A Conversation with The Doobie Brothers’ Tom Johnston – HuffPost 6.18.14
Mike Ragogna: Tom, the Doobies have a new album coming with lots of guests and a country vibe.
Tom Johnston: It’s pretty much all based on country. It’s our songs and those people singing them, and it’s been a gas to do.
MR: Where did the idea come from to do this project?
TJ: It came from Sony Nashville. We had a meeting with David Huff who produced it. He brought it to our attention and said, “This would be great thing for you guys to do” and we said, “Sure, why not? Let’s give it a shot.” It turned out to be better than I’d even hoped. Another thing I have to mention, I’ll just mention it quickly, is that playing with the studio guys we had in there was phenomenal. They were the band. If it was “China Grove,” I was playing guitar but I was the only one playing at the time. If it was “Black Water,” Pat [Simmons] was the only one playing, or if it was “Take It To The Streets” it was Mike. Basically, it’s not like we sitting as a band and playing. The band was all the guys from Nashville. It was unbelievable.
MR: It seems the two phases of The Doobie Brothers are with and without Michael McDonald; that was the group sound. Now Michael McDonald is back on this project, what was the tearful reunion like?
TJ: We don’t see him every day and we’re not on the road with him all the time, but every once in a while, we play a show with Mike. We see him once or twice a year. He has a place in Hawaii, so Pat sees him a lot more than that, actually, because they both live in Maui. It’s a happy reunion, it’s always good to see him.
MR: On recordings as well, I imagine.
TJ: Yeah, he’s got three songs on the album, “Takin’ It To The Streets,” “What A Fool Believes” and “You Belong To Me.”
MR: Beautiful. When you look at the number of hits and influence you guys had, what kind of impact do you think you had?
TJ: I’ve been asked that question before and it always takes me by surprise because I don’t ever think about that. It’s not like I walk around seeing people emblazoned with Doobie Brothers shirts, constantly singing Doobie Brothers songs, so when I found out from doing this album just how much an effect we’ve had on musicians in Nashville–guys that I respect and people who are doing really well in country music and they can’t say enough good things–it just blew me out of the water, I had no idea.
MR: What is it about The Doobie Brothers music that makes it so enduring?
TJ: I think it’s because The Doobie Brothers is basically all about roots Americana music, and I don’t mean strictly bluegrass or something like that. We come from all areas of Americana music, we come from roots, we come from rock ‘n’ roll, we come from R&B, americana, bluegrass and there’s some country influence in there aw well. We threw them all together and that’s what the band is. You’ve got the harmonies, you’ve got the finger picking, you’ve got R&B rhythm styles and singing styles hinting at the blues or R&B depending on what the song is, and then you’ve got the two versions of the band as well, you could say, when Mike was the spotlight guy, if you will, and that totally took it to another place. Yet the band still not only stayed relevant but actually became even more popular for a while. You put all that together and you’ve got a large swath of American music to look at.
MR: The songs on this album have really evolved over the years. Are there any evolutions that really took you by pleasant surprise? New configurations you play live now?
TJ: David Huff produced the album and he did some really cool production on some of the songs. There’s a couple of tunes that are very far from what the original songs are like in a very positive way, one in particular. It was our first single and it’s killer. “Nobody” is the name of the song. But all the songs have a thing that David did with them, be it a loop thrown in or pedal steel on it, this and that. You have people like Brad Paisley playing on “Rockin’ Down The Highway.” Nobody plays guitar quite like Brad Paisley. And on “Black Water,” The Zac Brown Band, they put their own stamp on it because they’re all singing on it and the track has got really cool elements that David put in there. “Long Train Running” has Toby Keith. There’s a whole slew of people on here. Chris Young singing “China Grove.” As far as the actual tracks themselves, that would be more of what you’re referencing, the way they were cut is the guy that wrote the song is the only one that’s playing on the track. If it was a song that Pat wrote he’s play on it and if it was a song I wrote I’m playing on it. If it’s a song that Michael wrote he’s playing on it, but the rest of the guys playing aren’t on the band, they’re all studio guys and they’re phenomenal. Unbelievably good. Pedal steel, three guitars going on every song, keyboards… And in Mike’s case, probably two sets. We had bass, of course, and a phenomenal drummer. The tracks were done very rapidly but really, really well because these guys are used to working like that.
