Wow, I have been seriously delinquent on show reports lately. I don't know if it's even worth talking about the Doughty show now, almost two weeks later...but then again, Doughty is always worth it. I'll keep it short, though.

The show was not, as far as I could tell, very widely publicized—if not for cptmoll's spotting the announcement we would never have known. I'm on the Doughty email list but I don't think they sent anything out about this. Anyway hobbitgrrl and I cruised on over to the Chicago History Museum. This seemed like it would be a really weird venue for a rock show, but we both ended up heartily approving of it, in large part because of the exciting variety of food available for purchase. (We always want food at shows.) We decided on the cheese plate, which was a very generous selection of cheeses, crackers, fruit and nuts...I'd get that again.

On my way from the bar back to the stage area I noticed some people sitting at a table off to the side, and I thought one of the guys looked like Scott Ligon. If you know what he looks like, you might wonder how I could possibly not have been sure it was him, but in my defense, 1) his haircut was less bowl-shaped than usual, and 2) he was sitting down, so I couldn't see how tall he was. However, I definitely knew it was him once I got back toward the stage and recognized his yellow Telecaster up there.

Let us now take a moment to appreciate Scott Ligon—he was playing in the opening band (Anna Fermin's Trigger Gospel), but I've also seen him perform with Nora O'Connor and Kelly Hogan...all of these ladies have lovely voices but as far as I'm concerned all that belting is just a pretext for Scott's guitar (and organ) playing. He's such a treat to watch.

So then after a fairly long set from the opener Doughty came on. Yay! It was him and his keyboard player John Kirby (who was totally adorable). Though I do like the Doughty solo performances I think he does benefit from having another musician with him; it really fills out the sound and he seemed more relaxed than when we saw his solo show in March. Also, he and John have this really funny rapport which was quite amusing.

Anyway, they played a few songs together (setlist here). One of them Doughty introduced as going to be on the new album, so I was surprised when it turned out to be 27 Jennifers—I wasn't sure if he was joking or whether he's remaking the song. Then John went offstage and Doughty did a few by himself. The first one he said was a new song and started to play it, but the crowd was being kind of noisy, so in the funniest moment of the night he broke off to berate people in the audience for talking too much. The best part was that he was actually pointing out specific individuals and ordering them to go back toward the bar if they wanted to keep talking. Eventually things quieted to his satisfaction and he played a new song. During the song I thought he was saying "luminous scroll," but that totally makes no sense; afterwards somebody asked him what it was called and I believe he said "Luminous Girl," which makes marginally more sense. Anyway I have an mp3 of it, which is not that good since I recorded it using my digital camera (meaning that it got recorded in crappy mono; and then it was compressed to an mp3 making it sound even worse). However it's not totally terrible, and you also get to hear him beforehand going all Jeff Tweedy on some poor sucker's ass.

Apart from that he seemed like he was in a pretty good mood, and he was amusingly chatty. I can't remember everything, but he did take a few minutes to mock the Yankees and Yankees fans, and express his amazement that John Kirby doesn't use his insane keyboard skills to get more girls. (Dude, totally. Also, the boy is seriously adorable.) They did another new song together, the title of which I've forgotten...Put It Down? Put It Up? Something like that I think (the setlist is not much help since it's written in that wacky Doughty Code).

And so, a fine night overall. Even though hobbitgrrl lost her hat. :( But I'd be happy to go see another show there sometime. More cheese please!

Oh yeah, 3 blurryish photos and they're also oddly pink. And again, setlist and a pretty lo-fi mp3 of the new Luminous Girl song.

Common Rotation tomorrow, OK Go and the Decemberists in a couple weeks! I've got to get back into my concert recapping habits...