It’s a late May afternoon in Nashville, and the Doobie Brothers are holed up in a nondescript, black-curtained rehearsal space along the banks of the Cumberland River working on a live version of a new song titled “Angels and Mercy.” It’s a song about overcoming demons, and Patrick Simmons, who came up with the idea and sings lead, wants his Doobie sibling Tom Johnston to let loose on the electric guitar in the outro.
“Get mad!” Simmons barks to Johnston, like him an OG Doobie since the band’s formation circa 1970. “Distort the shit out of it.”
Johnston obliges, and “Angels and Mercy,” which up to this point has been mostly defined by the group’s pristine harmonies, transforms into a raucous jam, heavy on rock and attitude. Utility man John McFee, who joined in 1980, adds violin while Michael McDonald, who returned to the group in 2019, strums away on a mandolin from behind his keyboard.
All four of the Doobies look pleased, especially with the intricate vocal arrangements. Just a few minutes earlier, they worked out the harmonies — singing the line “I’m on my knees” over and over again — in a loose circle. Still, Simmons has a request: “Let’s try it again.”
“Angels and Mercy” is one of 10 tracks that appear on the Doobie Brothers’ new album, Walk This Road. Out June 6, it’s the band’s first LP with McDonald in nearly 40 years. It’s also vintage Doobies. All of the hallmarks that made the group such a force in the Seventies and Eighties — the irresistible melodies, the spark-up-and-chill vibes, those voices — are present here, without any trace of aping the past.
“Making records with these guys is like riding a bike for me,” McDonald says. “But I almost feel like it’s taken me all the way to this record to get a little better at [writing] for the Doobie Brothers, as opposed to just whatever I was writing, hoping that it would be something the band would be interested in.”
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McDonald hits the target on Walk This Road, contributing four songs that scream classic Doobies. “Learn to Let Go” is the smoothest of silky soul, with an almost Buddhist message of giving up control and refusing to hold on too tightly. “It’s a lesson we learn over and over through life,” he says. McDonald also crafted the album’s title track, a celebration of longevity that features all three of the group’s principal songwriters —Johnston, McDonald, and Simmons — on vocals, with a guest appearance by Mavis Staples.
Co-written with John Shanks, who produced the album and co-wrote every track, “Walk This Road” was originally a self-referential song about the Doobie Brothers’ history as a group. Despite some lineup changes, the band has been together more than 50 years. In 2020, they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and it was their subsequent 50th anniversary tour that helped pave the way for the new album. But while writing “Walk This Road,” McDonald and Shanks began to see the song more as a universal commentary on humanity, and even right and wrong. “But it’s not preachy. It’s more observant than preaching,” Johnston says.
Johnston delivers the album’s boisterous singalong, “Call Me.” With its bright Memphis-style horns and a chugging rhythm, it’s a song about human connection — even if it’s one made over the telephone lines. “Call me when you need some cover/Call me when you need a friend,” he sings.
“It’s about a guy having a phone relationship,” Johnston says, “but it’s a positive thing.”
The album also travels to two places important to the Doobie Brothers: Maui and New Orleans. In the song “Lahaina,” written and sung by Simmons, the group pay homage to the village decimated by the 2023 wildfires that ravaged Hawaii, where Simmons is a part-time resident. “The idea is just to try to keep that memory alive, because it’s going to be a long time — years and years — before they’re rebuilt,” he says. “It’s not so much a song of loss as a song of remembrance.”
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The band has a long history with New Orleans, going all the way back to the title of their second album, Toulouse Street. They return to Crescent City sounds in the song “The Kind That Lasts,” with its second-line rhythm, and in another simply titled “New Orleans,” powered by Johnston’s instantly identifiable voice.
It’s that same voice that has been soundtracking classic-rock radio for decades, with songs like “China Grove,” “Long Train Runnin’,” and “Rockin’ Down the Highway,” each sung by Johnston. The staying power of those hits, and others like “Listen to the Music,” “Black Water,” and “Long Train Runnin’,” have helped expand the Doobie audience: In other words, it’s not all gray hairs.
“I’m always kind of amazed in how they get there and how they get turned onto the songs,” Johnston says of their new generation of fans. “And why they resonate with them. That’s the best part of all.”
When the idea is floated that, just perhaps, Gen Z’s curiosity into the “yacht rock” genre may play a part in introducing young fans to songs that are decades old, the Doobies don’t bristle. But it’s clear they’ve been asked about the phrase one time too many.
McDonald shifts in his chair. “Let me just say,” he deadpans, “‘go fuck yourself.’”
“A lot of my friends who are in that category just hate it,” he says. “I thought it was funny the first time I heard it. But the company we keep — Toto, Steely Dan — I don’t have a problem with that at all. It’s not like we’re being put in the category of the 1910 Fruitgum Company.”
To be fair, McDonald is really the only “yacht rock” member of the group. The Doobie Brothers as a whole have always been a rock & roll band, more counterculture than captain’s hat.
“Each decade, it seems like the music business likes to turn around and pee on the last decade: ‘If we’re going to be anything, we’re not going to be [what came before],’” McDonald says. “That spawned the ‘I’m going to reinvent myself with every album’ artist, and what was left is the music people like to listen to. Yacht rock was kind of a reactionary thing.”
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With “Angels and Mercy” dialed in, the Doobies are ready to break for lunch. Then it’s back to rehearsing more new songs for their summer tour. After a run through the U.K. next month, they’ll kick off a U.S. tour in Detroit in August, with the late Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band in support. Another album may even be in the works.
“We talked about trying it old-school, getting in a room together by ourselves and doing tracks live,” McDonald says with a smile, “like we used to.”
