Since 1970, when Tom Johnston began forming The Doobie Brothers with Patrick Simmons, the band has sold more than 48 million albums, won four GRAMMY Awards, and earned seven multi-platinum, six platinum and 11 gold albums. Beyond those accomplishments,
Has been certified by the Recording Industry Association of America as having gone “Diamond, ” by selling more than 10 million copies in the United States.
Now the band’s hitting the festival circuit with John McFee — on guitar, pedal steel, dobro, fiddle and vocals — and bringing the Doobie’s signature combination of harmonies, chicken pickin’ and chucka-chucka rhythms to a new generation of festival goers and expanding its base to include country fans, a deft move initiated with their 2014 release
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. The album, which debuted at No. 16 on Billboard, featured vocals by a who’s-who of country artists, including Blake Shelton, Zac Brown Band, Brad Paisley and Toby Keith.
With 30 dates ahead of them with Journey and Dave Mason, Johnston — who wrote Listen To The Music, Rockin Down The Highway, China Grove and others — and Simmons, who wrote “Black Water, ” “South City Midnight Lady, ” “Dependin’ On You” and many more, made time to speak with about the band’s resurgence, its new management, how their approaches to writing and recording have continued to evolve and how they are bringing their live-in-studio sound to festivals around the United States.
Tom: We have a new member at keyboards, Bill Payne from Little Feat, who is a very, very welcome addition. He's like a reincarnation of Professor Longhair. He's a phenomenal keyboard player and he can play anything, it doesn't matter what style, but he has a lot of that New Orleans stuff in there.
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Pat: Bill’s played keyboards on almost every record we've ever made. We’ve always kept in touch with him and he has been a close friend to Tom, John McFee and myself for more than 40 years. He brings so much of our original sound to the band because he's played on so many great songs: “China Grove, ” “Rockin Down the Highway, ” “Jesus is Just All Right.” So, having him there to do the original parts is amazing. He's an inspirational guy and a great writer as well.
We also have great new management, which has taken a huge load off my shoulders. I'm the guy who has been here; everybody else left at different times. I ended up having to help reorganize the band and find new players and organize rehearsals, recording sessions and songwriting. Having other people to take up some of the slack has been a huge gift to me and enabled me to enjoy the music more and not have to worry about the business and the details so much, and that really feels good to me.
The band has gone through a lot of lineups over the years, how have the writing and recording processes changed along with that?
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Tom: I've been experimenting by writing with people in Nashville for a little over a year now and it's really different from what I've been used to. In the old days I would start with just a guitar and that's how I would bring it in. As far as an album would go, you'd come in and say “here are the [chord] changes, ” and Pat would come up with a guitar part to complement it, the drummers would work on the drum parts. Now I come in with a track, and because of software, I'm able to pretty much give them the song the way I hear it. That doesn't mean it won't be changed and hopefully for the better. So the songs are a lot more developed.
I use a lot of MIDI stuff. I use Digital Performer. It provides me the ability to flesh out the tunes and that's what it's all about. I can play the guitar or sing directly into the computer, and I can also do keyboard, bass and drums via keyboards with various programs, be it a Hammond B3 or whatever. The software allows you to take it much further than in the old days.
Pat: I sit with my axe and maybe have a riff or something that I've stumbled on, or some chords that have been running through my head, and start throwing chords together and they turn into something. It's more accidental writing; I come up with something that’s intriguing and then follow it to see where it leads. Other things suggest themselves. I'll maybe have a sequence of chords in my head, a suggested chord that should follow, and then I'll hunt and peck until I find that chord. I do have legal pads, little books, and I'll carry those around with me, especially when I’m on the road. I’ll hear something, a phrase or something and write it down and then, from that, some lyrics that fit. Then I'll go find a guitar and start hunting and pecking again.
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Tom: Yeah, I have been since 1985. That’s what I play on the road and at home. I use the Custom 24, and I've got later versions of them now. I have two that I play throughout the set and then I have a backup for each of those. I only keep the ones that I'm going to be playing. The original PRS guitars, I bought off the rack. I was going out on a USO tour and took that with me. At home I have a hollow-body electric that Paul [Reed Smith] made for me as well. I occasionally use Fender guitars for that specific sound.
I'm using a Martin D-42 on a couple of songs and a Collings. It was a gift from a big fan who lives in Austin. He gave each of us a Collings guitar and so I chose to duplicate the one I had at home and use it on the road. It sounds killer.
Pat: I’ve played the same electric guitars live and in the studio since maybe the late '70s. My guitar tech, Mark Brown, built a couple for Bonnie Raitt and other people. I was looking at his work and I said, “That's really nice, where's mine?” And so he built me a Strat-style guitar like [former bandmate] Jeff Baxter's, only mine’s made of something lighter, like ash.
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I had another really old vintage Strat and pretty soon I was hooked, but it was a rare guitar. That's when I asked Mark to make me this Strat. Three of them, actually; it's got EMG pick-ups in it. Then Mark retired and Joe Vali, my brother in law, came to work for me. He taught guitar building at the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery and built me one using Mark's guitar as a template, only he made this guitar out of koa. That's been my number one guitar. They all have active electronics and a mid-range boost. Something to put a little more grind into the guitar.
For acoustics, I've been working with Taylor and using their guitars again in my live rig. They have been so wonderful in terms of the sound onstage and it translates into the studio as well.
How about amps and pedals? It looks like you're playing pretty lean if that's your main board. What all have you got on there?
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Tom: I really like the sound of the PRS Archon amp. It has a good, clean sound, and then I use a Fender Supersonic for the rhythm stuff. There is another thing on the horizon: a Kemper that my guitar tech is trying to talk me into using. It's basically a modeling device. You can get pretty much any sound you want to a powered speaker. I tried it out for the first time in Connecticut the other day, but I only had 15 minutes, so that's hardly enough time to give it a road test. For pedals, it’s a controller between the two amps, and maybe phasing on one song and delay on another song. I don't use a lot of effects. It's really pretty straightforward. Mostly I'm using the amp sound.
Pat: I'm pretty old school, I'm using a Mesa Boogie Mark V amplifier with a 4x12 speaker cabinets. I have a B rig for our fly dates; normally we're trucking our equipment to the gigs but sometimes we can't get it there in time so we have a second set of equipment in order to make it, and for that I use a JCM800 Marshall amp. My distortion is coming from the distortion channels. Besides that I've got an Electro Harmonix Micro Pog, which is like an octave divider, an XTS Pegasus Boost, a [Fulltone] Choralflange and an old Boss Rotary pedal. I also use a TC Electronics delay pedal and a Texas Two Step by Pedalworx occasionally.
Our live sound is more like a live studio version of the band. We all use in-ear monitors, so we don't have to have that monitor bleed on onstage. A lot of our guitar amplifiers are mic'd offstage so
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