Latest news with #DoobieBrothers
USA Today
a day ago
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Doobie Brothers on new album, tour, hall of fame: 'You have to think beyond your age'
Doobie Brothers on new album, tour, hall of fame: 'You have to think beyond your age' Show Caption Hide Caption Fans of Jimmy Buffett fill the Key West streets at parade in his honor Key West residents and fans of Jimmy Buffett gave the singer-songerwriter a last goodbye with a parade in his honor. Ariana Triggs, Storyful With a new album, tour and impending induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Doobie Brothers are takin' it to the streets like it's 1976. The quartet of Patrick Simmons, Tom Johnston, John McFee and Michael McDonald will hit the road Aug. 4 partially to jam through their 50-plus years of hits such as 'Listen to the Music,' 'Black Water,' 'What a Fool Believes' and 'China Grove,' but also to support their 16th studio album, 'Walk This Road,' out June 6. The album, which features Mavis Staples and Mick Fleetwood, also marks their first with McDonald in the studio in more than 40 years. A bit of nostalgia also colors their upcoming live shows, as the six-week tour will spotlight openers The Coral Reefer Band, the beloved touring and recording outfit of Jimmy Buffett, who died in 2023. Recently, Simmons – from Maui, his home of 30 years – and McDonald – from his 100-year-old hacienda in Santa Barbara, California – talked about the inherent positivity in the new album, the Doobies' history with the Coral Reefer Band and why Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones might end up directing their documentary. The Songwriters Hall of Fame is such a huge honor. What went through your mind when you heard about it? Michael McDonald: To be inducted alongside my friends Pat and Tom means all the more to me. Those were the guys who gave me the opportunity to be recognized as a songwriter. To be recognized with a group of people you've admired all your life is pretty meaningful. Patrick Simmons: It's a little surreal. You never think of yourself as having that credibility. When you're first starting out writing songs you never have confidence in anything and when people start responding to your songs, it's such a kick. You're always in search of the next song. Do you remember the first song you wrote? Simmons: I can't specifically, but it was probably some kind of blues-gospel thing with religious overtones from my Lutheran heritage (laughs). I was 15 and singing it in a coffeehouse while I was doing mostly covers and people politely applauded. You've got another lengthy tour coming up. How do you physically prepare? McDonald: Since I don't do anything, I'll let Pat answer. Simmons: I've got a hill I live on and walk it several times a day and am always working on a project. Not that that counts as calisthenics. But I try to always stay in motion and on the road try to get out and walk every day. We're all in our 70's now. I used to think that was old. I do feel it, but it's hard to believe we're out here doing it at this age, and in my head I'm still 16. You have to think beyond your age. It's a life adventure. What went into the decision to tour with the Coral Reefer Band? Simmons: The concept was more of, who is somebody we can tour with who will be complementary musically and be of interest to the audience. I think everybody went, that's really cool. Were you friends with Jimmy Buffet? Simmons: I would run into him occasionally. We had toured with him for years and years in the '70s. He was such an understated guy. He was always quality. Great playing, great singing, some funny songs with eccentric and esoteric concepts in his music. We got to be friendly with all the guys, so this is coming full circle. With this new album, Michael, how did it feel to be back recording with the guys? McDonald: It's been a while since we did it that way and the technology has changed, for better or worse … The new procedure is interesting. As you're writing the song you're recording it into a file and that is the basis you use for the track even if it's just a feeling. So it's kind of fun to feel like the song hasn't had to morph into something else. Some of my fondest memories of being in the studio are the first time I heard the band play 'Takin' It To the Streets.' I was like, wow! When the band started playing it, it took on a whole new life. The title track features Mavis Staples. What was it like recording with her? McDonald: (Producer) John Shanks came to us and said, "You've been walking this path for 50 years. Let's write about that." It became a broader message and what better ambassador for humanity and with empathy for each other and someone who remembers we're all on this path together than Mavis? That was always the message of (The Staple Singers). It was a thrill, though, when she came into the studio. What's the status on a new Doobie Brothers documentary? Simmons: We're still fumbling around. We have so much film and archives and so much film from 1973, stuff we shot on 16 millimeter and for a whole tour back then. But I think what's happening is we're so mired down in that there are so many documentaries out there so do we want to do this right now? It's almost a little saturated now, so we thought let's put it on the back burner for now. We'll wait 'til we're 90. It can be directed by Keith Richards.