MR: You guys are taking it on the road and doing a summer tour that looks pretty extensive with Peter Frampton and Boston for part of it. Is there something about this tour that will make it different from previous ones?
TJ: Not really. I don’t mean that in a negative way, but usually you get out and you play with another band and if you have chemistry with them that makes it a lot of fun. We played a lot of tours with Chicago and we always had a great time with those guys. And we’ve played with Peter Frampton before, but I think we’ve only ever played a show with Boston, just once so we don’t really know them that well and we’ll find that out as we’re playing with them. It also has to do with the venues, which with those bands will be sheds. We just came back from doing about three weeks in Australia and New Zealand and we did quite a few festivals and that was unbelievable. The one in Byron Bay was jaw-dropping. Hundreds of thousands of people in front of you while you’re playing and the list of people who played on that thing was a mile long and most of them were from the states so we kind of wondered, “If everybody’s down here, who’s playing in the United States?” Every gig has its own personality and every crowd has its own personality and when you’re playing with another group that will affect not only the demographic but the fans of that group as well as the ones that come to see you. And it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re having a great time and as long as you put that out for the people and the people respond then that’s what it’s all about.
MR: What advice do you have for new artists?
TJ: Well I’ve been asked that a lot, and the music business has changed so drastically from when we came in–it’s like night and day. Number one: Be as good at your craft–whatever that is, singing, playing or both–as you possibly can. Practice as much as you can, but I have to be honest with you, and this sounds cold but it’s the truth: you’d better find somebody that’s connected. Play as many shows live as possible. That’s another hardship because nowadays the venues that used to be available for doing that have stunk, a lot of times you have to pay to play it if you’re just starting out. Radio’s changed, how you buy music has changed, how music is brought to the public as far as streaming and downloading has changed. Radio is still the same in as much as you hear it on the air, but radio has changed a lot. My advice is make sure it’s what you really want to do and you’re going to have to get used to the idea that you’ll really have to work at it unless you know somebody who’s high up in the hierarchy.
MR: What’s next for the group?
TJ: That’s a great question. I kind of have a tendency to live in the here and now, I don’t worry about the future too much. Basically it’s all about the gigs you’re going to be doing. Right now the future to me is this album and the fall. We’ll be back in the sheds again and that’s always fun. As far as what’s down the road we’ve got a studio album in the mix right now, ’cause we’ve just finished doing this and we haven’t gotten into songwriting because we have been touring so much. I’m saying we’ve been doing two hundred seventy dates a year like the old days, we’ve been doing between eighty-five and a hundred shows a year at this point, but we all have families and we all have other things we do on the side when we get home, like pay bills and stuff as well as write music. For me that’s my hobby, I love writing music. I like to try and do that in other genres, too if possible. It’s something I’m looking into getting more heavily involved with. But the band I think just takes it as it comes. The idea of taking this album, being as how these aren’t new songs, and playing them live, the thing that makes this album special is having these other artists on it and the different sounds of different artists. When we go out and play live it’s going to be how it always sounded. WE can’t get those people out on the road, it would never work.
MR: Obviously, you guys have a set list for every show. Is there a song on that list that when you see it, you just can’t wait to get to it?
TJ: What makes those songs so special to me after playing them for as long as we have is the crowd reaction. We’ve played them so many times and rearranged them so many times, it’s really all about how the crowd reacts. There’s always something positive about having a crowd get up on their feet and sing along if they know the words to the song. It’s very gratifying, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve played the song before because it’s fresh that night because of those people who are in front of you. I have songs I look forward to that people don’t know. In this case because we’re doing a shorter set because we’re co-headlining with somebody else we’re only doing one song off of World Gone Crazy and that is the song that we’re doing. I love that song, I think it’s a really cool tune and I look forward to playing it every night. We brought up a deep cut, we’re doing “Eyes of Silver” and we completely rearranged it and it’s got a big jam right in the middle of it with Marc Russo playing sax and it’s really funky. That’s a hell of a lot of fun to play. But I enjoy all of them! As long as the crowd’s digging them, I’m digging them.
Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne