Mike Doughty

This poster is for the free reading Mike Doughty (former front-man of Soul Coughing) is doing of/for his new book The Book of Drugs at B Side Liquor Lounge, sponsored by Mac's Backs. The Ol' Cleveland Bachelor commissioned this one. I liked working on this, it was a lot of fun. About halfway through this I realized I had drawn something slightly similar before- for a charity Bingo event. But I think the two are different and distinct enough that I'm cool with the comparison. The sheet of paper in the typewriter looked screamingly blank to me, so I had Susanne over at Mac's Backs choose a piece from the book to place on the page. I'm super glad we did that, I think it makes the poster better by a huge margin. It's probably impossible to read on this jpg, so here it is:

"Beer, I thought is the ANSWER.

The next day I awoke with my first hangover, and swore off liquor. If you hang around twelve-step types you'll hear tales wherein an alcoholic wakes up with a hangover, swears off booze forever, and then is drunk later the same day; a bleak joke repeating itself throughout her or his drinking life."
-Mike Doughty, The Book of Drugs

I hope it's okay that I'm posting that, as you can see, it's a passage from the book Doughty will be reading from. I haven't read it yet, but The book sounds pretty interesting. Here's the paragraph I grabbed from Amazon:

Mike Doughty first came to prominence as the leader of the band Soul Coughing then did an abrupt sonic left turn, much to the surprise of his audience, transforming into a solo performer of stark, dusky, but strangely hopeful tunes. He battled addiction, gave up fame when his old band was at the height of its popularity, drove thousands of miles, alone, across America, with just an acoustic guitar. His candid, hilarious, self-lacerating memoir, The Book of Drugs—featuring cameos by Redman, Ani DiFranco, the late Jeff Buckley, and others—is the story of his band’s rise and bitter col-lapse, the haunted and darkly comical life of addiction, and the perhaps even weirder world of recovery.

I'm especially curious about how Redman fits into it all. I fucking love Redman! Actually, it all sounds pretty interesting. I bet this dude's got some incredible stories. In general, I really like when someone just up and drops something at the height of popularity. I mean, not necessarily when they do it if it's because of a drug addiction or personal problems that heights of popularity can amplify or exacerbate, but just overall. I think getting to a certain point, then getting out before the pendulum swings the other way is a move that is definitely challenging to make, and hard to understand in the moment. This reading should be pretty great.

Mike Doughty is also playing a show at The Beachland Tavern after this event, and will be doing more reading, and a Q & A.