San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Why the Doobie Brothers still matter in 2025
Since the early 1970s, the Doobie Brothers have provided the soundtrack to countless road trips and backyard parties with songs like ' Listen to the Music,' ' Long Train Runnin' ' and ' What a Fool Believes,' among many others. Yet half a century into their storied classic rock career, the band finds itself stuck with an unlikely label: yacht rock pioneer. After a 2005 web spoof went viral, the Doobie Brothers got lumped into the R&B-influenced soft rock subgenre promulgated by acts like Boz Scaggs, Kenny Loggins and Christopher Cross. Nostalgic heartstrings were tugged, yacht rock cover bands spread the gospel, and a recent HBO documentary exposed new generations to this invented but totally legit phenomenon. 'The whole idea of yacht rock, comically, is not lost on me,' Michael McDonald told the Chronicle, on video call from his Santa Barbara home. 'If I have to be attached to any group of musicians or bands or songs, I couldn't be prouder to be counted among bands like Steely Dan and Hall & Oates.' It's another curious twist of the tail for the Bay Area music legends. During their Carter-era peak, the Doobie Brothers were hitting cruising altitude in their DoobieLiner jet, high off a string of instantly recognizable hits and readily available substances. By 1976, they already had a greatest hits compilation that has sold more than 10 million albums in the U.S. to date. Now 56 years after their humble San Jose beginnings, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers are back with their 16th studio album 'Walk This Road,' out Friday, June 6. A week later, members Patrick Simmons, Tom Johnston and McDonald will be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on June 12. Johnston credits the band's success and longevity — they survived addiction, deaths, lineup changes and a five-year hiatus — to the strong connection fans have made with their music. 'They look fondly on the band because our songs are associated with good times,' said Johnston, on joint video call with his bandmates, from his home in Visalia (Tulare County). 'We're extremely fortunate to have that.' Johnston and Simmons are OG San Jose like the Winchester Mystery House. They met at San Jose State University in the '60s, and together they would prowl Bay Area clubs and bars. In the process, they scooped up like-minded souls like drummer John Hartman and bassist Dave Shogren who would eventually form the Doobie nucleus in 1970. 'Living in the Bay Area had a profound influence on me musically because there was so much live music all the time,' said Simmons. 'It really sparked my imagination.' A regular gig as the unofficial house band at Chateau Liberté in the Santa Cruz Mountains sealed their reputation as a favorite among local Hells Angels, who would ride their hogs into the joint without complaint. Moby Grape's Skip Spence was a key contributor to their rootsy hybrid sound. Hits like 'Black Water,' 'Take Me In Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While)' and 'Jesus Is Just Alright' revealed regional inspirations outside the 408, from swampy blues to joyous R&B. 'One of the things I really like about the band was that it never put stylistic limits on the music,' said Doobies guitarist John McFee, who joined the band in 1979, from his Santa Barbara home. 'We try to find things that work and just be as creative as possible.' The addition of McDonald in 1976 opened up the band's sonic palette further into R&B and gospel territory, and set the wheels in motion for a sound reset. 'Takin' it to the Streets' and 'What a Fool Believes,' the latter which won a 1980 Grammy for song of the year, showcased McDonald's bearded brogue that would later define the yacht rock aesthetic. On the band's new album 'Walk This Road,' the Doobie Brothers have matured like fine whiskey. Their voices have mellowed a touch, yet still have a satisfying residual burn. Mortality is a naturally occurring topic for the members whose average age is 74, as the group reflects on strengthening bonds ('Call Me'), achieving peace ('State of Grace') and pondering life's eternal lessons (the title track, a duet with gospel and R&B legend Mavis Staples). 'We have a lot of common feelings about where we've been and where we're going,' Simmons explained, joining the Zoom from his Maui residence. 'And it comes out in the songs.' 'Walk This Road' is a homecoming for McDonald, who hasn't recorded with the Doobie Brothers since 1980. He contributed 'Speed of Pain' and 'Learn to Let Go' to the new album, both imbued with his inimitable voice and keyboard touches. Even during the peak of his solo popularity, McDonald said he's always stayed in touch with his Doobie brothers. He especially enjoys playing different instruments with the group, which he doesn't get to do in his own band. 'It's a great opportunity to become a part of the band again,' McDonald said. 