Episode 311 - Mike Doughty
Marc:are we doing this really wait for it are we doing this wait for it pow what the fuck and it's also what the fuck what's wrong with me it's time for wtf what the fuck with mark maron
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what-the-fuckers?
Marc:What-the-fuck buddies?
Marc:What-the-fuckineers?
Marc:What-the-fuck sticks?
Marc:What-the-fuck nicks?
Marc:What-the-fucker recans?
Marc:What-the-fuck stables?
Marc:What-the-fuckadelics?
Marc:And, of course, you what-the-fuckaholics.
Marc:How's everybody?
Marc:There was a list.
Marc:There were some oldies but goodies that go way back.
Marc:Today's...
Marc:Days one.
Marc:Days one.
Marc:Days two.
Marc:I am Marc Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Oh, fuck.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:It's hot here.
Marc:The air conditioner is off.
Marc:Let me set the scene for you.
Marc:I just got done writing all day.
Marc:We're doing those scripts for my IFC show and it's good.
Marc:I can't fucking talk today.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:Sorry.
Marc:Sorry about the outburst.
Marc:I've got a little bit of a canker sore in my mouth.
Marc:It's driving me nuts.
Marc:I'm very aware of it.
Marc:Now you're aware of it.
Marc:So we're all on the same page.
Marc:Spent the day writing.
Marc:We're working on, we've just gotten about five scripts done or they're in their first stages.
Marc:It's all very exciting, very taxing, very interesting process, but they're coming along great and I'm excited about it.
Marc:Now I'm home.
Marc:The garage is like an oven.
Marc:It literally becomes some sort of a large human tandoor as the day progresses, as if there were coals underneath it.
Marc:And I'm just in here turning into some sort of non bread.
Marc:Oh, God, did I have to continue the joke?
Marc:I mean, it's fine.
Marc:It's just a tandoor.
Marc:And now I'm a piece of bread.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:It's hot in here.
Marc:And I had to turn off the air conditioner.
Marc:I'm not going to complain anymore.
Marc:All right?
Marc:I'm doing okay.
Marc:Mike Doty is on the show today.
Marc:Love Mike Doty.
Marc:This guy's been a great guest since back in the Air America days.
Marc:He's going to play some guitar.
Marc:He's going to let me play with him.
Marc:It's going to be sweet.
Marc:Maybe some of you know him from his days in Soul Coffin, but his solo stuff is where it's at, and he's got some good stories, Mike.
Marc:Good guy.
Marc:engaging look forward to that because it's going to happen momentarily also i might get someone on the phone here in a second but let me do some other stuff first this month september 29th if you live in michigan i will be at the magic bag theater for two shows on september 29th i have no idea where that is in relation to where you are but if it is near where you are in ferndale michigan is where the magic bag is so if you're anywhere within a few hundred mile radius of that i'd recommend it because i'm not getting out much
Marc:You can go to magicbag.com, themagicbag.com for info on that.
Marc:LA people, the Riot LA, September 22nd.
Marc:I will be doing a live WTF and some sort of storytelling show.
Marc:Not clear on what story I'm going to be telling, and I'm also not clear on who's going to be on that WTF.
Marc:I have to reach out to my peeps.
Marc:Got to find some folks.
Marc:I believe Eddie Pepitone is in.
Marc:I imagine Jim Earl is in, but then we got to fill out that roster.
Marc:All right, so you can go to riotla.com for information on that.
Marc:Oh, okay, and before I forget, we're doing three episodes this week.
Marc:So Friday, I've got Nate Bargazzi on, who is honestly one of the funniest people working today.
Marc:I mean it.
Marc:Like, I literally just laugh my ass off at him.
Marc:And it's a great talk.
Marc:So that's coming up Friday.
Marc:Nate Bargatze.
Marc:It's a triple play week on WTF.
Marc:All right.
Marc:What else?
Marc:Man, it was some weekend, huh, folks?
Marc:I think the last time I talked to you, I was preparing for a party that I overcooked for.
Marc:Got them tri-tips going.
Marc:Rubbed them down.
Marc:Some people were asking me after I sent out a newsletter, which you can get on if you'd like to be part of that circle over at WTFPod.com.
Marc:Get on that newsletter.
Marc:I did some Santa Maria tri-tips, and then some people were like, what does that entail, Mark?
Marc:Grill master.
Marc:I am by no means a grill master, but I will say that despite my my celebration of myself as a guy who works with a small Weber grill that I did focus and pull it off, man, I delivered the goods.
Marc:I delivered some pit master quality shit, man.
Marc:But Santa Maria rub is the way I understand it.
Marc:It's basically equal part garlic powder, pepper, and salt.
Marc:And then a teaspoon of ground red chili from Chimayo.
Marc:Chimayo up by Santa Fe.
Marc:The sacred grounds of Chimayo where chili comes out blessed by the spice goddess Chimayo.
Marc:or a mother mary or somebody but man that shit is good and i rubbed that shit down marinated it for a few hours got it to room temperature seared it on one side on my little weber seared on the other side on the same little weber and then just kept my eyes on it and kept moving it around until it got nice and dark and crispy and i stuck my meat thermometer in it and when it hit about 125
Marc:130 boom off the grill let it sit slice that bad boy up genius i ain't calling myself a genius but whatever magic i think it had something to do with jesus because of the red chili that's taken from the church grounds there at chimio uh that we got something good there and i did the mac and cheese business too i do a baked mac and cheese people are asking me about this if this ain't your cup of tea then then then you know
Marc:Fuck off.
Marc:All right, move on.
Marc:Bake macaroni and cheese.
Marc:All right, so you cook about a pound.
Marc:Cook a pound of macaroni.
Marc:Get it to almost cooked, like a little too al dente, all right?
Marc:Cook that up, all right?
Marc:And then what you do is you get about four tablespoons of butter.
Marc:Get that going.
Marc:Put four tablespoons of flour in there.
Marc:Make a nice roux.
Marc:Cook that up a little bit.
Marc:Add a quart of milk.
Marc:Cook that up so it thickens a little bit.
Marc:Then mince up an entire medium onion.
Marc:Throw that in the milk with a bay leaf and a half a teaspoon of paprika.
Marc:Get that going.
Marc:Simmer that up for about 15 minutes, all right?
Marc:And then what you do is you take about, let's say, three and a half cups of grated cheddar cheese and put that in the milk and save about a cup and a half, all right?
Marc:Do that and then get that gooey, right?
Marc:And then you take your macaroni
Marc:And you put that in the cheese and mix it up so it looks all good and yummy.
Marc:And then you add salt and pepper so it tastes good.
Marc:All right, now you got your basics.
Marc:Then you take a buttered baking tray and put about half of the macaroni down.
Marc:Half of the cheese you have left over and sprinkle that over it.
Marc:Then you put the rest of macaroni down and then you sprinkle over the cheese on top.
Marc:And then what you do is you take like a cup of fresh breadcrumbs and about two tablespoons of butter in a pan and butter those breadcrumbs up and then sprinkle those on the top.
Marc:Stick it in a 350 degree oven for like 30 minutes.
Marc:Let it cool five minutes and boom.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That is it.
Marc:The key to that is the fucking onions.
Marc:That's what makes that shit.
Marc:Now look, on Sunday, my brother was in town.
Marc:You talked to him.
Marc:And we had a big day Sunday, man.
Marc:We rocked it.
Marc:I could not believe it, man.
Marc:I had to go to the FYI Fest.
Marc:The FYF Fest and do a set there, which I'm always apprehensive about.
Marc:I don't understand why they have comedy at rock festivals.
Marc:I don't understand necessarily why people go to see comedy at rock festivals.
Marc:It's almost like, do you want to see a comic in the most difficult situation possible for a comic, which is outdoors in a tent with no doors on it?
Marc:With music coming in and people standing up, struggling to hold focus and get laughs, is that the way you want to see comedy?
Marc:Then go see comedy at a festival.
Marc:So me and my brother, my chick, and my brother's wife, we go to that.
Marc:We make it in and out.
Marc:We got to be at Berbiglia's screening and hang out with Mike on stage afterwards so we can have this tense Q&A.
Marc:That was fine.
Marc:And then the four of us, we make it.
Marc:After that to Scarpetta, it's the second time I've been to Scarpetta this month.
Marc:That's Scott Conant's restaurant.
Marc:Look, I'm no millionaire and that place is pricey, but God damn it, if it isn't fucking amazing, there's a chef there.
