Mike Doughty and Ghost of Vroom have announced an LA residency. The band – Doughty, Andrew “Scrap” Livingston, drummer Madden Klass, and a rotating cast of incredible musicians – will perform every Friday night in January and February for eight special shows at Harvard & Stone in Los Angeles. The performances will be centered around improvisation — somewhere between psychedelic trances, absurdism, and weird jazz.
Admission will be free (first come first serve). Members of Mike Doughty Patreon will get free exclusive items at the merch table. More info is available at mikedoughty.com/govla.
Show Dates:
FRI JAN 7 / FRI JAN 14 / FRI JAN 21 / FRI JAN 28
FRI FEB 4 / FRI FEB 11 / FRI FEB 18 / FRI FEB 25
Schedule for all shows:
8PM Doors
8:30PM SET 1
10PM SET 2
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A few years ago, Mike Doughty had an idea: Make a new album with his iconic genre-blending band Soul Coughing, their first since breaking up over 20 years ago. He presented it to the band’s former members, and it didn’t go well. “I got back a hot plate of crazy,” he laughs. Ever the resourceful artist, Doughty made lemonade out of lemons, as well as a whole new band: Ghost of Vroom.
With Ghost of Vroom, Doughty is getting back to his sampling, breakbeat-loving, Tom Waits-meets-hip-hop ways, drawing inspiration from hip-hop legends Das EFX’s dexterous lyricism through loading these songs with dense referentialism that yields new delights with every listen. “Pretty much every lyric of theirs is a reference to something from the ‘70s,” he explains. “So I was like, ‘What if I do this with my kind of references?’” Specifically: ‘80s metal bands, Greek poets, German philosophers—and a whole lot more. “I cannot wait to see the Genius page for this album,” he laughs.
Musically, Ghost of Vroom draws heavily from Doughty’s love of hip-hop and breakbeats — specifically, Scarface Records’ Classic Beats and Breaks compilations, which he rediscovered in recent years. “It’s been at the heart of everything I’ve been doing these last couple of years,” he explains. “They’re sampling bonanzas from the days when no one could make a legal claim to a drum part, so you could sample all the drums you want to and never get sued.” In an especially deft touch, Doughty also wrote a fair amount of the album’s bass lines using GarageBand on his phone: “The only good bass sound was the upright bass sound, so I ended up writing all these upright bass lines—which were pretty central to Soul Coughing, too.” Along with Livingston, legendary Beastie Boys collaborator Mario Caldato worked with the band to achieve their beat-driven, hip-hop-influenced sound: "I was quaking in my shoes working with that guy because I'm such a fan. He's incredible at this sound we were making—the best in the business."