'I've always enjoyed playing the music of the Doobie Brothers every bit as much, and sometimes more than, my own.' Having a string of hits has resulted in a wide swath of Doobie admirers across a spectrum of genres. A 2010 tribute album, 'Southbound,' highlighted their lasting give-and-take connection with country music, featuring artists like Zac Brown Band and Brad Paisley. There are pop, house, funk, even Cuban jazz renditions of the Doobie Brothers songs. They've been sampled by producers and DJs like J Dilla ('367') and Daft Punk ('Face to Face'). And McDonald's 'I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near)' forms the foundational bed for Warren G and Nate Dogg's G-funk classic 'Regulate.' Oakland R&B great Raphael Saadiq included 'China Grove' in his 2025 NBA All-Star Game medley, and yacht rock cover bands keep sprouting up as a new generation taps in and climbs aboard. All this interest keeps the Doobie Brothers hype train on track. In July, they'll kick off their 2025 'Walk This Road' tour in the U.K., with U.S. dates following in August. Johnston doesn't take the transformational power of live music for granted. He said the goosebump-raising feeling of an audience reacting to familiar opening chords of hits like ' Rockin' Down the Highway ' never gets old, even after more than five decades. 'If you can get that, man, take that to the bank and hang on to it,' Johnston said, 'because that's one of the reasons people keep coming back.' 'It's like we've been invited into people's lives, and we've become part of them,' added McFee. 'And that's an amazing thing. What a great benefit of playing music — to be lucky enough to make that kind of connection with people.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
50 years on, the Doobie Brothers are more harmony than testosterone
These days, the Doobie Brothers are much more relaxed and open when heading to the recording than in the band's heyday in the 1970s and early 1980s. "Anything goes, we don't really have any presuppositions entrenched," singer and keyboardist Michael McDonald tells dpa in London. "We might have done that more like in the old days when we all suffered from more testosterone than we do now," he says with grin. A milestone in the band's long history "Walk This Road" is the name of the new Doobie Brothers album, a work marking a milestone in their history. After more than 50 years of music making, it is namely the first record which has been jointly recorded as a band by Tom Johnston (76), Pat Simmons (76), John McFee (74) and Michael McDonald (73). There were the occasional guest appearances and tours, but never - until now - were the four Doobie veterans together in a studio as full-fledged band members. Amid the differing musical ideas of guitarist and singer Johnston and the later band member McDonald, the two men never worked together for any length of time. Johnston stood for classic rock'n'roll, blues and boogie and for such hits as "Long Train Runnin'." Later, McDonald helped the band achieve megahits such as "What A Fool Believes" with his style of soulful pop and R&B sounds. The many musical sides of the Doobie Brothers The Doobie Brothers now agree that their versatility is one of their strengths. This was in evidence during the recently concluded tour marking the band's 50th anniversary, during which Michael McDonald returned as a firm member. "We can present all eras of the band. That's pretty cool. Because it gives you a variety," a jubilant Johnston said. "There's really no downside to any of this." The same thing can be said about the new album, although the members mostly wrote the songs separately with successful producer John Shanks (Bon Jovi, Take That). "We're shooting for the songs that work best for the band and that we think the band can express and represent as the Doobie Brothers," said McDonald. The method worked perfectly for the new LP. Highlights include the rousing Southern rocker "Angels & Mercy" sung by Simmons and the soulful "Learn To Let Go" featuring McDonald's uniquely unmistakable voice which still sounds powerful and warm at the age of 73. A stroke of fate as source of inspiration McDonald had written some of the songs years before in an attempt to come to terms with a stroke of fate, the death of his friend and Doobies drummer Keith Knudsen in 2005. "It rattled the hell out of me," the singer recalled. "It was a big loss for me, the family, and the whole band." And so he began to write. The best example for the harmony that today defines the Doobie Brothers is, by the way, the good-natured title song with soul legend Mavis Staples - with Tom Johnston, Pat Simmons and Michael McDonald all singing along, together. The different styles harmonise as well with each other as do the band members. "Walk This Road" combines the qualities of such different album classics as "The Captain And Me" and "Minute By Minute" seemingly effortlessly. A wonderful late work by the Doobie Brothers.