Marc:You know, Scott's not there.
Marc:He lives in New York, but he's, you know, he's got, you know, he's on top of it.
Marc:He's got this cat, Freddy, that takes care of me.
Marc:Now, there's nothing worse and there's nothing better than having an amazing restaurant that is high end and the guy knows you.
Marc:Because that means you walk in, hey, how you doing, Mr. Marin?
Marc:Here's your table, Mr. Marin.
Marc:Hey, Freddie wants you to try this stuff and that stuff.
Marc:And you're like, oh, my God, I'm a king here.
Marc:I'm going to spend my life savings at this place.
Marc:So fucking worth it.
Marc:Freddie Vargas is the guy over there.
Marc:He's a fucking genius.
Marc:And of course, you know, Scott Conant, big fan, a big fan of the Conant.
Marc:I think it's his appearances on Chopped.
Marc:I like that he's got a, you know, kind of an arrogant asshole-like disposition on Chopped.
Marc:There's something about dudes like that where I'm like, that guy, he's a ball buster.
Marc:I want to know how good his fucking food is.
Marc:Happens to be very good.
Marc:And then from there we went to the comedy store.
Marc:I played the main room and I did well.
Marc:That was a huge day.
Marc:Did I mention, did I mention, did I mention, we're sponsored today by IFC Films and the new movie Sleepwalk with me, which just had a hugely successful weekend.
Marc:I helped along with that because I went to one on Saturday, hung out with Mike afterwards and did the thing.
Marc:It's playing in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Washington, D.C., Boston, Austin, and it expands to many more cities this weekend.
Marc:And I'm going to get Ira Glass on the phone because he co-wrote Sleepwalk with me with Mike and Mike's brother.
Marc:And also he's the producer.
Marc:So let's get Ira Glass, as you know, he's also the host of This American Life, on the telephone right here in the garage.
Marc:Let's do that.
Guest:Hello?
Guest:Ira.
Guest:Isn't that what being a big movie producer is in the day and age we live in now, Ira?
Guest:I guess.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Like, like, Birbiglia and I are at this point where, like, literally, like, we were doing a thing where we're going to be tearing tickets and making popcorn for people.
Marc:So you're doing this.
Marc:So now it's a performance art and film promotion.
Marc:Are you really going to make popcorn?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:We did a video about this online where we basically told people opening weekend is so important to the film and the film's this labor of love.
Guest:And so please come out.
Guest:We think you'll like it.
Guest:And to make your experience as at the maximum best it can be, Bibigley and I will not just do Q&As at every show.
Guest:We will pop the popcorn and tear the tickets.
Guest:So now we've committed to it because we said it on the Internet.
Marc:That is hilarious.
Marc:Now, are you willing to do that at every theater it opens in?
Marc:Because, you know, now it sounds to me that you're right at the edge of sort of like, well, we really got to go all in with this.
Marc:And you're just going to tour the country for the next two months making popcorn and tearing tickets to sell your sweet little movie.
Guest:I am not willing to do that, and that is what I say to WTF listeners.
Guest:But after the first weekend, I think they're on their own.
Guest:They're going to have to get popcorn from trained popcorn professionals.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, let me ask you a question about the production process, because, I mean, you've done a television show.
Marc:You obviously do your weekly...
Marc:radio show i mean what were how how is this different i mean how did you choose what was the entire process so mike you you have a relationship with mike the show has a relationship with mike and you just say to mike let's make this a movie i mean how did that come about um it came about mike mike suggested that mike mike wanted to make the thing into a movie and he asked me if i wanted to help him do it and um
Guest:And truthfully, at the beginning, the answer was kind of no.
Guest:It seemed like it was going to be more homework and more work.
Guest:But Mike was really charming and persistent.
Guest:And it's just like, come on, come on, come on.
Guest:It'll be fun.
Guest:And then the big difference between doing this and anything else I've ever done is we spent like a year and a half or two years.
Guest:We spent two years working on the script before it was ready to shoot, before it was good enough to shoot, because neither of us had done this before.
Guest:And sometimes when I'm trying to explain the movie to people, I say, what it feels like, it feels like a story from our radio show if we spent three years making a story on our radio show.
Guest:I feel like every little turn and beat has been gone over a million times.
Marc:Well, you've got to figure everybody who's on your radio show has spent a lifetime making the story for your radio show.
Marc:So I guess a few years on top of that doesn't... I imagine that eventually Mike will have a monologue about the making of Sleepwalk with me.
Guest:That then we'll put on the radio show that's completing the circle.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:So you co-wrote it with Mike.
Marc:There were three writers.
Marc:It was you, Mike, and Mike's brother.
Marc:Is that how it worked?
Guest:Mike's brother, Joe, who works with him a lot on his comedy, and then also Seth Barish.
Guest:There was a one-man show, and Seth is just a very talented sort of dramaturg and figuring out how scenes should work, and he was a big help.
Marc:It was a big group effort.
Marc:And I've got to say, the casting of Marc Maron was a tremendous stroke of genius.
Marc:And I only speak about myself in the third person.
Guest:It was, and you were great.
Guest:And you were great on Louie a couple weeks ago.
Marc:Thank you, sir.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is this going to be your new thing?
Marc:What, the three-minute part?
Marc:Yeah, I am the king of the three-minute part.
Marc:I have been one of the greatest three-minute actors that the industry has ever known.
Marc:Well, Ira, I couldn't be more honored to be with that cast.
Marc:I mean, well, just Carol Kane alone was amazing because I think I've been in love with her since Annie Hall, but everybody was great in the movie.
Guest:Yeah, actually getting to know Carol Kane is one of the more amazing things that's happened to me too.
Guest:And on the set, she was like the mom.
Guest:She was like the caretaker.
Guest:If it seemed like somebody was having hurt feelings over something, she would be the one to say the thing, to smooth things out.
Guest:It was really interesting seeing her do that.
Guest:But beyond that, beyond Carol Kane, it's Lauren Ambrose.
Guest:And then it's basically a roster of people who have been on WTF.
Guest:There's Kristen Schaal, there's Wyatt Sinek, there's Jesse Klein, Henry Phillips, there's you.
Guest:doing various cameos because the whole plot line of the film is Mike becoming, trying to turn himself into a stand-up.
Guest:And when he starts the film, he's terrible.
Guest:He goes on stage and does these laughable sets.
Guest:And over the course of the film, he gets better and better.
Guest:And then the key moment in the film, as you know, is when you give him the classic Marc Maron advice that he should be honest with people on stage.
Guest:And and and things.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:And then you people can see what happens after that.
Marc:Well, yeah, I mean, and quite honestly, as a stand up, I was very impressed with with that whole process because stand up is generally not done very well in films.
Marc:And certainly the process of becoming a stand up, although it was honoring a larger story, I thought was was very authentic.
Marc:And it was great to see all those guys.
Marc:in the film, and I think they all did a great job.
Marc:Kudos to that, because kudos to you for that, because really, stand-up in films can be pretty awful, and you guys pulled it off.
Marc:Thank you so much.
Marc:Well, look, I'm excited about it, because I love you, I love Mike, and occasionally I like myself, but I'm very proud of myself for the part that I had in your film.
Guest:As a special request from you, I will make popcorn in Chicago, too, at least a little bit.
Marc:I want you to make popcorn at my house, Ira Glass.
Marc:Do you even eat popcorn, Marin?
Guest:Hypocrite.
Guest:When's the last time you ate popcorn?
Marc:I have an air popper.
Marc:You're talking to a man with an eating disorder, and air popped popcorn is a staple of the anorexic male's diet.
Guest:Noted.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, congratulations, and thanks for talking to me, and I love the movie.
Marc:I will see it again, and I will tell my friends to go.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:All right, Ira.
Marc:Thanks, buddy.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:Okay, man.
Marc:Bye.
Bye.
Marc:Bye.
Marc:That was a pleasant chat with Ira, right?
Marc:It was.
Marc:This isn't fun to hear him on another show other than his show.
Marc:I think it is.
Marc:Sleepwalk with me will expand to new theaters this Friday, September 7th in places like Milwaukee, Baltimore, Providence, Miami, Salt Lake City, Raleigh, Omaha, many more to come.
Marc:It's all over the place.
Marc:Go to sleepwalkmovie.com for more details.
Guest:What?
Marc:So I was listening, Mike Doty.
Marc:Mike Doty in the garage.
