Classic act crafts nostalgic setlist for sentimental fools

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This article was published 22/10/2023 (1062 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Five decades ago, inflation was soaring, Trudeau was the prime minister and the Doobie Brothers were still rockin’ down the highway.

We were right back where we started from on Sunday night at the Canada Life Centre: Canadians grumbling about rising prices and Trudeau — Justin, rather than his father, Pierre — while the Doobies played Rockin’ Down the Highway and many other of the band’s hits from the 1970s and ’80s.

It’s taken three years for the travelling celebration of the band’s 50th anniversary to make its way to Canada — and like so many groups from the classic-rock era, the Doobies probably sound better now than they did in 1975 when Take Me in Your Arms, the concert’s opener, was a hit.

Better amplifiers and other technological advances from the 21st century have a lot to do with it, but so does a focus on the music by those onstage.

The sex and drugs ethos of the 1970s is in the past, leaving just the rock ‘n’ roll. Guitarist and vocalist Pat Simmons, the band’s co-founder, and longtime members John McFee and, most notably, Michael McDonald, showed the Doobies have lots of boogie in their 70s.

Simmons, wearing a grey fedora over his long grey hair and playing a hot-pink Stratocaster, led the band on stage, and the group went on to perform two-plus hours of classics, giving special emphasis to tunes featuring McDonald, who transformed a rock band with folky roots into a power-pop powerhouse.

Here to Love You and Dependin’ on You, two songs from 1978’s smash Minute by Minute, got the show going early on, putting McDonald and his distinctive vocals in the spotlight.

He also featured on 1980’s Real Love, which shifted the concert and the crowd into a higher gear, and later with What a Fool Believes, the song most rock listeners associate with the keyboardist.

McDonald was able to reach the song’s many high notes; although the 71-year-old didn’t sustain them like he did when he was in his 20s, in a era where Auto-Tune and pitch correction dominate music, it was refreshing to hear the singer could still deliver the goods.

He even emerged from behind his electric piano to perform the old-timey Slack Key Soquel Rag, playing mandolin as Simmons and McFee strummed acoustic guitars, a change of pace the crowd enjoyed.

Simmons shared the spotlight, whether singing parts normally performed by fellow Doobies’ co-founder Tom Johnston, who is laid up after back surgery, or on his own tunes, such as the folk-rock number South City Midnight Lady.

Another ’70s callback in Sunday’s show was the saxophone solo. Saxes are rarely seen on concert stages these days, but the Doobies brought out Marc Russo time after time for rich moments that added to the show’s turn-back-the-clock atmosphere.

At one point, Russo even made his way into the front row to wail away while Doobies’ fanatics with premium tickets soaked it all in.

Johnston’s presence was missed, but Simmons and bassist John Cowan — who joined the group in 1993, making him a relatively newbie Doobie — took on his vocal parts without skipping a beat, especially on the older anthems such as Jesus Is Just Alright and China Grove, which the band performed just before the inevitable encore.

They returned for five songs, including Simmons’ seminal Black Water; the crowd loved it when he substituted “Winnipeg moon” for “Mississippi moon” at one point in the 1974 classic.

McDonald gave one more moment of nostalgia, singing an upbeat Taking It to the Streets, while the crowd deserved some props for taking over the chorus to Listen to the Music, which likely every member of the 5,500 people at the arena has sung in the car since it came out in 1972.

The finale was Pretzel Logic, a bluesy Steely Dan cover — an odd choice for a finale for a show celebrating the music of the Doobies.

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

X: @AlanDSmall