Telegraph
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Michael McDonald's high times with The Doobie Brothers: ‘I'd done a pretty good job of screwing up'
Fifty years ago this spring, the 23-year-old known to everyone on the Los Angeles recording session scene as Mike McDonald got the call that would change his life. And the listening pleasure of two, maybe three, generations. The instantly-recognisable vocalist who would become the de facto captain of the good ship Yacht Rock was about to set sail on a musical journey that, as a member of The Doobie Brothers and a solo artist, would net him five Grammys; an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; another induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame; and a truly beloved status as the writer and/or singer of stone-cold classics such as What a Fool Believes, I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near), Ya Mo Be There (with James Ingram) and, with Patti Labelle, On My Own. Not to mention, in another AOR staple, Christopher Cross's Ride Like the Wind, a walk-on part – well, single lyrical line – that's still shouted at him to this day. But half a century ago, all that was a long way off. Only a fool would have believed that, in 2025, The Doobie Brothers – McDonald, Patrick Simmons, Tom Johnston, John McFee – would be playing a 50th anniversary tour (it reaches the UK in July) and releasing a rocking new album, Walk This Road (out in June), the first by the foursome in 40 years. The offer in April 1975 from an LA muso mate was simple if challenging. Did McDonald fancy filling in on vocals and keyboards with a California boogie band who'd outgrown their roots in the biker bars in the hills of Santa Cruz and San Jose and were now, courtesy of monster hits Listen to the Music and Long Train Runnin', one of the biggest touring outfits in the world? It was, to be clear, a temporary gig with a multi-vocalist band promoting their fifth album, Stampede. And he'd have to fly to New Orleans. Tomorrow. And go straight into two days of rehearsals to learn the set-list. Then, at Shreveport, hit the road. Still, it might have more prospects than his other current gig, as a studio backing vocalist for Steely Dan. 'I felt like I'd just been thrown out of a window – and hadn't hit the ground yet,' McDonald remembers of the minutes before curtain-up on his opening night in Louisiana with The Doobie Brothers. His piano was festooned with Post-Its, reminders of the notes, chords and lyrics he had to perform. 'I realised that I didn't remember the songs nearly as well as I thought I had.' But as soon as the house lights went down and the audience roar went up, for the newbie – who'd been drafted in to make up for the absence of guitarist/lead singer Johnston, out after five gigs on the tour through excess and illness – the rush was immediate. 'It felt like I was strapped to the hood of a Fifties vintage Buick going down the highway at 80 miles an hour. it was a thrill and a terror all at once,' says McDonald with a chuckle. 'Somewhere in the middle of the show, it was becoming a blur.' Eventually, guitarist/co-vocalist Simmons introduced him to the audience. 'It was a tepid response, because they had no idea who the hell I was. 'On piano, Michael McDonald!' And so, from that night on, my name became Michael McDonald.' Later that year, he made his presence felt in the studio. With McDonald now a full-time member, The Doobie Brothers recorded his composition Takin' It to the Streets, a jazzy, soft-rock groover blessed with the creamy, soulful R&B vocals of the white kid from St. Louis. In that moment The Doobie Brothers were reborn. McDonald became fundamental to their sound, a change that reached its peak in 1978 when they recorded What a Fool Believes, a co-write from McDonald and his friend Kenny Loggins. It became an American Number One and would go on to win the Grammys for Song and Record of the Year. The Doobies gig was a much-needed break for McDonald. He'd come to LA from the Midwest in August 1970 in time-honoured fashion: to make it in music. And, certainly, eventually, after an abortive solo album project, the big-ish time beckoned. In 1973 he went from playing Wurlitzer for teen idol David Cassidy on his single Daydreamer (a British number one) to auditioning for Steely Dan, the East Coast intellectuals and proper musos who were busy reinventing what Seventies rock could be. It was a ridiculous-to-the-sublime moment. But for the jobbing musician, that was the MO: a gig's a gig. 'Yeah,' nods McDonald as he Zooms in from his long-term home in Santa Barbara, California, that career-long beard now a Christmassy white but that soul-man charisma very much undimmed at age 73. 