The Doobie Brothers have been doing their 50th anniversary tour featuring Michael McDonald for four years, so why not segue into recording a new album.
Singer and guitarist Pat Simmons, the only Doobie to play on all their albums, writes on Facebook, "We are very close to finishing up an album’s worth of new songs... Tom [Johnston], Michael, John [McFee] and myself have composed a great bunch of songs that we’re really proud of and John is really a stand out on the tracks. It’s the first time in 40 years that Michael has recorded a whole album with the band and in my humble opinion it’s turning out to be some of the best music we’ve ever made together! We’re shooting for a Spring/Summer release."
This will be their first album of new original material with McDonald since One Step Closer in 1980. He was part of 2014's Southbound, which saw them collaborating with other artists on some of their hits. The Doobies' last album was Liberte in 2021.
Until then, Simmons says they'll start rehearsing in May for their summer tour.
"Let us know what songs you might like to hear us play... knowing songs you might want us to play would be a really cool way for us to put together a set that could be more engaging. I’m hoping we’ll be able to debut a few of our new songs. There’s some really high energy stuff that will be fun for us to play and hopefully work well with our better known tunes...
The tour starts June 15th in Auburn, Washington outside Seattle, stops in Dallas June 29th at Dos Equis Pavilion, and runs through August 30th in Salt Lake City suburb of West Valley City.