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LIVE AT THE IRON HORSE, NORTHAMPTON, MA APRIL 16 2001

Dear <expletive-deleted>,

The Doughty was good.  He's chunked up a little -- probably something to do with quitting heroin or whatever. He played a lot of Soul Coughing stuff, so a good deal of the show (at least for me) took place inside my head, imagining the rest of the band.  He also played, not once but twice, a song called Fire Truck, which consisted of him strumming loudly and yelling "Fire Truck... Fire Truck..." -- which struck me as conceptually very similar to something called "Screaming Macaroni", which rumor has it was one of Tom's chief musical activities prior to Better Than Cats (the earliest pre-incarnation of No-Shadow Kick).

On almost all his songs he does his typical strummy thing, mostly using his patented "gang-a-dank" or sometimes the "Janine" rhythm.  One interesting thing is that the Solo Coughing stuff and the straight solo stuff were stylistically indistinguishable, which kind of implies that he never really bothered to tailor his writing/playing to the band as much as they just sort of laid their groove thang on top of what he was doing -- which is fine, but being as the bass and drums are such a big part of the Soul Coughing sound, I guess I always assumed they were more of a foundational part of the writing process (and actually he only played two songs from El Oso, which makes sense considering how "drum & bass" that album is).

As with Soul Coughing, he made a good deal of witty pop-cultural references, most of which I was either too un-hip or too drunk to pick up on -- although I was all over the "walk around in circles/walk around with Urkel" bit.  I wondered if his stage presence would suffer without the security of the other fellas standing behind him, but he did not disappoint.  He seemed very comfortable and affable and charming, and very funny as well.  He knows how to control a crowd and deals well with audience distractions, like when he was trying to start a song and Tom, two-and-a-half sheets to the wind, said in an embarassingly loud voice "I don't think I should have anymore to drink on an empty stomach."  Doughty kept playing, looked in our general direction and said "You obviously don't make your living as a public performer."   Funny guy.  He could probably be a halfway decent stand-up comedian if this music thing doesn't pan out.  - Shawn, April, 2001

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