'I always marvel at the fact that Stephen Stills tried out for The Monkees! And didn't pass the audition! I guess he was a little too rough around the edges or something. But for the grace of God go all of us…' McDonald, however, did pass his audition for Steely Dan, the band centred on Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. He wound up singing backing vocals on Bad Sneakers, Peg and many more, and joining them on tour. In fact, Fagan revealed last year, McDonald was almost too good. 'There was a serious discussion about whether Mike should replace me as a lead singer in Steely Dan, which would have been my personal preference,' Fagan said in a contribution to a profile of McDonald tied to the publication of his memoir, also titled What a Fool Believes. 'But for some dumb reason, I was voted down. I didn't insist, and have regretted it ever since. I mean, here's this monster singer, a musician, and he's also really funny and a sweetheart of a guy. What's not to like?' Was he aware of that backroom plotting to enthrone him as the face of Steely Dan? 'No, I wasn't!' he replies, laughing. 'Donald is one of my favourite people on earth… Him and Walter were hysterical, you know? But to this day, whenever I work with Donald, I become that 19-year-old kid on stage. If he looks up and glances in my direction, I'm all but sure I'm getting fired in that moment. I tense up in all the wrong places.' Equally, he can't believe that we're all still talking like this. 'It's amazing to me that all these years later – and I don't think any of us would have ever bet on this – that in our 70s we'd be, once in a while, still taking the stage together, the way we did when we were twentysomething years old.' McDonald has more reason than most rockers of his vintage to feel that way. His book opens like this: 'I'm getting fingerprinted and processed – for the second time this week.' It's 1971, the musician is in jail in Van Nuys, and this is his 'third or fourth interaction with LA County's finest that year. I'd lost track… This time I was pulled in after falling asleep in a booth at Du-par's pancake house following a 48-hour marathon party-for-two with a female friend, walking the tightrope between a cocaine binge and copious amounts of Jack Daniel's.' This, he acknowledges to me now, was indicative of what his life was like as a 19-year-old not long arrived in LA. 'It was becoming more of that and less of what I had gone out there to do. What had literally been laid in my lap, as far as an opportunity,' he says of the early buzz around town about the young Midwesterner's musical talents. 'I'd done a pretty good job of screwing up. I remember thinking: am I going to be one of those guys who came out here with all the best intentions, but who winds up spending a good part of the rest of his life in institutions like prison? I knew that this was not boding well for my future. And that I needed to somehow get a grip on myself.' It would take McDonald the best part of a decade-and-a-half to get that grip. His book details several misadventures, including a blackly comic moment when, sharing an apartment with Becker (who wrestled with heroin addiction), the pair attempted to make a small fortune on a cocaine deal – only to pre-squander the profits by getting very high on their own supply. McDonald would eventually go drug-free in the mid-Eighties after suffering grand mal seizures. 'I increasingly was frightened by the prospect that all the willpower in the world was not going to save me from myself,' he reflects of high old days that, to be fair, were characteristic of the LA music scene in the Seventies and Eighties. 'That I had a malady that wanted to kill me. To this day, I find that any place I sit in a chair sober, my disease is out in the parking lot doing push-ups, waiting for me to lose that much conscious state of mind about what my real problem is, and what is at the centre of my existence. Which are my addictions. My propensity to addiction. 'I had to learn that the hard way,' he continues, 'like most people do. But in the process, I was given some great fortune, in spite of myself, that has more to do with what my career [became]. I don't think I'd be here if it wasn't for sobriety. I think I would have passed away a long time ago. I'm all but sure of that.' On August 1, McDonald will be 39 years sober. 