The challenge of creating a Doobie Brothers set list: ‘There’s just so many songs’

The Doobie Brothers — featuring founding members Tom Johnston, Michael McDonald and Pat Simmons — are set to kick off the North American leg of their Walk This Road tour on Monday, their first time touring the States since releasing their new studio album, Walk This Road, in June.

Johnston tells ABC Audio fans can expect to hear new songs from the album at their shows, but they likely won’t play “more than two or three, maximum.”

“Because you still got this backlog of catalog that everybody wants to hear … which is great because people love it,” Johnston says. “And so the new songs are an adventure.”

Of course, fitting in all the songs fans want to hear isn’t easy.

“Our problem is, there’s just so many songs to do in a certain amount of time that we always have to make these hard choices,” McDonald explains. “I think if it was up to all of us, we’d do them all, but we’d probably be up there for four hours trying to play them all.”

He adds, “They’d probably have to send an ambulance for us after that, but yeah, we try to cover it all as much as we can, the important stuff.”

And pleasing the audience is something that’s important to Johnston, who says that “interacting with the crowd” is his favorite part of playing live.

“I mean, they’re the ones that, to me, make it worthwhile to do this,” he says. “The crowd has just been phenomenal, have been for years. And that’s not something I take for granted. … That’s what it’s all about.” 

The Doobie Brothers’ U.S. tour begins Monday in Detroit. A complete list of dates can be found at The DoobieBrothers.com.

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