stuff on the record. I’ve been touring with them for a couple of years and I just wanted to do something that was specifically suited to their strengths. I was really thinking a lot about this tour and touring on this record and making it kind of more of a rhythmic affair, a more danceable affair.

I like to sort of set parameters for myself when I make something, if I don’t necessarily have an idea of what the outcome’s gonna be. And to get back to Sekou, you really shouldn’t figure out what the outcome’s gonna be before you go through the journey or the process, because who knows what’s going to be revealed?

The parameters I set for myself were that we were going to do it live, there were going to be a limited number of instruments on there, and I was going to tailor as many things as possible to the way those two particular guys sounded.

Click to read more from Mike Doughty on. . .

Song development and self-plagiarism
Words and war
Politics and parameters of the new album
Scrap, Pete, & John and “Small Rock”
Secret codes and Scott Wynn from The Panderers
The Rock Star Echelon and retirement plans

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