'It seems like a blur, it really does… My life is better today than it was a week ago. I don't know how that works. But I know it [is] by virtue of me not picking up a substance, one day at a time.' Not that his demons dimmed his abilities, or his work-rate. In 1979, the year What a Fool Believes topped the charts in the US, he recorded backing vocals on the title track of Elton John's Victim of Love album. And, at the behest of another LA studio contact, he also laid down, as he writes in What a Fool Believes, 'a line or two' on a new song for a new artist. Was it apparent in the studio that Ride Like the Wind and Christopher Cross were both going to be big? 'Um, you know, it was such a fast and furious thing,' replies avuncular, easygoing McDonald. 'It was like: 'Come on in, this won't take more than half an hour. You've just got to sing two parts.' But I remember thinking: 'This is a clever song.' It felt like a hit. And it piqued my interest about Christopher. We became friends in that moment and have remained friends to this day.' Interviewed together, Cross and McDonald made for an engaging double-act in HBO's brilliant 2024 Yacht Rock film. It was a, if you will, 'DOCKumentary', as it was subtitled, about the ironic-not-ironic love for the genre of easygoing, exquisitely produced, mostly West Coast American rock from the Seventies and Eighties. 'Oh, yeah, it was funny,' he cheerfully agrees of the film (Cross's daughter was one of the producers). To McDonald's credit, he takes the Yacht Rock appellation in the spirit in which it's intended. Certainly there's a whiff of satirical mockery, baked into the genre from its coinage in an online video series from 2005. But that fades next to the genuine appreciation for the songcraft, musicianship and, yes, peerless vocals that characterise the genre. 'Some of my compatriots do not like the moniker at all, and bristle,' he acknowledges, as aware as anyone of the film's last word: a curt Donald Fagen hanging up on the director with a 'Why don't you go f–– yourself?' (Fagen did nonetheless allow six Steely Dan songs to be used in the film.) 'And I get that. Everybody has a different dog in that race. But I was always a big fan of pop music, so I never bristled at the idea that I wasn't a rock god. I don't mean that disparagingly about any of my friends,' he adds, 'because they were rock gods. Toto were one of the ultimate rock bands of the '70s. The Doobies also, but the guys in Toto played on every conceivable record you could imagine,' he notes of a discography that, for guitarist Steve Lukather and drummer Jeff Porcaro, includes, amongst myriad others, appearances on Michael Jackson's Thriller. 'Just to be counted in among those artists – Toto, Steely Dan, The Eagles, whoever is considered Yacht Rock – I feel a great sense of pride. Those were the guys that I look up to no less now than I did back in the Seventies. So I'm proud to be counted among the Yacht Rock crew!' Still, the snark persists, with one take being that Yacht Rock is the preserve of old rich white guys, the Jeff Bezos set, the actual yacht-owning class. Is McDonald on board with that? He laughs gamely. 'I think that's a stretch, because I'm not so sure that those guys like us any more than anybody else! But it had great comic value,' he agrees. 'When those original viral videos came out, my kids were quick to make me sit down and watch them with them. So I had to get into the comic value of it all early on. 'I can't count how many times some drunk has stumbled out of a bar as I walked by, singing [Ride Like The Wind line] 'got such a long way to go', doing his Michael McDonald imitation!' he adds, laughing again. 'I always tell my son: when your music becomes less relevant, your pathetic comic value might come in handy. [And my kids] have punished me with every take on me, from Family Guy to Rick Moranis,' he says – the former a reference to McDonald's appearance in the cartoon in 2008, the latter a reference to a sketch-show skit, both of which riffed on the in-demand McDonald's ubiquitousness. 'I feel oddly honoured by it all!' McDonald's down-to-earth nature has been a constant; the singer has always been unafraid to apply his supreme skills to the supremely silly. In the 2009 episode of sitcom 30 Rock titled Kidney Now!, McDonald is part of the all-star musical line-up singing on a charity song to raise money for a kidney transplant. 'This country has 600 million kidneys / and we really only need half,' he sings with typical eyes-closed sincerity. 'That means about 300 million kidneys / You do the math.' He also turned the earnestness up to 11 for 1999's South Park movie. For the soundtrack he sang Eyes of a Child, a faux loving hymn to the magic of children, their angelic innocence meaning 'they've yet to realise the bastards they really are'. 'Oh yeah!' McDonald says with a chuckle. 