In 2024, Yacht Rock: A DOCKumentary was released in homage to a genre of late ’70s, early ’80s easy listening pop music. The term “Yacht Rock” was actually coined as part of a web series joking that the light rock of that era was perfect for people aboard their fancy sea vessels.
While what constitutes YR has been much debated because of its broad inclusion of everything from Michael Jackson to Gordon Lightfoot — Steely Dan co-founder Donald Fagen is not terribly enamored with the categorization despite, for many, being its epicenter — the bottom line is that it represents a kindler, gentler, soft-focus era of music’s past. But, if you listen carefully, you can hear its influence all over modern music.
In a music world driven by loudness and pop controversy, there seems to be a yearning for something that is both softer on the ear and infinitely singable. If YR was anything, it was earworm-worthy, filled with the kind of hooks now craved by shower and karaoke singers around the world.
The documentary sought to highlight that time in music, but it missed the fact that there are artists out there paying tribute all the time. On-the-nose representations like Young Gun Silver Fox and State Cows seem to be trying to single handedly keep the cool party vibes alive. And depending on the breadth of your definition of YR, the Bruno Mars/Anderson Paak collaboration, Silk Sonic, is clearly a pleasant rendering of that time in music (assuming you are ok with a little soul music when you set sail).
But, more subtly the sound has permeated popular music across a pretty wide spectrum. Pillow soft drums and gentle harmonies blended with hooks that, while not quite approaching the accessibility of the Bee Gees or Doobie Brothers, are definitely on the catchier side.
Southern folky acts like Goose are as much an homage to classic pop as they are to the Allman Brothers and the Eagles, the latter an artist that is frequently included in YR playlists. In fact, there is plenty of that folksy country-leaning style around modern music today taking their cues from the southern-tinged light rock of the ’70s. Just a cursory listen to Kacey Musgraves or HAIM or Maggie Rogers should set off the radar of anyone who still feels the pull of Jim Croce or Seals and Crofts.
And even if you are among those who think YR should be centered more around the pop of the early ’80s (think Toto, Boz Skaggs and Texas’ own Christopher Cross), that’s out there as well. Tell us you don’t hear the strains of the late ’70s in Sabrina Carpenter’s “Juno,” right down to the casual sexually tinged lyrics that practically scream “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight” or “Kiss You All Over,” albeit less overt like everything else in the world today.
Charlie Puth, Teddy Swims, even the Jonas Brothers wear the YR influences on their sleeves on occasion. John Mayer is practically a walking ad for the style, but he grew up listening to it, so we have to discount his impact slightly.
Most of the winks to YR in modern music are just that. The technology that exists today along with the way songs are crafted for modern listeners has radically altered everything about popular music. But, the similarities are there if you pay attention. In the end, YR may have had a bigger impact on modern music than anyone could have anticipated when all the early new wavers, punks and metal heads were snickering about Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald. Little did we know.
If you’re curious about today’s artists harking back to Yacht Rock’s past, check out this cool Yacht Rock Nouveau playlist on Spotify which includes a number of the artists listed above and even some pretty unique covers of YR-era songs by modern artists.
In 2020, the Doobie Brothers were all set to launch a massive tour celebrating 50 years since their founding. And it would be marked in a special way with a lineup featuring both co-founding singer/guitarist Tom Johnston with his replacement, singer/keyboardist Michael McDonald.
Add co-founding vocalist/guitarist Patrick Simmons—the only constant member of the lineup since 1970—and Doobies fans would get to hear material from across the entire span of their career.
Well, COVID scuttled that launch, which began the next year and saw the Doobies play shows across the U.S., Australia, Japan, and back to the U.S. Now, they’ve announced a continuation of the party that will touch down in Houston June 30 at the Woodlands Pavilion. So, the question must be asked: At what point does it just become more accurate to call it the 55th Anniversary Tour?
“Well, we’re definitely on to the next 50 years by now. And I like not having to work so hard with the three of us up there!” Simmons laughs via Zoom from his home in Hawaii on the island of Maui.
