Singer/songwriter Mike Doughty has released a music video for his second single “Fort Hood” from his album Golden Delicious, which was released on February 19 by ATO Records. Fort Hood is the base in Texas that’s lost the most people in Iraq and Afghanistan. This song is based on Mike’s past experiences and his thoughts on war. Please read more below for Mike’s process in writing this song and also check out the video streams of “Fort Hood”, as well as an audio stream of Mike’s introduction to the song. Please let me know if you could feature this video and/or the information about it on Watch Mojo.
“Fort Hood” Streaming Video:
Windows:
http://easylink.playstream.com
http://easylink.playstream.com
Quicktime:
http://easylink.playstream.com
http://easylink.playstream.com
Audio intro from Mike:
Windows:
http://easylink.playstream.com
http://easylink.playstream.com
Quicktime:
http://easylink.playstream.com
http://easylink.playstream.com
Mike Doughty discusses his song “Fort Hood”
”Fort Hood” isn’t exactly an anti-war song. It’s more of a song about my own guilt for living life without thinking of the war every moment. I was invited by the USO to visit Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2006; I went over and gave CDs to wounded guys, most of them in their 20s, most missing limbs. It was tremendously moving. As we left the hospital, I was thinking that I wanted to never lose that feeling I felt, of incredible gratitude for everything in life.
Fort Hood is the base in Texas that’s lost the most people in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The first verse is about guilt. That I can go about my daily life without thinking of the violence and the fear in Iraq, and the sacrifice people are making over there.
The first part of the second verse is about frustration with political pissing matches, instead of unity among our elected representatives to serve these guys. The second half is about how the war haunts me; how I see dudes in uniform in airports and wonder what’s going on in their heads, what they’ve witnessed.
The bridge is about lost innocence. The lyrics are about what I wished a guy in his 20s was doing instead of being scarred by a fucked-up war. One line is, “You should blast Young Jeezy with your friends in a parking lot.” I changed it from “You should blast Toby Keith with your friends in a parking lot” — mostly for reasons of singability. But also because I realized everybody would take it as a snobby dis on the soldier. I actually meant it in passionate sympathy; it’s better to be a teenage jingoist than to come back with your consciousness or body shattered, knowing the tragic naivete of jingoism. Young guys go over there and come back scarred — bodily, often, but also psychologically, such that so many of them will have the burden of post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares, haunting images.
I grew up an Army brat on Army bases — pretty much all the adult men had been in Vietnam, and looking at their collective bizarre behavior in hindsight, I realize I grew up in a crazy land where every adult man had post-traumatic stress disorder.
My dad never talked about Vietnam to my mom. As — I think — a passive-aggressive means of hurting my father, she took us all to see Milos Foreman’s film version of Hair (at the military cinema on a NATO base in Belgium!) without telling us what it was about. My dad was upset — though he laughed, bitterly, when the character Berger got accidentally shipped off to the Vietnam war and killed in action.
The genesis of my song was: I downloaded from WFMU.org an mp3 of the Japanese cast of Hair doing “Sunshine.” It was surreal and fun through the verses, which were in Japanese, but when it came to the end, the chorus was in English — it was chilling, and so apt, and my eyes moistened up on the subway.
I moved to New York when I was 18, and the music everywhere was hip hop and house, and often based on samples and re-jiggered melodies from other songs. It’s kind of weird in singer-songwriter land to take a chorus from another song, but it felt really natural to me.
Official Site:
MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/mikedoug
Mike’s Blog:
n February 19, 2008, ATO Records will release Golden Delicious, the new album from singer/songwriter Mike Doughty. Doughty and GRAMMY-winning producer Dan Wilson worked with Doughty’s touring band to craft a driven, organic sound around his savvy, agile lyrical escapades on Golden Delicious, which was mixed by Jacquire King (Kings Of Leon, Modest Mouse, No Doubt) and mastered by Richard Dodd (Dixie Chicks, Tom Petty, Green Day) — both also GRAMMY winners. Golden Delicious is the follow-up to Doughty’s AAA radio top five album Haughty Melodic (2005), which included the hit “Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well.”
Golden Delicious includes the hip-shaking pop gems “Put It Down” and “I Just Want The Girl In The Blue Dress To Keep On Dancing,” and the fan favorite “27 Jennifers” is recorded with a band for the first time (and will be the album’s first single at radio). Doughty paints a haunting picture on the noirish “I Got The Drop On You,” and his longing vocals and the band’s smoldering rhythm guide the dirge “Wednesday (Contra la Puerta).” Opening track “Fort Hood” is named for the U.S. army base that has suffered the greatest number of casualties in the Iraq War; the anthem was inspired by a visit to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. See reverse for a complete track list.
“27 Jennifers” Streaming Audio:
Windows
http://easylink.playstream.com/ato_records/27jennifers_lo.wax (low)
http://easylink.playstream.com/ato_records/27jennifers_hi.wax (high)
Quicktime
http://easylink.playstream.com/ato_records/27jennifers_lo.mov (low)
http://easylink.playstream.com/ato_records/27jennifers_hi.mov (high)
Mike Doughty is a true multi-media artist: musician, songwriter, poet, playwright, photographer, and an avid, eloquent blogger (mikedoughty.com/blog). His band on Golden Delicious — multi-instrumentalist Andrew “Scrap” Livingston, drummer Pete McNeal (Cake, Jem, Gary Jules), keyboardist John Kirby (Black Eyed Peas) and bassist John Munson (Semisonic, Trip Shakespeare) — was supplemented with some tracks by guitarist David Levita, percussionist Ken Chastain and singer Mankwe Ndosi.
Doughty will introduce the new songs on Golden Delicious with The Question Jar Show, a November small-venue duo tour with Livingston. Doughty will take requests from the audience and answer questions that fans place in a jar at the venue — no question too weird, no topic taboo. See below for a list of confirmed dates.
Official Site:
MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/mikedoughty
Mike’s Blog:
http://www.mikedoughty.com/blog
Purchase “27 Jennifers” at iTunes
Track Listing:
1. Fort Hood
2. I Just Want The Girl In The Blue Dress To Keep On Dancing
3. Put It Down
4. More Bacon Than The Pan Can Handle
5. 27 Jennifers
6. I Wrote A Song About Your Car
7. I Got The Drop On You
8. Wednesday (Contra La Puerta)
9. Like A Luminous Girl
10. Nectarine (Part One)
11. Navigating By The Stars At Night
The Question Jar Show – Tour Dates:
November
8 Chicago, IL Schubas
10 Louisville, KY Phoenix Hill Tavern
11 Nashville, TN 3rd & Lindsley
13 Annapolis, MD Ram’s Head
15 New York, NY Joe’s Pub
16 New York, NY Joe’s Pub
17 Boston, MA Lizard Lounge
19 Philadelphia, PA World Cafe Live
27 Los Angeles, CA Hotel Cafe
28 San Francisco, CA Rickshaw Stop
30 Portland, OR Mississippi Studios (two shows)
December
1 Vancouver, BC The Red Room
3 Seattle, WA The Triple Door
5 Boulder, CO Trilogy Lounge
6 Fort Collins, CO Hodi’s Half Note
PLAY
