We chat with vocalist-guitarist Tom Johnston, the former San Jose State University student who helped form the Doobie Brothers.
The Doobie Brothers perform on stage during San Francisco Fest 2016 at AT&T Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, Sept. 4, 2016. Tom Johnston still sounds great on the microphone after more than a half century of rocking with San Jose’s legendary Doobie Brothers.
Beyond a full slate of gigs, the Doobies also plan to release a new album this year, the band’s second studio album in roughly three years. Many of the Doobies’ contemporaries have pretty much given up on putting out new albums, preferring to just bank upon decades-old fan favorites. Yet, Johnston says it is important for the Doobies to keep recording.
Those songs remain staples on classic rock radio many decades later. Even Johnston can’t tell you what it is about these songs that continues to charm both old and new listeners. “People always know those songs,” he says. “They always stand up, singing them back to you, and it’s amazing. There are just a lot of songs that fit in that mold. We are very lucky. It’s not something where you sit down and say, ‘I’m going to write a hit that everybody is going to love 50 years from now.’ That’s not the way it works. It’s that you happen to walk in the right door.”
One of his roommates was John Hartman, who became the Doobies’ original drummer. The two met Patrick Simmons, a graduate of San Jose’s Leigh High School, who certainly knew his way around the guitar. “It was all just — for lack of a better way of putting it — magical. It just kind of happened,” Johnston says. “The first album didn’t do a lot. The second album took off with ‘Listen to the Music.’ And it just kept going.”Stagecoach 2024: Diversity within country reflected within the new school and old
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