Marc:Haven't seen you in a while, man.
Guest:Indeed, it's been a while.
Guest:And I behold the cat ranch.
Guest:Yeah, right?
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:It's nothing like you pictured it, or did you do some research?
Guest:I thought that it was like a garage, you know, like a suburban garage.
Guest:I don't really know from the L.A.
Guest:garage.
Guest:No, this is an old-timey garage.
Guest:Yeah, an old-timey garage.
Marc:It's a 1924 garage.
Guest:Yeah, it's very, like, shacky in its garageness.
Guest:Yeah, the whole house is a little shacky.
Guest:Dude, believe me, it's like trees, things that smell good.
Guest:Yeah, it's all going on.
Guest:The ever-tempting Californian lifestyle.
Guest:Yeah, why aren't you here?
Guest:Um, I just...
Guest:just everybody i love is in new york i don't want to start over um you know i came real close to moving to portland oregon oh my god yeah it was a few years ago it was before everybody was moving to portland that's like the uh that's like the uh the uh independent musicians retreat yeah it is that so if you if you go to portland and your career craps out you're still in portland
Guest:Well, the thing about it is it's no longer like the cheap second cousin of Seattle.
Guest:It's better.
Guest:It's expensive.
Guest:Well, I think it's better than Seattle.
Guest:It's got more integrity.
Guest:This I do not know about.
Guest:No integrity in Seattle anymore.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:It's played, Dodie.
Guest:Yeah, come on, man.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:my mom's from seattle so my my uh my impression of seattle has always been like sort of cranky trying to be nice uh scandinavian people oh yeah that's which there's a huge scandinavian population up there yeah oh yeah all through the midwest there's uh you get that scandinavian thing yeah what um all right so i was listening to the live record which they sent me that's the one right that's the newest one
Guest:Yeah, that's in this record.
Guest:And the book.
Guest:The book is mostly what I'm macking.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:That's what you're pushing?
Marc:And this is The Addiction Memoir?
Guest:The Addiction.
Guest:Oh, dude.
Guest:It's one of those terrible books.
Guest:No, it's not a terrible book.
Guest:Well, I know, but it's in that genre.
Marc:But it's your life.
Marc:And the thing is, you're a smart guy.
Marc:You had an opportunity to write a book, so you wrote a fucking book, right?
Guest:Yeah, no, I dug it.
Marc:And it's your life.
Marc:That's the one thing I was noticing about the live record.
Marc:The live record was like, because you started out with a phenomenal first record with Soul Coughing, right?
Marc:And that got a lot of attention.
Marc:Indeed.
Marc:And then whatever happened, happened.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you put out, what, five records since then?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Well, yeah, since 2000, since being a solo.
Marc:OK, so that means that I'm listening to a Mike Doty, a troubadour, a solo operation, but a guy who has earned his voice.
Marc:I mean, that's the one thing that I notice that you've always had a sort of passionate kind of, you know, lyrical and rhythmic.
Marc:There's moments where you're actually Richie Havens like.
Guest:Oh, badass.
Guest:That's awesome.
Marc:Has anyone ever said that to you?
Guest:No, but it's something that I've been going for for a long time.
Guest:I mean, certainly.
Marc:That's been in your head?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Fuck yeah.
Marc:I mean, watching Richie Havens at Woodstock just use his fucking guitar like a rhythm instrument?
Guest:Oh, totally, yeah.
Guest:That guy, Billy Bragg, John Lee Hooker, Ani DeFranco, all the amazing, super rhythmic guitar players.
Marc:So what I'm listening to now is a guy that you've lived the life.
Marc:I don't know if you intended to, because, you know, a guy like me, you know, my heroes were always junkies.
Marc:So it was only a matter of time before I evolved into that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I don't.
Guest:Was that the plan for you?
Guest:Junkied them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, what happened with soul coughing was it was like the worst marriage.
Guest:Uh, and, uh, like, believe me, when I finally got a shrink, uh, she was like all about spousal abuse.
Guest:She was throwing all this spousal abuse stuff at me, which was like pretty, I mean, I grew up around the army, so like being like, I'm a victim of spousal abuse was, oh, just fucked up.
Guest:So that was in relation to, uh, your band?
Guest:To, to soul climbing, yeah.
Guest:How many, there were three of you?
Guest:There were four of us.
Guest:And I was a 22-year-old kid, and they were all in their 30s when I started the band, and they had never put out records or anything.
Guest:They really didn't give a fuck about me until we got a record deal.
Marc:These were just guys you're like, yeah, I need guys to play with me.
Marc:It wasn't like you grew up together and wrote songs.
Guest:songs together no no not at all and it just like what happened was they really believed it seemed yeah that what i was doing was just sort of this kind of annoying thing that they had to deal with while they were doing their thing which was awesome well that well that sounds like uh that sounds like you you were assigned a writer in in my racket like you know you get an old tired hat guy who's like i just want to work well how'd you end up with those guys
Guest:Well, I mean, the short story is I was working at the knitting factory, and I just, like, picked out different players.
Guest:Well, we've got time.
Guest:We don't have to do a... Well, the long story is, you know, to get fucking Oprah on you, is I came from a fucked up family, and I sought a fucked up family.
Guest:So where'd you grow up?
Guest:Kind of all over the place.
Guest:You know, military parents.
Marc:Both of them were military?
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:My dad was military.
Guest:Like, what branch?
Guest:Army.
Guest:Okay, so he's an army guy.
Guest:Been to Vietnam.
Marc:Your dad was a Vietnam vet.
Marc:Yes, he was.
Marc:He was a Vietnam vet.
Guest:And so he was an army, what was he, a lieutenant colonel?
Guest:No, my dad retired a general.
Guest:For real.
Guest:They made him a general on the day he retired for the pension.
Guest:So your dad was a one-star general.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Still is.
Guest:Still is.
Guest:You always are.
Guest:You're always the general?
Guest:Do you call him the general?
Guest:I do not.
Guest:I do not.
Guest:So he grew up in Louisiana in the 50s, and his dad was an old-style town drunk.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:In a southern town.
Guest:And had, like, the story, the bandied-about story in my family is that, you know, the, like, cars came late to rural central Louisiana, and theirs was... So did a lot of progress.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well...
Guest:But they had a horse because the horse could get home.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And my grandfather could stumble out of the bar and fall on the horse, and the horse would take him home.
Guest:So that's the family mythology.
Guest:Yeah, but no, it's true, apparently.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I've confirmed this with multiple sources.
Marc:So your dad, being maybe a classic child of an alcoholic, needed some order in his life.
Guest:Yes, he did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, did he ever.
Guest:And man, like, I don't know.
Guest:Career military guys at the time when I was a kid in the 70s, basically everybody's dad had been in Vietnam.
Marc:Now, what does that mean exactly in terms of how it affected you?
Marc:I mean, how old were you?
Marc:When were you born?
Marc:Are you older than me?
Marc:70.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:So, he returned.
Marc:He returned.
Guest:I was born after he returned.
Guest:But not much, right?
Guest:I think he was there in 68 or something.
Guest:But was he in the shit?
Guest:Yes, he was.
Guest:He was actually he was an advisor to a South Vietnamese tank unit.
Guest:So he wasn't even with Americans down there.
Marc:So he was with the guys that were on our side that we were fighting for.
Marc:Yes, indeed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And trying to manage that situation.
Guest:Yeah, and man, he's talked very little about it.
Marc:Isn't that interesting?
Marc:I've talked to a couple other guys whose parents seen some war, and that's what they say.
Marc:Like they didn't find out things until after they passed away.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, my dad got a medal from the South Vietnamese government, and I asked him when I was a teenager what he got it for.
Guest:He was like, oh, well, we were at blah, blah, blah place, and there was X amount of them and X amount of us.
Guest:I was like, so it was a battle?
Guest:He's like, oh, yeah, it was a battle.
Guest:I was like, did you win the battle?
Guest:He said, no, but we killed a lot of them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so he was a professor at West Point for a lot of years.
Guest:He was really good at finding gigs in the army that were not the army.
Marc:Yeah, but was that the moment where you're like, okay, my dad just admitted to killing humans?
Guest:Oh, no, I knew that very early.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yes, very early.
Guest:Why?
Guest:How'd that come about?
Guest:Oh, you know, because it's in the army.
Guest:You know, like, my dad was the healthy dad.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, like, it was like a crazy town of post-traumatic stress disorder growing up on military bases.