'I was doing the vocal, and [co-writers] Trey [Parker] and Marc [Shaiman] were sitting in a chair in the control room writing lyrics that were ever more awful. And I kept saying: 'Guys, I can't sing that! That's pathetically awful.'' Which makes you wonder about the lyrics that didn't get used. 'I remember, at the time, [my wife and I] trying to get our kids into a youth group at the church that we decided we needed to attend so that they wouldn't grow up total pagans,' McDonald continues. 'And it was a failed experiment at best – nobody knew that better than my kids,' he notes wryly. 'But after that song came out, I remember thinking you could hear a pin drop whenever we walked into one of the church services.' Fifty years on from that Shreveport try-out, Michael McDonald remains in good humour, good voice and a good part of the magic of The Doobie Brothers. As much is in evidence in Walk This Road, on which McDonald takes lead vocal on four tracks. As Pulp have managed this month but Oasis aren't even bothering risking, the Doobies' new album achieves that trickiest of feats for the revenant rock stars on the comeback trail and anniversary victory lap: it builds on their legacy without trashing it. McDonald gets that. 'The two things that I was most in fear of losing were: that instantaneous feeling of passion when we performed live. And that place you go to when you're singing a song you've sung 1000 times… 'You renegotiate with all that stuff as you get older. On the road now, I laugh and accept the fact that sleeping in a bunk on a tour bus at 73 is no picnic. And [that I'm going to be] worrying about things like: where are my hearing aids? Did I leave them in a restaurant? ' None of which, though, is important as long as 'when I get on the stage with those guys, I sense that we're 19 again. In that moment, all that matters is between us and the audience. If so, then I have some business to still be there.' And Michael McDonald knows exactly how to find that moment. 'People always ask me: 'Why do you close your eyes when you sing?' Well, there's a place I like to go to. A place to remove myself to, where it's just me in the song. I know the audience is out there. I know who I'm talking to. I know it's all about this moment. I don't want to ever lose that.'
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Even yacht rock icon Michael McDonald is criticising Donald Trump and the US government
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Doobie Brothers singer/keyboard player and yacht rock kingpin Michael McDonald has joined the chorus of musicians criticising the current US government. The title track of the Doobie Brothers' brand new studio album, Walk This Road, is a thinly condemnation of the Donald Trump-led administration. In a brand new interview in the current issue of Classic Rock, McDonald – who co-wrote the song with Doobies producer John Shanks – reveals that the track was inspired by his worries that the nation could be heading towards 'totalitarianism' at the hands of Trump and associates. 'I think it's important that all of us stand up and say our piece,' McDonald says of the track, which features an appearance from legendary US singer Mavis Staples. 'Here in the US these are perilous times, I'm afraid. We are staring down a dark channel that could lead to totalitarianism. 'We've got a guy who doesn't want to be President Of The Unites States as much as he wants to be one of the points of light – the whole axis of everything. He wants the world. 'We have to be very careful of that, and we should speak out against it while we still can. I have no doubt that should they get their own way, this administration would shut down the press completely.' McDonald isn't the first musician to criticise Trump in recent days. On May 14, Bruce Springsteen launched an attack on the president onstage at a show in Manchester, England, stating that the US "is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration' and calling for 'all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against the authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.' After Trump responded by calling Springsteen a 'dried out 'prune' of a rocker' and said he is 'not a talented guy' on his Truth Social network, the likes of Neil Young, Pearl Jam and Robert Plant stepped up to defend The Boss. 'Stop thinking about what rockers are saying,' wrote Young on his website. 'Think about saving America from the mess you made.' Read the full interview with the Doobie Brothers in the brand new issue of Classic Rock, onsale now. Order it online and have it delivered straight to your door.
