Doobie Brothers celebrate 50 years with a tour, documentary and 'a new album in the can'
When Pat Simmons asked Michael McDonald if he’d ever feel like getting back together with the Doobie Brothers for a few gigs, he was thinking maybe four or five shows, just for old times’ sake.
McDonald hadn’t done much with the Doobies since a brief reunion tour in the mid-‘90s, but he and Simmons stayed in touch through all the breakups and reunions and would often get together just to hang.
So when management started discussing a possible 50th-anniversary tour, Simmons said, “Hey, you should ask Mike if he might want to do some gigs with us.”
That was 2019.
Five years later, McDonald is still out there doing some gigs, with time off for a global pandemic that forced them off the road in 2020.
“Actually, this is the second 50 years of the band we're celebrating now,” Simmons said with a laugh.
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McDonald also recently recorded his first album of new music with the band since 1980’s “One Step Closer," although to be fair, he does appear on several tracks on “Southbound,” an album released in 2014 that found the Doobies re-recording their old hits with country guest stars.
“We have a new album in the can,” Simmons said.
“We kind of worked on it over the winter. Same producer that produced our last album, John Shanks, only this time, Mike's involved in writing with us and recording. So that's another great moment for us, having Mike involved in this album.”
Having McDonald involved in a project is always a bonus.
"He's a fabulous singer, a great person and just always fun to be around, an inspiring guy and a good friend of mine forever," Simmons said. "So it's really nice having him back after all these years."
Simmons estimates that the album should be released by spring 2025.
“I'm kind of leaving it to management to figure it out,” he said. “We have some other things we're working on, so I think they're maybe trying to coordinate the release of the album so it'll be something to talk about during a tour, that kind of thing.”
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Those other things they’re working on include another Doobie Brothers documentary.
“We have a ways to go on that,” Simmons said.
“So we'll see. It would be nice if we could have that out not at the same time, but have some kind of flow to it, so that we have a couple new things happening to give us something to talk about. You know, old guys, we need something to talk about.”
The documentary follows “Long Train Runnin’: Our Story of the Doobie Brothers,” a 2022 memoir written by Simmons and fellow founding member Tom Johnston with the help of music journalist Chris Epting.
“I think maybe that was somewhat of an inspiration for the documentary,” Simmons said. “That was certainly something that I think helped to give some form to it, helped to conceptualize it a bit."
There have been other Doobie Brothers documentaries, but they're hoping this one will be better.
“We have a lot of great vintage footage we wanted to use for the project that wasn’t included in the last one we did 15 years ago or something,” Simmons said.
“So we kind of want to update things and have some of the cool archival stuff that we've been holding onto for a long time that really hasn't been taken advantage of. I think it would be fun for people to see a lot more of that stuff.”
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That includes a lot of footage from the early '70s.
“It's probably about 10 hours worth of footage from a couple tours we did,” Simmons said.
“There's sound for part of it, some live stuff and some on-the-road just silly stuff. Hotel rooms and we used to fly around in a couple of old twin-engine prop planes. You know, crazy stuff — platform shoes, bell-bottom pants, weird glitter-rock moments. We thought we were... I don't know what we were thinking.”
It's pointed out that most people don't think of “weird glitter-rock moments” and the Doobie Brothers in the same breath, but Simmons said they went through a phase.
“We used to wear all that stuff,” he said. “We toured with Mark Bolan and Rod Stewart and the Faces, all those guys. And we thought we wanted to be more like that. We should've been slapped.”
They did learn some valuable lessons from watching those guys work a room, though.
“Being on the road with them and seeing the energy they were able to generate with their audience, you admire that and want to do it,” Simmons said.
“And we did. We were able to conjure up some of that just by paying attention to what they were doing. We learned 'Hey, you don't just stand there and play.’ You play to the audience and try to involve them in what you're doing. They really were good teachers in that regard.”
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Formed in 1970, the Doobie Brothers hit the airwaves two years later with two singles from their second album — Johnston’s “Listen to the Music” and the gospel song “Jesus is Just Alright.”
The hits kept coming in short order: “Long Train Runnin’,” “China Grove,” “Another Park, Another Sunday” and their first chart-topping entry on the Billboard Hot 100 with one of Simmons' contribution, 1975’s “Black Water.”
McDonald made his first appearance on a Doobie Brothers record in 1976, when his “Takin’ It To the Streets” and “It Keeps You Runnin’” introduced a more soulful approach that provided the template for “Minute By Minute,” a chart-topping album that spawned their second No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100, “What a Fool Believes.”
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Asked if he recalls a point at which he felt they really hit their stride as artists, Simmons says that's not the way he looks at making music.
“Speaking for myself, and I probably speak for the other guys too, I don't think you ever feel like you found the sound, you know?” he said. “You're always searching for the sound. I think that's kind of part of what keeps you going for it. You write a song and you don't necessarily go, 'Well, that's it. That's what I was going for.’ You write a song and you go, 'Well, that's close.'”
And by the time you’re done with that song, you're already on to something else.
“Or you hear a song that inspires you, and you think, God, I want to be able to write something like that,'" he said. "And you keep trying. You never really go 'Well, that's it. I finally hit it. That's good enough.' You're always trying to do better.”
And not only better, but different.
“It doesn't always sound different, because it's you, and you're only gonna be able to be who you are,” Simmons explained. “But you want to try to go beyond yourself, come up with something new and interesting, hopefully, for your audience, so people go, 'Wow, that's really different for the Doobie Brothers.' And I think a lot of our albums have been that way, in terms of people listening and going, 'Wow, I didn't even know that was you guys.'”
Simmons feels that’s been the key to much of the success the Doobies have enjoyed along the way. “A song like 'China Grove' doesn't sound like 'Black Water,' which doesn't sound like 'What a Fool Believes.’”
It helps that they have different writers in the group, with Simmons, Johnston and McDonald all contributing hit singles to the mix.
“It’s enabled us to have more than one sound,” Simmons said. “A lot of bands are stuck with 'only that guy's songs are gonna be the songs,' and 'only this kind of song is gonna make it in our musical vocabulary.' We don't have that problem going on. It’s been a lifesaver, really.”
The Doobie Brothers
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 26.
Where: Footprint Center, 201 E. Jefferson St., Phoenix.
Admission: $19.50 and up.
Details: 602-379-7800, ticketmaster.com.
Reach the reporter at [email protected]. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @EdMasley.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Doobie Brothers on new album with Michael McDonald, documentary, tour