Guest:Oh,
Guest:Oh, was it?
Guest:Yeah, like dudes were like, I remember this guy screaming at me for bringing his paper late when I had a paper route.
Guest:This guy was raking leaves.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this guy literally came up to me and goes, you're going to keep raking, but the leaves will always win.
Guest:The leaves will always win.
Guest:Oh, that's fucking spectacular.
Marc:I know, yeah.
Marc:That's like a cop.
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:But they interviewed my dad, the New York Times did, for an article about how Vietnam is taught at West Point.
Guest:And the quote he said in the New York Times was, Lord, I saw them die by the thousands.
Marc:That was his quote?
Marc:That was his quote.
Marc:An unsolicited quote?
Marc:That was his opener?
Guest:They were interviewing him.
Guest:That was his opener.
Guest:I mean, like apparently the experience of Vietnam was that those guys were just willing to die.
Guest:And that was like a huge component of the fucked upness of people coming back from that war.
Guest:It's just like, you know, you should stop.
Guest:The Vietnamese were.
Guest:Yeah, they were just ready to die, ready to die.
Guest:And they just kept coming forward in waves and waves.
Marc:The Viet Cong, the other side.
Guest:Yeah, the other side.
Guest:The North Vietnamese.
Marc:The North Vietnamese.
Marc:So that was, okay, that was, you can't win that one.
Marc:indeed yeah exactly i mean not not um unlike suicide bombers well it's like that moment in the godfather 2 where pacino's in the car in cuba and uh you know some dude blows himself up in front right and uh he brought it up to hyman roth and uh and he said i saw a guy you know blow himself up and and hyman goes what does that mean to you and he said well it means they can win right exactly exactly
Marc:So now in terms of like, what does it mean for a kid growing up?
Marc:And like how when you say your childhood was fucked up, it sounds like your dad was not one of the guys who was, you know, you know, angrily diatribing or strung out on drugs or incapable of of existing.
Marc:It sounds like he had quite a life after the war.
Guest:well i mean no he was he was pretty strung out he was like uh he was a very controlled drinker right um you know like we always heard stories about you know what your grandfather did and what your uncles did and like all this stuff for like the real alcoholic tales of you know beating up women and like all that shit losing but his dad actually lost their house in a card game
Marc:Like, it really happened for real.
Marc:I mean, do you have a ballad that captures your grandfather?
Marc:No.
Marc:Where is the ballad about your grandfather?
Marc:It sounds like Between the Horse and Losing a House.
Marc:Right.
Guest:It's the first two pages of the book.
Guest:oh it is yeah okay yeah but he um uh you know he like you said he wanted control um you know and he drank like after 5 p.m right um he drank on the weekends i never thought he was an alcoholic just because i heard the tales of did he drink quietly did he like dad needs his drinking time and he went over into a room with a cigar or pipe or cigarettes
Guest:He had a lounge chair that he would lay back in with a blanket over him with his head kind of cocked to the side and a beer by his side and just sort of let the misery wash over him in waves.
Guest:And leave him, probably, temporarily.
Guest:And on Saturdays, if I had fucked something up, not mown the lawn, whatever it was, I had to tell him before noon.
Guest:Because afternoon, it got progressively more violent of a reaction.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah, and by like 3 or 4 p.m., he was whipping out the belt and wielding it over me.
Guest:You got belt?
Guest:I didn't get the belt.
Guest:In fact, I was like, man, I'm so lucky because I grew up in a family where he didn't hit me with the belt.
Guest:He just threatened me with it.
Guest:That is pretty amazing.
Guest:It is pretty good, and it's fucking weird when you grow up and you're like, nah, I had a really good childhood because I didn't get it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, yeah, emotional abuse is certainly just as it's more insidious in a way.
Marc:I've always envied people that had very specific physical abuse.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, even I mean, I don't want to get too much flack, but even if you're sexually abused.
Marc:You know, you're like, I know where it happened.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:I know the night it happened.
Marc:I know the moment it happened.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But when it's just sort of vague, boundaryless, emotional abuse or emotional rape, you're like, I'm not sure.
Marc:It was kind of, you know, and you have relatively similar symptoms.
Marc:Indeed.
Marc:And I was grateful.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like the whole time I was like, man, I did so great.
Guest:Didn't get hit by the belt that was wielded over me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what was your mom?
Guest:Just the quiet?
Guest:No, she was super bipolar.
Guest:Oh, you got the double whammy.
Guest:Alcoholism and bipolar.
Guest:Yeah, all big time.
Guest:And her thing was she would just start yelling at you about something that somebody else did.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Just needed to get it out on whoever was available.
Guest:That pressure speech thing.
Guest:She would burst into my room at 7 in the morning when I was a teenager.
Guest:Just start going, when your brother did this and your father did this and you did this and why did you do this?
Guest:All of it.
Marc:Yeah, it was insane.
Marc:This is everything that's happened to me now being dumped on you.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So how many siblings you have?
Guest:A younger brother.
Guest:How'd he hold up?
Guest:He's homeless.
Guest:He lives, he got himself SSI, which is good.
Guest:The only thing he's really interested in is chess playing.
Guest:He's an amazing chess player.
Guest:Is he a diagnosed what?
Guest:I don't know what the diagnosis is.
Marc:But he's homeless and he plays chess.
Marc:We're in Washington Square Park?
Guest:No, in Orange County, Rockland County, New York.
Guest:And he's a wizard at the chess?
Guest:He's a wizard, but he...
Guest:Like, the last time I spoke to him, I had this really good conversation with him because I was the only guy who had been like, well, you know, of all the reasons that that particular car could have been parked outside your house, one of them could be that the mafia is trying to kill you.
Guest:Of the millions, like, I actually was like, okay, well, you believe this.
Guest:I wasn't like, you're crazy.
Marc:But what is he?
Marc:Is he on drugs or has he just got a mental problem?
Guest:He's he's got a fucking weed problem, which is like I've known people underestimate the insidious nature of the weed Especially if you have mental illness Yeah, and you may not know you have mental illness and you initially do it because you think it's helping you Yeah, and all of a sudden you're peering through the blinds Yeah, I mean I have a friend that was delusional throughout college and in her early 20s And she's like got her shit together now and I was like well what meds are you on she's like nothing I just stopped smoking weed and
Marc:Yeah, I found it to be very insulating.
Marc:Some people can do it with some success, but again, if you're sensitive or you have that weird narcissism or paranoia, it's only going to amplify that.
Guest:And bipolar or borderline disorder or any of that stuff, it just kicks that shit into turbo power.
Marc:And so he's really, what, unemployable?
Marc:What's SSRI?
Marc:What's SSRI?
Guest:It's money for, it's disability.
Marc:So he's got mental disability.
Guest:Yeah, and he was hospitalized against his will last year because he talked to my parents.
Guest:He was like, I'm going to get a gun.
Guest:And so they called up the sheriff's department in Rockland County and had him put away.
Guest:But listen, after this really good conversation I had with him,
Guest:I talked to him.
Guest:He called me the next day.
Guest:I actually texted him and said, listen, Kevin, I'm on your side, no matter what, I'm on your side.
Guest:And he called back and he was like, I just figured out why you're being nice.
Guest:It's because you're one of them.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:So, yeah, welcome.
Guest:Welcome to the one of them.
Guest:Welcome to the one of them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He got it all figured out.
Marc:That's interesting.
Marc:I know another guy like that.
Marc:I don't want to mention names where, you know, you talk to them and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And then within a day, you're like, oh, I get it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I know who you are.
Marc:Say hi to him for me.
Marc:You're working for that thing.
Marc:The them.
Marc:You're one of the them.
Guest:He's a believer in the them.
Marc:So you're in West Point, which is in upstate New York, correct?
Marc:And your dad's still over there or what?
Guest:No, he retired.
Guest:They went down to Louisiana.
Guest:They were remarkably chilled out.
Guest:It's like they retired and they got the fuck out of New York State and they chilled out.
Marc:So you're full circle with them?
Marc:You're okay with them?
Marc:Yeah, cool.
Guest:Kind of, sort of.
Guest:I mean, my brother is still out in the universe.
Marc:Well, yeah, well, he's in a spaceship, and he's running away from the them.
Guest:Yeah, well, I mean, I got to tell you, before he was like full-on on disability, he would go periods when he was living in his car and then when he was living with my parents, and he was better living in his car.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Yeah, when he would be living in his car, I'd be like, oh, man, that's good.
