You’re celebrating your fortieth year in the recording saddle and you’re named after the herb superb. So who do you enlist to write a new song and sing it on your 24TH album?
You’re celebrating your fortieth year in the recording saddle and you’re named after the herb superb. So who do you enlist to write a new song and sing it on your 24TH album? Well, the Doobie Brothers chose Shotgun Willie Nelson (now aged 77 and back on the Lost Highway again with regular dope busts). The singing septuagenarian is guest vocalist onI Know We Won – his co-write with guitarist and founder Patrick Simmons. Other aural relief includes Don’t Say Goodbye with former singer and Grammy winning solo artist Michael McDonald.
This is a strong marketing tool for the 13-song disc on the eve of their Australian tour in March. The quartet also benefit from their studio reunion with original producer Ted Templeman. And let’s not forget guest cameos from Little Feat pianist-organist Bill Payne, bassist ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson, Norton Buffalo on harmonica and many more.
But this is the Doobies and don’t be fooled by their California dreaming rhythms. They kick off with A Brighter Day – an anti-war tune utilising a TV news metaphor –and Chateau, with its parodic reality TV sting. Guitarist Tom Johnston’s title track narrative – about a delivery driver rising above homeless peers and being framed for a liquor store armed robbery – has its sting in the tail of the tale. So does Law Dogs, where the bank robber’s bucolic belle is freed in an explosive jailbreak and mean streets cheating song New York Dream, while Young Man’s Game is Johnston autobiographical lament on changing of the guitar guard.
Old Juarez , on the other hand, is ostensibly a love triangle death ode set across the border from El Paso – perhaps a descendant of the vintage Marty Robbins hit. But life may be imitating art with recent drug wars in the border town. Johnston’s love metaphor, though, is a true weapon of mass distraction – “He don’t care about danger with his kinda love / Goin’ six feet under or in heaven above.”
But it’s not all bullets and bodies, the band punctuate narratives with Simmons’ love ballads Far From Home, Don’t Say Goodbye and Little Prayer and Johnston’s rollicking My Baby. Multi-instrumentalist John McFee also blends country with west coast rock on slide and resonator guitar, violin and banjo. Producer Templeman’s tambourine, guest cello and horns help ice this accessible gateau from the ghetto.
Nostalgia triumphs in the hands of the Doobies.
Wold Gone Crazy is out now through Shock Records