He’ll soon be jetting off to the UK where the Doobies are opening some shows for the Eagles before launching their own summer tour (bluesman Robert Cray will open in Houston).
“It’s nice to be able to do all the songs that people want to hear. We’ve done a song or two of Mike’s through the years when he hasn’t been with us. But it’s great to have the real guy right there!” Simmons says. “Having him is a huge bonus. We’re still here, still able to do it, and have a great band.” Expect to hear the early, biker-bar-band hits (“Long Train’ Runnin’,” “Listen to the Music,” “Black Water,” “China Grove,” “Rockin’ Down the Highway”) along with the later R&B-tinged material (“What a Fool Believes,” “Minute by Minute,” “It Keeps You Runnin’” “Takin’ It to the Streets”) and some deeper cuts.
In 2022, Simmons and Johnston collaborated with music journalist Chris Epting on their memoir Long Train Runnin’: Our Story of the Doobie Brothers. And when a copy is held up to the Zoom camera, Simmons has an instant reaction.
“Oh, that one’s been banned! It’s not an, uh, complete summation of the band’s story, but it’s an approximation!” he laughs.
“We had contemplated doing a book through the years, but it’s hard to get started. We’re not novelists. Chris got things going. We told stories to him, he wrote it down, and gave it back to us. He really helped to shake our memories. We’d tell him a story and he’s go find a poster or photograph and bring it back, and that would open more memories. And then we rewrote more.”
Simmons adds that he and Johnston would have the same experience, but sometimes conflicting memories, which they’d toss back and forth from different angles.
“It was fun to remember stuff and laugh about it. We also had some more serious things. Not really sad stories, but there was some sadness there. It was the truth of what went down.”
The lineup for this tour will again include Simmons, Johnston, McDonald, John McFee (multiple instruments/vocals), and longtime touring members Marc Russo (sax), Ed Toth (drums), John Cowan (bass/vocals), and Marc Quiñones (percussion)
In 2020, and longtime snub was set right when the Doobies Brothers were finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But again, COVID reared its ugly head. Instead of the usual lavish ceremony in New York or Cleveland with speeches, video reels, and live performances and jams, the “virtual” online ceremony featured a brief clip highlights of the band’s career, with short comments from Johnston, Simmons, and McDonald, filmed from their homes.
Nevertheless, Simmons takes a light approach to matters. “We’ll always remember not being there!” he chuckles.
“But it was a great moment. It’s something you certainly think about as an artist. We had hoped to be recognized, but thought maybe if we don’t get it now, we’ll get it after we’re dead! There are so many deserving artists out there, and I didn’t hold it against them. No offense to [Hall and Rolling Stone co-founder] Jann Wenner, but Jann never liked us! So, I wasn’t holding my breath for us to come in on our walkers. But Jann’s gone now!” [Note: Last year, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame removed Jann Wenner from its Board of Directors after he made some comments about Black and female artists during promotion for his book of interviewed The Masters that were widely criticized as both sexist and racist.}
Texas fans have always been very receptive to the Doobies throughout the years of touring, but there’s one Texas show that was a bit unique. In 2005, the Doobie Brothers played Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July picnic at the outdoor venue Billy Bob’s Texas in Fort Worth, where this writer covered the show for the Houston Press.
I got to chat briefly with both Simmons and Johnston backstage, and even made it onto Willie’s bus for a brief interview (where I recall trying not to wake up a slumbering David Allan Coe, fast asleep on his wife’s shoulders).
The writer backstage with Patrick Simmons during Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic in Forth Worth, 2005.
Photo by Mace Wilkerson
The lineup was unique in that Bob Dylan followed the Doobies’ set prior to Willie’s slot. And the notoriously prickly and security-conscious Dylan required that all press be removed from the pit as security forced an open path through the crowd to allow him to walk uninterrupted straight from his bus to the stage.
Simmons remembers the show well, with a mischievous glint.
“It was super-hot! But Dylan was totally insulated. Nobody could look at him or talk to him. He was surrounded by all these guys. We had just finished playing, and they cleared the stage and said nobody could go on there,” he recalls.