Guest:But how do you detach from that?
Marc:I mean, were you guys close growing up?
Marc:No, not really.
Marc:I got a brother and we've had our periods apart, but I feel very connected to the kid and we're a lot alike.
Marc:So I can't imagine really being out in the wilderness from him that long.
Guest:Is he older or younger?
Guest:Younger.
Marc:yeah uh was there was there like kind of an idolatry thing when you were young kids well no oddly he uh you know that didn't sort of like manifest itself till later he was an athletic kid oh and i was always a sort of like keith richards kid so you had you know so you had the tennis you know he had posters of tennis players i had posters of the stones and hendrix right right so we were in two different camps we went to do two different schools but as it all came full circle it was one of those moments where i'm like you're
Marc:you're more fucked up than i am when did that happen welcome aboard the tennis guy is fucked up yeah well not well he's okay now you know he's uh you know he's he got off the uh you know he's sober and you know he's doing well but it took a long time but uh did you go to college yeah i went to uh first i went to simon's rock which is a little tiny college like experimental college but it admits kids who haven't finished high school oh so you didn't finish high school
Guest:Yeah, no, I just went straight to... Was that a fuck you thing or, you know... No, in fact, like, one of the weird things about my family is no matter how fucked up it was, they were like, you're going to college and we're going to pay for it.
Guest:And not that I didn't pay for it in blood and emotional blood...
Guest:But they sent me to this weird school.
Guest:They paid for it.
Guest:They got you into the one that would take you.
Marc:They got me into the one that would take me.
Marc:Now, when you were fucking up in high school, was there ever any pressure from the old man to be like, well, maybe you should join the army?
Marc:No.
Marc:No, there wasn't.
Marc:I mean, it really was like... Was he turned off by it?
Marc:I mean, was he sort of like, don't join the army?
Marc:Kind of, sort of.
Marc:Yeah, like it's not worth it?
Guest:You know, I have a friend who his dad didn't go to West Point, and he thus was forced to go to West Point.
Guest:What his dad said was, I'll buy you a Porsche if you go to West Point.
Guest:So he was like, great, I want a Porsche.
Guest:You are in the Army when you go to West Point.
Guest:You are paid.
Guest:Cadets are paid.
Guest:But after your sophomore year, you owe them five years.
Guest:So if you get kicked out for cheating or failing at something, you're enlisting.
Guest:And this guy called his dad the night before and was like, please let me leave, please let me leave, please let me leave, totally in tears, and his dad wouldn't let him.
Guest:And that was more common than my dad, who was like, like I said, he was like the liberal guy.
Marc:Right, so that kid ended up doing the full four and then was in for another five?
Guest:Five years.
Guest:I mean, there weren't any wars going on.
Marc:But if you're a graduate of West Point, you go in as an officer, right?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Unless you get kicked out, you go as a private.
Marc:Right, but you jump a lot of steps.
Guest:No, I mean, that's like ROTC is the same thing.
Marc:So when you left your parents' house, I mean, where did the guitar come in?
Marc:When was that your salvation?
Guest:I mean, I just, like, the first time I would listen to Led Zeppelin IV and For Those About to Rock.
Guest:What old?
Guest:How old?
Guest:12, 13.
Guest:That's when you had your first guitar?
Guest:No, I mean, my parents wouldn't get me a guitar because they're like, you dropped out a trumpet.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah, it's trumpet.
Guest:I know, exactly.
Guest:Could not explain this to them.
Guest:Who decided trumpet?
Guest:You know, it was just like, you have to join band.
Guest:And I went to the band guy, and he was like, we need trumpets.
Guest:That's how it worked?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did you have any aptitude for it?
Guest:For the trumpet?
Guest:No, I didn't give a fuck.
Guest:I mean, like, I do really great at things that I love doing, but if I don't give a fuck, I just, I cannot even get the smallest.
Guest:And Miles Davis was way out of your wheelhouse at that time.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I wasn't, like, listening to Jack Johnson as a 13-year-old in the early 80s.
Marc:That's hard to listen to as a man in his 40s.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, he sometimes, well, Jack Johnson's a good, that's a good couple records.
Marc:Yeah, Peche is really good.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:All right, so you're listening to ACDC, you're listening to Led Zeppelin, and then when do you get your first guitar?
Guest:I guess I was like, actually, what it was was they were like, we will buy you a guitar if you get on the honor roll.
Guest:So for one semester, I got on the honor roll.
Guest:I got on it by the skin of my teeth.
Guest:I remember going and arguing with a gym teacher like, you have to give me a B. I did this and this and this.
Guest:And my thing in gym was like, I forgot my clothes and I got to sit on the side.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like consciously.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But my clothes are broken.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My clothes are broken.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, you know, it was one of those things where like, you know, your friends are like, let's start a band.
Guest:I'm the guitar player.
Guest:You can be the bass player.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I was the bass player.
Guest:OK.
Guest:And then eventually, I mean, what's sophomore year?
Guest:Yeah, 16 or so.
Guest:So you're playing bass.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, it's like there's nobody.
Guest:There wasn't even like the kid who knew some chords who could show me how to play like your basic blues lick.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I didn't know shit until I got off to college.
Guest:And this whole time, my mindset was like, this is what I have to do.
Guest:This.
Guest:you know there's nothing else in the world i can do but i have no shot so as i you know moved to new york like super ambitious kid calling clubs all over the place like working my ass off i the whole time i was like this isn't gonna work there's no way this is gonna work you moved to new york with uh your guitar yeah basically yeah and uh you weren't in college you were just gonna live it out
Guest:Well, I ended up going to college because my parents would pay for it.
Marc:But when you first went to New York, you weren't enrolled in anything.
Guest:You just were a guy with a guitar and a dream.
Guest:And where were you living?
Guest:I was living on the Upper West Side, actually, on 88th and Broadway.
Guest:That doesn't fit the narrative.
Guest:Well, it was... No, it does not.
Guest:I rented a room from this weird lady.
Guest:Oh, how'd that go?
Guest:Poorly.
Guest:Very poorly.
Guest:How old was this lady?
Guest:Oh, she must have been in her late 30s.
Guest:She had a kid when she was young, and the kid went off to school, and I rented the room.
Guest:And you slept in his room?
Guest:I slept in her room.
Marc:And was it weird?
Guest:uh i didn't think so i mean it was like like i was just stoked to be in new york you know yeah and how how was it from her side uh you know i was paying whatever 300 bucks a month and so she was you know she was cool she was cool yeah
Guest:There was no weird... Nothing got weird?
Guest:Nothing got... What kind of weird are you pushing at?
Guest:There's a lady down the hall.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:And I wouldn't have accepted were it an offer.
Marc:No, there's a difference between me and you.
Marc:I would have destroyed that living situation in a week.
Marc:Ha, ha, ha.
Marc:Alright, so when did you start?
Marc:What was the breaking in process in New York?
Guest:I started going to Latch's Open Mics.
Guest:And you were already writing songs?
Guest:Yeah, I was already writing songs.
Guest:And who were your guys?
Guest:Like the guys I tried to emulate?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:um well you know like it was it was billy bragg and the replacements and all that shit until i got to new york like right smack dab in in like the best period of hip-hop yeah of tribe called quest and de la soul jungle brothers what year are we talking uh 89 90 and you know and i was just it just blew my mind and
Guest:And, like, I would talk to my old friends.
Guest:They'd be like, oh, we're going to see Dinosaur Jr.
Guest:Dinosaur Jr.?
Guest:What, are you kidding me?
Guest:Like, let's go to Giant Step and listen to, you know, Swing Set Spin and Orange and, like, Milky Way, all the amazing, you know, hip-hop and house clubs.
Marc:So, like, you were entrenched as a kid in townie rock, and, you know, you sort of got the independent rock, the alt-rock thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But you just, like, rap and hip-hop blew your mind.
Marc:Blew my mind, yeah.
Guest:And I brought it together with my crude guitar scribbles.
Marc:And that was a driving force behind Soul Coffin.
Guest:Yeah, pretty much.
Guest:That and I was working at the Knitting Factory when it was really like an avant-garde jazz place.
Marc:Did you see John Zorn?
Marc:A million times, yeah.
Marc:I never got to see him, but boy, his Enio Morricone soundtrack and the Naked City album...
