I never would have expected this musical tour combination. It seems like too much of a coincidence considering that I’ve been listening so much to both Mike Doughty and Erin McKeown lately, and I’ve seen them both perform recently after not going to any concerts for a long time. They played at the Showbox and both put on great shows. The only bad thing about the shows is that they were completely separate. Normally when I see Erin McKeown plays she’ll jam on a song or two with whoever else is performing, but Mike Doughty didn’t even mention Erin during his set let alone play with her.
Erin did the warmup set and she didn’t have as many fans as I’ve normally seen at her shows, but it also was a Monday night. She played a short set with the same drummer that she had when she played at the Tractor. She played Le Petite Mort, aka Estelle, which Kim was happy to hear. Kim prefers Erin’s older music to her newer stuff, but in a noisy venue like the showbox where a ton of the people are talking to each other rather than listening to the music, her newer and louder stuff turns out better. We were leaning on the stage the whole time for both performances, so we had a great view.
For Mike Doughty’s set the drummer was right next to us, so he was a little overpowering at times, but a really awesome drummer. The guy playing the stand up base seemed cool, but sadly you really couldn’t hear his base at all. There was also an Asian dude on the keyboards who added some really interesting, if strange, music to the mix. Mike got a lot of requests for songs and he got angry whenever anyone requested Soul Coughing stuff. Someone shouted out for “Super Bon Bon” and Mike reacted with, “Fuck you, I can’t even believed you asked me for that.” I was surprised how many people knew all the words to his new songs. The next to me I think knew every single word to every single song. Mike played “Hungry Like the Wolf” again. He also played a tiny bit of “Paradise City” and Kenny Roger’s “The Gambler”. Fun covers. With his distinctive voice I really enjoy hearing him do covers.