“So, I just walked up and some of his guys tried to get me off, and I said ‘Fuck you! I saw you on our stage!’ It’s everybody’s stage’” and he said ‘Well…just don’t let Bob see you!’”
Nelson’s sons Lukas and Micah, along with Simmons’ own son, also managed to sneak up there to watch Dylan’s set. “I don’t think anybody was going to tell Willie’s sons they couldn’t be on Willie’s stage! Sorry, Bob!”
The Doobies’ last studio effort was 2021’s Liberté, and they are working on new songs—with McDonald—for an upcoming release.
But their most recent effort concerns a location of more pertinent interest to Simmons. It’s about 36 miles from his home on the island of Maui, and that’s Lahaina.
Much of the city were destroyed in August 2023 by wildfires that ate everything in sight, killing more than 100 people and damaging or destroying more than 2,200 structures. It left many people homeless while levelling businesses and burning out cars.
The Doobie Brothers quickly released the benefit single “Lahaina,” written and sung by Simmons. Helping out the band were Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood (whose own Lahaina-based restaurant was destroyed) and Hawaiian musicians Jake Shimabukuro, and Henry Kapono. All proceeds benefit the People’s Fund of Maui.
For Simmons, it was not only just important to help, but to connect with the land and its inhabitants.
“People come from all over the planet to experience the climate and peace of Hawaii, and it is a special place. Those of us who have come here and stayed, there’s a reason for that,” Simmons says.
“No matter what your beliefs are, the Hawaiians believe in the spirituality of nature and the place. That’s part of a reverence here that myself and most of the locals have. The ‘Aloha.’ We all feel, experience, appreciate it, and try to live it,” he says.
“I grew up in northern California. I took acid. I dropped out. I was a hippie—still am probably. And it’s a continuance of my beliefs from that era. It’s not something spoken. It’s something that you feel.” He adds that visitors and tourists to Hawaii inevitably ended up in Lahaina, and the warmth and connection from business owners was palpable and a “charming way of existence.”
“That’s all gone now. But ‘Aloha’ is still here and that song was my attempt to keep that spirit alive for the people here and to spread that to further communities,” he sums up.
“People are still going through trials and tribulations here, and it will take a long time for those folks to recover. Chipping in a dollar or two or more will help immediately. It will come back around, but we have to work together.”
The Doobie Brothers play at 7 p.m. on Sunday, June 30, at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, 2005 Lake Robbins. For more information, call 281-364-3010 or visit WoodlandsCenter.org. Robert Cray opens. $35 and up.
FILE – Michael McDonald, of the Doobie Brothers, poses for a portrait at Show Biz Studios in Los Angeles on Aug. 17, 2021. McDonald has a new memoir titled, “What a Fool Believes.” (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)
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Something stopped Michael McDonald from telling his story publicly — him. The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer with multiple Grammys just didn’t think he had one.
McDonald, a member of both Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers who became a singular soul solo artist with such hits as “On My Own″ and “Sweet Freedom,” believed he was just a small player in the history of rock.
“I was afraid that, ‘Well, how much of a story is here, really?’ My experience is pretty much me living vicariously through other people’s accomplishments,” McDonald said in an interview.
Prodded by a friend — actor and comedian Paul Reiser — McDonald is finally owning his story this spring in the unvarnished and humble memoir “What a Fool Believes,” out May 21.
It’s the portrait of a remarkable singer-songwriter who had career highs and terrible lows, who battled alcoholism and self-doubt, endured popularity, mocking and then rejuvenation.
“I think we both discovered that this is really just a story about how random life really is — no matter how much we think we have a plan, and no matter how much we think we have a direction we want to go,” he said. “What we really have to do is be ready to let life change on a dime and go with the flow.”
Reiser said in a separate interview that the book grew from conversations the two had, mainly him asking lots of questions about McDonald’s life. “It’s entirely selfish. I just wanted to read it,” Reiser said.
“Everybody’s in awe of his voice. Everybody loves the music he’s done. But I don’t think anybody knows anything about him,” he added. “He just sort of floats on this frequency that doesn’t get a lot of attention.”