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Those are fucking awesome.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:So when he played, like, I can't, okay, so here you are, you're well-versed in Zeppelin and ACDC, you got a head full of hip-hop, and then fucking Zorn gets up there with 20 dudes and just makes the most elaborate noise possible.
Guest:Well, there's, like, a really obvious connection to make.
Guest:It's, like, hip-hop, lots of weird dissonant sounds, avant-garde jazz, lots of weird dissonant sounds.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, like, it just was, like, a no-brainer to me to put that shit together.
Marc:But what was some of the most profound moments you had?
Marc:What, you were working the door at the Knitting Factory?
Marc:Working the door, yeah.
Marc:So, like, I worked the door at the Comedy Store, and I got to see fucking everybody.
Marc:What were some monumental moments where you're like, oh, I can do this differently, or that's going to fucking... Oh, I don't know that I had any moments like that.
Guest:Well, first of all, I started, like, hating to go to rock shows, because it's like, you're just playing the fucking songs.
Guest:Like, you know, like Yamatsuka Ai is just like, well, I'm, you know, improvising.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Mark Rebo, Anthony Coleman, and Roy Nathanson.
Guest:What happened to me was after I started fucking hating everything about soul coughing, I saw what happened on a gig, Magnetic Fields and Elliott Smith.
Guest:That show changed your life.
Guest:That show literally changed my life.
Guest:Elliott Smith and Magnetic Fields.
Guest:And Magnetic Fields, yeah.
Guest:And then I just wanted it to sound like low records or Galaxy 500 records.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:So soul coughing, we didn't quite get the genesis of that.
Marc:So you're hanging around the knitting factory and you see some dudes that are, what, they're old guys that have been kicking around for a while?
Guest:Yeah, and I just realized, I was like, oh shit, like dudes.
Guest:What bands were they in?
Guest:Oh, you know, bands you wouldn't have heard of.
Guest:They were just playing with a million people.
Guest:Sort of bitter guys that kind of nothing had ever happened to.
Guest:And they needed a, they wanted a gig.
Guest:Well, I don't even think they did.
Guest:They just, they ended up with me and then they were like, oh, we're super great.
Guest:Who the hell is this guy?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like seriously, the whole time.
Guest:Well, I don't understand how they held together then.
Guest:Why were they with you?
Guest:You got me.
Guest:You got me.
Guest:I mean, like part of it is like for real, like I'd been from a fucked up family and I knew how to hold a fucked up family together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They hated me.
Guest:They fucking hated me.
Guest:So you were the control freak?
Guest:Oh, no, I was the not-in-control freak.
Guest:So you were completely diplomatic.
Guest:It's like, okay, what do you guys think?
Guest:Let's just not fight.
Guest:Diplomatic.
Guest:I bullied, cowed.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it was a fucked-up situation.
Guest:But you made a hit record.
Guest:I mean, I made we made a popular record.
Guest:People who love soul coughing love it.
Guest:And the thing is, I fucking hate those records.
Guest:And I meet soul coughing fans and it's like, I'm very glad that you like it.
Guest:That's good news.
Guest:But I think it's terrible.
Guest:It would have sounded a lot more like Tom Waits and a Tribe Called Quest if I had the chance.
Guest:I hate those records.
Guest:They are not what I want.
Guest:How many are there?
Guest:Two?
Marc:Three.
Marc:That's hilarious.
Marc:And you toured with those guys.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And just a fucking carnival of hate.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And the thing they kept telling me was like, you're so lucky to have found us.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We're sorry that we're stuck with you, but you can make a living playing music if you stick with us.
Guest:They took the songwriting royalties.
Marc:Oh.
Guest:So, I mean, there were songs that came out of jamming, but the bulk of them were written by me.
Guest:Certainly all the singing and melodies were written by me.
Marc:So all four of you had credits on the song?
Guest:Yeah, they were like, we will dump you and you will never make music professionally again if you do not give us an equal cut.
Guest:So they're still making money off you.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's negligible, but yeah.
Guest:Like, literally, they are, yeah, I own a quarter of songs I wrote years before I met them.
Marc:So what, oh, wow, that sucks.
Guest:It's fucked up.
Marc:You bitter?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah, totally.
Marc:So whenever you play those songs, even on a live record, they get a piece?
Guest:Yeah, absolutely, but I don't play them anymore.
Guest:Out of spite?
Guest:No, out of, like, out of I play the shit, and even if I have a, like, a perfect memory of the moment when I wrote it, it does not feel like it's mine.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, if I play it, start a Soul Clothing tune, and some kid that, you know, got high to it in 96 is like, woo!
Guest:It just fills me with hatred.
Guest:really yeah it's just like you don't like the me that is finally me uh i like the me that's finally me no but i mean like they're you're that that's what you're saying to that kid oh yeah like if you're hanging on to that song if that song defines me for you yeah then fuck you but what you know over the years i've just been a dick to people that are like please super bomb on and just like you know said no i'm not and actually
Guest:I have to say, if you have dudes yelling out song titles, the way to get them to stop is to actually name the song title Circles.
Guest:No, I will not be playing Circles, and they will stop.
Marc:But it's just interesting to me because I've talked to... Who I talked to?
Marc:I've talked to a few musicians...
Marc:And there seems to be a different attitude about that.
Marc:Because my thought was always like, don't you guys get tired of playing those songs.
Marc:And there's two schools of thought.
Marc:It's like, I think a musician who...
Marc:who is not resolved as shit is gonna be like, yeah, it's not me anymore.
Marc:But a musician who is okay with himself is like, yeah, oh, who was it?
Marc:Wayne Coyne.
Marc:I talked to him about it.
Marc:He's like, of course we'll play those songs.
Marc:They're things we made and they make people happy.
Guest:Well, the shit that I wrote after I got sober, after I got out of that fucking band, I don't want playing that at all.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:All the stuff.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:All the stuff, you know?
Guest:It's just, you know, it's not like even that's not me anymore.
Guest:It's like, that never was me.
Guest:Right, so it's almost like a relapse.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Like, you playing those songs, it's like, you feel dirty and hungover.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But listen, man, I was a fucking dick about it for years, and I have an audience that listens to the solo shit.
Guest:Every once in a while, some soul coughing fan wanders in and is very sad to discover that.
Marc:But you've got to assume that a lot of those people were introduced to you through soul coughing.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And that they stayed with you.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And they let you evolve into what you are now.
Guest:And what all skittish was like the Kramer.
Guest:That's a great record.
Guest:Oh, thank you.
Guest:Yeah, that that that is the shit that brought people to it.
Guest:And the Warner Brothers, we had our in our guy at Warner Brothers.
Guest:I would describe him as a gay indie rock job of the hut.
Guest:And he would just do anything to keep me unhappy and insult.
Marc:Where was he?
Marc:Seymour Stein?
Guest:No, no, I won't say his name.
Guest:He passed away actually Which was helpful for writing about him I have to say but I gotta tell you other than the gay indie rock job of the hut Warner Brothers was gold to us in ways that they shouldn't have been like because the inmates were running the asylum We have song the X-files soundtrack
Guest:This is you solo or soul coffee?
Guest:This is soul coffee.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And Chris Carter was like, oh, I want to shoot a video for you guys.
Guest:We're like, that's amazing.
Guest:And then the X-Files season ended and he's like, nah, I want to wait six months.
Guest:And my bandmates were like, fuck you, man.
Guest:We don't want to do this.
Guest:And I was like, it's Chris Carter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Fucking assholes.
Guest:It was just, like, too dumb to realize, like, let's just, you know, hang out for six months and rehearse, and then, you know, we'll make this video.
Guest:They didn't want to do it.
Guest:They did not want to do it.
Guest:And it was like, I was too dumb to say, you motherfuckers, I'm getting out of here.
Marc:So now how much...
Marc:During the soul-cogging time and before the solo, I mean, how much, like, self-abuse were you involved with?
Marc:I mean, were you, like, just boozing, or, like, what did it look like for you on a day-to-day basis?
Marc:Where were you living by that point?
Guest:Yeah, I was living in Brooklyn.
Guest:I briefly lived in London, ran to London for a woman that hated me.
Marc:really good for you so you're up for the fix it challenge yes i am make this work oh lord and that would be your uh your family stuff too indeed yeah yeah people that hear voices that's my shit oh really sexy yeah who was that your mom or your dad no no she was the only one that actually heard voices oh really and what were they telling her to do
Guest:Leave you?
