Y3W: Mike Doughty's 'Sad Man Happy Man'

Jan. 29, 2011— -- Mike Doughty provides the soundtrack to this week's Y3W, and appears in the segment with his own three-word message.

Doughty began his professional music career as frontman for the avant garde group Soul Coughing, first performing at New York's famed Knitting Factory club in 1992, where he also worked as a bouncer. Mixing jazz, rock, hip hop and electronic music, the band built a strong following among alternative and college radio fans, and released three albums before eventually splitting up in 2000.

Since then, Doughty has pursued a successful solo career, adopting a more stripped-down acoustic sound, but still incorporating his distinctive syncopated guitar technique and stream-of-consciousness lyrical approach. The most recent of his five solo albums is "Sad Man Happy Man," on which he backs himself up with guitars, keyboards and drum programming.

Sad Man includes this week's Y3W track "(I Keep On) Rising Up," a song written as he recovered from a painful breakup. He has said the message is a positive one, that in spite of difficulty, "I'll keep on with my spiritual journey." He added, "Yes, I really am that much of a hippie."

In addition to performing extensively on tour, he has been known to serve as his own tour manager, merchandise agent and driver, but that has not stopped Doughty from keeping busy as a writer as well. He has worked as a music critic for New York Press and contributor to the Huffington Post, and has also written a book of poetry and a play titled "Ray Slape Is Dead." He regularly keeps up his personal blog.