The book opens in 1971 with the author hungover in county jail. A 19-year-old McDonald has been arrested after falling asleep in a pancake house following a 48-hour cocaine- and Jack Daniels-binge. It is a foreshadowing.
It then goes chronologically, tracing the path McDonald took from humble roots in St. Louis, Missouri, to touring around the world with two classic rock outfits despite a “propensity for making poor choices.”
McDonald went from his first band at 12 playing picnics and civic events with a homemade guitar, to the local pro band Jerry Jay and the Sheratons and then the touring The Delrays. At 18, RCA Records gave him $3,000 and flew him to Los Angeles, but his debut album was scrapped and he was dropped from the label. “My quickly rising star came crashing down to earth,” he writes.
He would return to California a few months later — by car this time — with a more secure offer of session work. “I was determined not to return to St Louis until I had something to show for my efforts,” he writes.
His career took an upswing when he was asked to sing backing vocals and play keys for Steely Dan. His distinctive, soulful voice graced memorable tracks on classic Steely Dan albums, including “Katy Lied,” “The Royal Scam,” “Aja” and “Gaucho.” (That’s him singing background on “Peg.”)
When Steely Dan stopped touring, McDonald jumped to another ’70s icon, The Doobie Brothers. In 1975 — on the eve of the release of their fifth album — their original lead singer, Tom Johnston, was hospitalized and unable to tour. The band drafted McDonald into the line-up to replace him, giving him 48- hours to learn their entire set.
McDonald was asked to join the Doobies permanently — $1,500 a week plus a $100 per diem — and would become somewhat divisive for changing their direction from country rock and blues boogie to a smoother, more soulful sound.
“There was an undeniable atmosphere of internal strife building within our ranks. And I will be the first to claim my share of the blame in that department,” McDonald writes.
McDonald isn’t shy about showing life’s ugly parts — from having crabs as a young man to acid reflux as an older one. He admits to showing up drunk to a rehab support group two days in a row and once could be found in a bathrobe, a joint in his mouth and a salad bowl full of Lucky Charms on his chest.
“If you’re going to tell a story, tell the whole story,” he says in the interview. “We all get where we’re going in spite of ourselves, you know? And I think that’s what the story is kind of about.”
Musicians who read the book will get lessons in touring etiquette and songwriting, including hyper-specific details like chromatically descending II-V passing chord progressions.
Fans will also get stories about playing basketball with James Taylor and some good advice about opening for Cher: “Generally speaking, when you see some guy all made up in a Cher wig and gown standing on a chair giving you the finger, it’s time to go.”
In addition to his solo albums, McDonald sang on songs by Elton John, Luther Vandross, Kenny Loggins and Christopher Cross (That’s McDonald singing “Such a long way to go” on Cross’ “Ride Like the Wind.”) He earned a Grammy nod for “Sweet Freedom” from the movie “Running Scared” and teamed up with James Ingram on “Yah Mo B There” and Patti LaBelle on “On My Own.”
Eventually, McDonald became a butt of jokes for his propensity to show up on other artists’ tracks. “No one wanted to hear another Michael McDonald background vocal — I had dipped into that well perhaps once too often, somewhere between 50 and a thousand times,” he writes.
Redemption occurred in the 2000s when McDonald began issuing well-received albums of Motown covers. He recorded with Solange Knowles and Grizzly Bear and showed up at the Coachella festival in 2017 with the jazz-funk bassist Thundercat.
McDonald, 72, says that writing the book gave him the chance to look back and let go of resentments to people he long perceived as standing in his way. “I probably owe those people more than I have a reason to hold a grudge,” he says.
If Democrats avoid the worst outcome in November’s midterm elections, the principal reason will likely be the GOP’s failure to reverse its decline in white-collar suburbs during the Donald Trump era.
That’s a clear message from yesterday’s crowded primary calendar, which showed the GOP mostly continuing to nominate Trump-style culture-war candidates around the country. And yet, the resounding defeat of an anti-abortion ballot initiative in Kansas showed how many voters in larger population centers are recoiling from that Trumpist vision.