Guest:Mostly to dislike me.
Guest:A lot of tantrums, like weird freak outs.
Marc:But I mean, how much of that, like, you know, in retrospect, I know you've got the book, but I mean, how much of your music, you know, lyrically is driven by these experiences?
Guest:Oh, tremendous amount of it.
Guest:I mean, if anything, like...
Guest:People that are strong enough to maintain are the unlucky ones.
Guest:The guy who has to surrender, who gets the shit beat out of him.
Guest:I mean, for me, desperation was a gift.
Guest:And if I had not gone super down into the addiction, if the relationship had...
Guest:not been uh with the band uh just an utter nightmare i would still be there i'd be touring with those motherfuckers playing those songs and just having a shitty job that happened so you're one of those guys that that really has to hit a pretty dramatic bottom uh you know realistically and and also emotionally before yeah i don't know if i believe in the idea of bottoms because like there's always a deeper yeah i mean this death is the bottom
Marc:So let's talk about... Okay, so you're living in Brooklyn.
Marc:You went to London to chase a chick.
Marc:That didn't work out.
Marc:So when... What, were you just drinking at the time?
Guest:How did it all start?
Guest:No, actually, I... The way I thought I'd beat the system was by not drinking alcohol.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So for years, I would not touch a beer and just be sniffing a ton of Coke and ecstasy and, you know, just total mental illness weed thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and so actually, like, the bottom...
Guest:uh was drinking like when it was all gone and it was just me drinking drinking to get out of bed in the morning when i was like okay i really have like lost to the family when did dope come into it because i haven't talked to uh you know any uh uh sort of um demonic representatives of heroin uh well you know like
Guest:The unfortunate thing about heroin is if you say, I was a heroin addict, people write this story about you.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And if it's like, no, I was just doing drugs in a room and I had a roof over my head.
Marc:No, no, but I mean, there was a time in New York, certainly in New York in that period, what are we talking, the mid-90s?
Marc:Yeah, mid to late 90s.
Marc:Well, like, because I was there, you know, in, you know, what, 91, 92, that there was a type of heroin that was coming into New York that was so fucking clean that you didn't need to boot it and you didn't need to shoot it.
Marc:You know, you could buy a fucking $10 bag and it was just white fucking, you know, probably 75% pure and it got a bunch of people strung out because you could sniff it to pretty good effect.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, it doesn't fucking matter.
Guest:You put it on a Ritz cracker and stuff it up your asshole.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It's still heroin.
Guest:Were you doing that?
Guest:No.
Guest:But actually, my first sponsor gave me this amazing.
Guest:He was like, I used to take a lump of black tar and stick it up my asshole.
Guest:He'd be high for four days.
Marc:Yeah, no.
Marc:Burroughs used to talk about Paragoric, which was opium suppository.
Marc:I mean, yeah, it's a mucus memory.
Marc:It's built to take in nutrients.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But it does not affect the strength of the drug.
Guest:It affects how quick it hits you.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And what was your thing?
Guest:Sniffing.
Guest:Smoking a little bit, mostly sniffing.
Guest:But I kind of maintained for a long time and was reasonably disciplined about it until eventually I was like, oh, soul-clopping is fucking terrible.
Guest:It's never going to get better.
Guest:I'm never going to get out of it.
Guest:So I will just get high the moment I wake up and someone will tell me when to get in the van.
Marc:so that so you're you know your shift out of uh your shift into sobriety what happened at the same time your solo career happened yeah pretty much yeah i mean just briefly i i right when the band broke up i was still drinking um so it didn't end up in a you know you know you and you know you know bottles of your own pee around a bed because you couldn't get out of bed anymore and um no i just i did some of that
Guest:Did some of that.
Guest:My shit was that the heroin depressed my lungs.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I couldn't really breathe.
Guest:So you needed to drink.
Guest:Open those lungs.
Guest:Yeah, dude.
Guest:Yeah, so it depressed your lungs.
Guest:Yeah, and I walked like a 90-year-old man.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:So yeah, there was a bank machine four or five blocks from my house on Delancey Street that I would go.
Guest:I'd beat my dude, the age of the beeper, and go and get money.
Guest:But that was the neighborhood then.
Guest:Was it still?
Guest:no I always got it delivered that was like among the things that I was like I'm cool was A no needles B no street copping you know like but the thing was it took me like literally 90 minutes to 2 hours to go to the bag machine and come back because I was moving so slow oh my god so there was no time for street copping
Guest:No.
Guest:There were many drug addicts.
Guest:It's funny, because when I started going to meetings, you hear people talk about stuff, and I'm like, that's a great idea for finding heroin.
Guest:Yeah, wow, if I'd only known that.
Marc:Yeah, totally.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I remember this one guy who was like, yeah, if you go to St.
Guest:Nicholas and blah, blah, blah, and I was like, great, I have to know that.
Guest:Yeah, now I've got to know that now.
Marc:I don't even know what that looks like anymore, because by the time...
Marc:I left New York in the mid 90s or left the Lower East Side.
Marc:I mean, you know, once Giuliani kind of militarized the entire city and new businesses came in, I'm sure it's there, but it's certainly not where it was.
Marc:Well, I mean, it's it's out in Queens now, I think, because I was on the bus to Queens a couple of times.
Marc:I'm like, I know that.
Marc:Where are they going?
Guest:Well, I mean, first of all, the thing that pisses me off is Vicodin, Percocet, Oxycodone.
Guest:Everyone's like, oh, I never touch heroin.
Guest:And, you know, it's like, oh, I don't drink gin.
Guest:Give me some whiskey.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Or what it is more is like, I don't drink homemade gin.
Marc:Give me the stuff that you can buy.
Guest:Well, I mean, you were talking about the strength of New York heroin.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Declined precipitously in the late 90s.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, like, Percocet was probably stronger than a bag of New York dope.
Marc:And certainly more consistent.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think that the beauty of pharmaceuticals is they're engineered.
Marc:Indeed.
Marc:Whereas, you know, where street drugs are sort of like, I don't know what it is.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:I think maybe it's good.
Guest:This guy's usually okay.
Guest:Yeah, and not that we were particularly diligent about, like, well, let's just sniff a little bit first and see how strong it is.
Marc:I'm happy it was never my bag.
Marc:I did snort a couple of blasts because I lived on 2nd Street between A and B, and there was really- Oh, there you go.
Marc:It was a heroin supermarket.
Guest:Yeah, B&C was the joint.
Guest:That place on the laundromat on Topkins Park.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In 89, 90 into 91 or 92.
Marc:And I was sober for like a year and a half watching these zombies walk down that fucking street going, how do you live like that?
Marc:But then, you know, once the demon gets hold of you, you're like, I wonder what the hell is so great that these people would commit their life to that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I better go do a little of that.
Marc:And it just it didn't lock in.
Marc:Thank fucking God.
Marc:I was always an upper guy.
Marc:You know, I can sleep fine.
Guest:Well, look, if I had a kid, I would much rather him doing heroin than cocaine.
Guest:I mean, good Lord.
Guest:Yeah, cocaine.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because it's just economically a waste of money?
Guest:Well, that's not a factor.
Guest:Well, first of all, you can fucking die off coke just as easy as heroin.
Marc:Not really.
Guest:Oh, totally.
Guest:Are you kidding me?
Guest:No.
Guest:Dude.
Guest:I just such a pet peeve of mine is like, you know, well, I'd never do heroin.
Guest:It's like, yeah, you're like fucking caning coke and throwing ease down your throat and sniffing speed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, but you'd never do heroin.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I think that, you know, heroin will stop your heart in a very weird, specific way.
Marc:Whereas like, you know, with with meth or crack is bad, but it's just weird.
Marc:It's just.
Marc:It seems to me that those drugs kind of, you're more likely to get into some sort of trouble because you're awake a lot longer.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You're on the move.
Marc:There you go.
Guest:If my kid was doing drugs, I would want him to be in front of the television as opposed to on the streets.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Smoke some weed, do some heroin.
Marc:You'll be happy at home.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:If you do crank or meth or crack, then you're out in the world and God knows what.
Marc:You're awake too long.
Marc:your teeth will fall out you're not gonna have hair so when you started doing songs sober uh what did you find that your emotional capacity was different that you know your focus was different i mean yeah well for for like a year and a half i could not write like it was just it was fucking horrible what was the experience i mean you were like you just sat there with a piece of paper no ideas were coming or you were too
Guest:No, I found a new manager, and he put me in the studio to do some demos, and I just sort of came up with some bullshit.
