Crossings brings Mike Doughty's Renowned, Award Winning "Question Jar Show" to Zumbrota's State Theatre on Saturday, September 6, at 8 pm. Tickets are $20 in advance, $23 at the door, and can be purchased online or by calling 507-732-7616. Doors open at 7 pm.
Mike Doughty contains multitudes: Singer. Songwriter. Guitar player. Poet. Author. Playwright. Photographer. Most Improved Camper, West Point Youth Camp, 1982. He’s released five solo albums, some EPs, a covers album, a couple of live albums, a bunch of EDM tracks and remixes, a poetry book, and a memoir about that time he was in a band called Soul Coughing and didn’t like it and took a lot of drugs. Now, he performs in a duo with Andrew “Scrap” Livingston.
The show, also the name of a two-disk live album by Doughty and Livingston, who plays cello and electric guitar, features not only music, but the answers to questions placed in a jar by the audience before the show starts. “Questions on any topic–obscure, weird, or esoteric questions accepted happily,” Doughty says on his website. So far, audiences have proven themselves capable of coming up with some doozies.
Doughty most recently released “Circles Super Bon Bon…,” an album of re-imagined Soul Coughing songs recorded with the hip-hop/house DJ Good Goose, in September 2013. Two new albums are slated for release in fall 2014: an album produced by Good Goose, “Stellar Motel,” and a live album called “Live at Ken’s House.”
It's in this kind of setting where Doughty thrives, with the sparse arrangement putting the focus on his twisting, poetic lyrics while the time between songs gives the singer the opportunity to draw audiences in with his laid-back charm. Songs like “Madeline and Nine,” and “Down on the River by the Sugar Plant,” really shine when they're stripped down to their most basic elements, allowing their yearning to take center stage in the absence of a full band.
– Gregory Heaney, AllMusic.com
The State Theatre is located at 96 East 4th Street in Zumbrota. For more information call 507-732-5210.