Democrats still face enormous headwinds in November, including sweeping voter dissatisfaction over inflation, low approval ratings for President Joe Biden, and the near unbroken history since the Civil War of the party that holds the White House losing seats in the House of Representatives during a president’s first two years.
Polls indicate that many college-educated center-right voters have soured on the performance of Biden and the Democrats controlling both congressional chambers. Yet in Tudor Dixon, the GOP gubernatorial nominee in Michigan, and Blake Masters, the party’s Senate selection in Arizona, Republicans have chosen nominees suited less to recapturing socially moderate white-collar voters than to energizing Trump’s working-class and nonurban base through culture-war appeals like support of near-total abortion bans. With Trump-backed Kari Lake moving into the lead as counting continues in the Arizona Republican gubernatorial primary, the top GOP nominees both there and in Michigan will likely be composed entirely of candidates who embrace Trump’s lie that he won their state in 2020.
In the intermediate term, most Democratic strategists believe that the party must find ways to combat the GOP’s strong performance during the Trump era with working-class voters, particularly its improvement since 2016 among blue-collar Hispanic voters. But with inflation so badly squeezing the finances of many working- and middle-class families, recovering much ground with such voters before November may be tough for most Democratic candidates. Those working-class voters “know the shoe is pinching,” says Tom Davis, the former chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, quoting the late political scientist V. O. Key Jr.
The more realistic route for Democrats in key races may be to defend, as much as possible, the inroads they made into the white-collar suburbs of virtually every major metropolitan area during the past three elections. Although, compared with 2020, the party will likely lose ground with all groups, Democrats are positioned to hold much more of their previous support among college-educated than noncollege voters, according to Ethan Winter, a Democratic pollster.
An array of recent public polls suggest he’s right. A Monmouth University poll released today showed that white voters without a college degree preferred Republicans for Congress by a 25-percentage-point margin, but white voters with at least a four-year degree backed Democrats by 18 points.
A recent Fox News Poll in Pennsylvania showed the Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman crushing Republican Mehmet Oz among college-educated white voters, while the two closely split those without degrees. Another recent Fox News poll in Georgia found Senator Raphael Warnock trailing his opponent Herschel Walker among noncollege white voters by more than 40 percentage points but running essentially even among those with degrees (which would likely be enough to win, given his preponderant support in the Black community). The most recent public surveys in New Hampshire and Wisconsin likewise found Republicans leading comfortably among voters without advanced education, but Democrats holding solid advantages among those with four-year or graduate degrees. A poll this week by Siena College, in New York, found Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul splitting noncollege voters evenly with Republican Lee Zeldin, but beating him by more than two-to-one among those with a degree.
This strength among college-educated voters may be worth slightly more for Democrats in the midterms than in a general election. Voters without a degree cast a majority of ballots in both types of contests. But calculations by Catalist, a Democratic-voter-targeting firm, and Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist who specializes in voter turnout, have found that voters with a college degree consistently make up about three to four percentage points more of the electorate in a midterm than in a presidential election. “When we see lower turnout elections,” like a midterm, “the gap between high-education and low-education voters increases,” McDonald told me. In close races, that gap could place a thumb on the scale for Democrats, partially offsetting the tendency of decreased turnout from younger and nonwhite voters in midterm elections.
Republicans have mostly counted on voters’ dissatisfaction with inflation and Biden’s overall performance to recover lost ground in white-collar communities. But as the polls noted above suggest, many voters in those places are, at least for now, decoupling their disenchantment with Biden from their choices in House, Senate, and governor’s races. “Voters have concerns about the direction of the country,” the Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson told me, “but they’re terrified of the direction it would take if these MAGA Republicans took power.”
One reason for this decoupling may be that, although all families are feeling the effects of inflation, for white-collar professionals, it generally represents something more like an inconvenience than the agonizing vise it constitutes for working-class families.