Guest:And he was like, what is wrong with you?
Guest:Did you feel lost?
Guest:I didn't feel anything.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you were sober, because usually when I first got sober, I was bouncing off the fucking wall.
Guest:Well, I was.
Guest:Were you afraid?
Guest:No, I was just bad.
Guest:Just the shit I was doing was bad.
Guest:It took, actually, really, September 11th kind of opened me up emotionally to write.
Guest:Right after that is when I started, the writing kind of kicked in.
Marc:What was the first song?
Marc:What was the moment there?
Marc:What did you feel?
Marc:Heartbreak?
Marc:Fear?
Marc:Sadness?
Guest:I had my junkie ex, she had a job down there, which was she was a bartender at a place that catered to alcoholic day traders.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So they'd come and sit at the bar, and there were all the screens, and she would get them shit-faced.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought that it was in the towers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It wasn't.
Guest:But so I started thinking about her and I'd always been sort of on this line of like pining for her pining for the heroin whatever it was right at first.
Guest:I don't know why that just that intense emotion that tense of you know what happened to her is she dead is she alive.
Guest:That feeling.
Guest:That, like, you're personally connected.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I can necessarily articulate it, but, you know, between September 11th and January of 2002 was when, like, most of my first solo album was written.
Guest:And what were the tone of those songs?
Guest:Because that wasn't skittish, right?
Guest:No, that was, yeah, it was several years after skittish.
Guest:It was a lot of, like...
Guest:I made it a gay indie rock job of the hut, rejected it.
Guest:It got out on Napster, which saved my life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's something you don't hear often.
Guest:Oh, dude.
Guest:I mean, I got to tell you, going out on the road playing for soul coughing fans as a troubadour, those people fucking hated me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there was this nugget of people that had, you know, they were like lip syncing skittish songs and yelling out.
Guest:There was one of my first solo gigs.
Guest:Someone had written the words real love on a piece of paper and taped it on a rafter.
Guest:And it's a Mary J. Blige song.
Guest:And there's a cover of it on skittish.
Guest:Um, and I remember looking up and going, what a strange coincidence that someone would have written those words on a piece of paper and put it up on a rafter.
Guest:I have a song called that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:And so that's when it was like, holy shit, this shit has gotten out into the world and found a life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that is, that's the grace.
Guest:That's the grace.
Guest:Oh, that's fucking, that's sweet.
Guest:Dude.
Guest:File sharing is awesome if you already have an audience.
Marc:Right.
Guest:It's the new kids that can't get funding for a van and rooms at the Red Roof Inn that are fucked.
Guest:And you do all right with the records?
Guest:Yeah, I do really well.
Guest:I certainly make more money than I did when I was in Soul Coughing.
Guest:And what size rooms do you play usually?
Guest:Oh, not that big.
Guest:Four or five?
Guest:Eight?
Guest:Yeah, the biggest are like five, six hundred.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, most cities like 200.
Guest:That's cool.
Marc:And you like playing.
Marc:Yeah, that's great.
Marc:So 9-11 changed the whole game because like my girl at the time worked down there and she was fucked up for months.
Marc:I mean, she had to leave town and like there was that weird moment that time that, you know, those hours where all cell phones were dead.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, and people walking to Brooklyn and.
Guest:Well, I wasn't in New York.
Guest:I was coming back from a gig, like driving from Northampton.
Guest:And so I was listening to this shit on NPR and Howard Stern.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I was going across 94.
Guest:Because you couldn't get into New York, so I was just driving down the interstate, turning around, driving back.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:like Howard Stern would fuzz out and then NPR would fuzz in and then whatever the rock station would have like they would have just like put on the CBS feed and so I didn't know what it looked like until like 4 p.m.
Guest:so I was you know and I lived on Rivington Street and I was like what happens when a tower falls oh man you know would it hit my house not that far no I thought I thought it would have like fallen over on its side I didn't realize yeah yeah yeah so like it was super weird for me
Marc:So the album I got was a live album.
Marc:You also released a solo album.
Marc:What's the book called again?
Marc:The book's called The Book of Drugs.
Guest:I wanted drugs big on the cover because I walk into a bookstore, I pick up some drug porn.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So this live one is the newest one, though?
Guest:It's the newest one.
Guest:It's fun because you do a little stand-up.
Guest:I wouldn't say that, dude.
Guest:I got to say, since I started doing comedy, my stage patter game has become both better and more intimidating.
Guest:You do stand-up?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:What am I, John Mayer?
Guest:Good Lord.
Marc:Okay, so you want to do songs?
Guest:Yeah, let's do it.
Marc:I don't think I should play with you.
Marc:I'll just ruin it.
Marc:I mean, your songs are not that... I mean, they're usually a couple chords, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Go ahead and you do your song and I'll try not to ruin it.
Guest:It's basically like hang out in D-sharp major for the verses and C minor for the up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, your man won't dance, but I will He's just a cup of punch that you'll spill
Guest:you're gonna hang him from the sails of the sinking sloop crowded with the goons and the dopes you do you get nah nah nothing i found out that i'm a chomp and you look cold cold hearted to me
Guest:You got la la lucky that I told you what I did And you're so so sorry for not the way you want your kid Nah nah nah nah nah nah nothing for me Nah nah nah nothing for me I was in flux, I was a clunker, I was busted crufter
Guest:I was the swellest of the swells and the roughest rough.
Guest:Now I'm bound to the bend of your bone white wrist to shun the pill popper of the pharmacist.
Guest:You get nah, nah, nothing.
Guest:I found out that I'm a chomp and you look old, old hearted to me.
Guest:I'm lucky that I told you what I did and you're so, so sorry for not the way you want your kid.
Guest:Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nothing for me.
Guest:Nah, nah, nothing for me.
Guest:That's what we had on F for a minute.
Guest:Go back to the chorus.
Guest:You get na na nothing I found out that I'm a chomp and you were cold cold hearted to me.
Guest:You got la la lucky that I told you what I did and you're so so sorry but not the way you want your getting na na na na na na nothing.
Guest:Nah nah nothing I found out that I'm a chump and you were cold cold hearted to me You got you la la lucky that I told you what I did And you're so so sorry but not the way you want your kid Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nothing Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nothing from me
Guest:Nah, nah, nothing from me.
Guest:There's a sound on this guy.
Guest:Nice.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:You're laughing at it.
Marc:No, it's fucking awesome.
Marc:Why don't you play one more by yourself?
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Oh, this is somewhat Marin-themed.
Guest:Cool.
Marc:I like things Marin-themed.
Guest:If you go to Astoria I hope you get there Seek your road to Astoria I hope you get there I hope you get there If you go to Astoria
Guest:Down your lonely road on home If you go Down your lonely road on home I want to come I want to come along, along
Guest:Get a plate Full of sog veneer I hope you eat well In the clubs In your fallow year That funny sweet smell That funny sweet smell And if you go
Guest:Down your lonely road on your home If you go Down your lonely road on your home I want to come I want to come along
Marc:Awesome.
Marc:Mike Doty.
Guest:Right on.
Guest:Thank you, sir.
Marc:Thank you for coming, man.
Marc:Good talking to you.
Marc:Great seeing you.
Marc:You too.
Marc:Okay, that's our show.
Marc:What a sweet thing that was.
Marc:Talking to Mike Doty, listening to Mike Doty play, sitting in a little bit, kicking in some licks for the sound, for the tune, for the jam.
Marc:Hey, people.
Marc:Again, Magic Bus Theater, September 29th, Ferndale, Michigan.
Marc:Come down if you can.
Marc:uh riot la september 22nd live wtf and a storytelling show go to riot la.com for info on that and for the magic bag go to themagicbag.com boomer's not coming in today because i was just outside and he's busy fighting with scaredy cat the uh angry convict like stray that hangs around go to wtfpod.com for all your wtfpod needs get on that mailing list and i'll send you some recipes or something
Marc:Kicking a few shekels.
Marc:We got new posters up there.
Marc:The Chicago posters are up.
Marc:Fucking, those are beautiful.
Marc:You can get the app.
Marc:You can get all the info you need.
Marc:You can check in on the blog.
Marc:Leave some comments.
Marc:Do what you gotta do.
Marc:I gotta go, man.
Marc:I'm sweating and I'm packed with mac and cheese.
Marc:Did you need that?
you