That doesn’t mean white-collar voters are unconcerned about the economy, but with less worry about week-to-week financial survival, they are more likely to be influenced by the trifecta of issues that have exploded in visibility over the past several months: abortion rights, gun control, and the threats to American democracy revealed by the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.
As last night’s Kansas result showed, abortion rights may be an especially powerful weapon for Democrats in white-collar areas. Polls, such as a recent survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, have generally found that about two-thirds or more of voters with at least a four-year college degree believe abortion should remain legal in all or most circumstances. That support is evident even in states that generally lean toward the GOP: Recent public surveys found that strong majorities of voters with college degrees supported legal abortion in Georgia and Texas, and another survey showed majority backing among more affluent voters in Arizona.
In deep-red Kansas, two-thirds or more of voters have just supported abortion rights in four of the state’s five largest counties. Particularly noteworthy was the huge turnout and massive margin (68 percent to 32 percent at latest count) for the pro-choice position in Johnson County, a well-educated suburb of Kansas City that demographically resembles many of the suburban areas that have moved toward Democrats around such cities as Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, Austin, and Phoenix.
Republican candidates this year have ceded virtually no ground to the pro-abortion-rights or pro-gun-control sentiments in those suburban areas. With the national protection for abortion revoked by the Supreme Court, almost all Republican-controlled states are on track to ban or restrict the practice. In swing states that have not yet done so, GOP gubernatorial candidates are promising to pursue tight limits. Dixon, the GOP’s Michigan nominee, said recently that she would push for an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of the mother (while she would allow them only in cases that threaten the mother’s life). Asked during a recent interview about a hypothetical case of a 14-year-old who had been impregnated by an uncle, Dixon explicitly said the teenager should carry the baby to term because “a life is a life for me.”
Matt Mackowiak, a Texas-based Republican consultant, told me that the magnitude of the pro-abortion-rights vote in Kansas was “unexpected,” but it does not guarantee Democratic candidates’ suburban domination in November. “This was a rare up or down vote on this issue,” he told me in an email. “November will be different, as voters will have lots of reasons to vote and lots of issues to consider … Polls consistently show the economy trumping this issue in the minds of the voters.”
But Democrats believe that the contrast on abortion will be highly consequential, especially in governor’s races, where Democrats such as the incumbent Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan and the nominee Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania are presenting themselves as a last line of defense against Republicans intent on banning the procedure. Suburban “voters might have been thinking about voting Republican because they are unhappy with the direction of country and inflation, and they might decide to back Whitmer because of abortion,” Winter, the Democratic pollster, told me.
The choice may not carry such immediate implications in House and Senate races, but leading Democrats are running on promises to pass legislation restoring the national right to abortion, while Republicans are either opposing such a bill or signaling openness to imposing a national ban. The two top Democratic challengers for Republican-held Senate seats (John Fetterman in Pennsylvania and Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin) have both called for ending the filibuster to pass legislation codifying national abortion rights.
Davis, the former NRCC chair who represented a suburban Northern Virginia district, believes that even in white-collar communities supportive of abortion rights and gun control, Democrats won’t escape discontent over inflation. If Republicans could frame the election simply as a referendum on Biden’s performance, Davis told me, “that’s their path to victory and a path to an electoral landslide.” But, he added, the choice by GOP voters in so many states to nominate “exotic candidates” mostly linked to Trump has provided Democrats with an opportunity, particularly in higher-profile Senate and governor contests, to make this “a choice election.” And that, he said, gives Democrats a shot at winning enough “white ticket-splitters” to at least hold down their losses.
Given the headwinds, Democrats would take a November outcome in which they narrowly lose the House but hold their Senate majority and preserve control of the governorships in the key swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, while perhaps adding some others, such as Arizona. With Biden’s approval rating still scuffling, that outcome is hardly guaranteed. But it remains a possibility largely because, as yesterday’s primaries showed, Republicans have responded to their suburban erosion by betting even more heavily on the policies and rhetoric that triggered their decline in the first place. In November, white-collar suburbs may be the deciding factor between a Republican rout and a split decision that leaves Democrats still standing to fight another day.
