Doobie Brothers try to keep long train running, 50 years on

The Doobie Brothers are celebrating their 50th anniversary in their 51st year, heading out on a delayed tour and hoping they can keep doing what their big hits call for: taking it to the streets and letting audiences listen to the music

LOS ANGELES -- The Doobie Brothers are celebrating their 50th anniversary in their 51st year, heading out tenuously on a delayed tour and hoping they can keep taking it to the streets and letting audiences listen to the music as cancellations abound around them. 2020 ought to have been a banner year for the band, with an anniversary tour that united its two eras — the original Tom Johnston-led version of the early 1970s, and the more R&B Michael McDonald-led version of the late 1970s — and an invite to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame that many fans felt was decades overdue. "We had everything going and it got dumped on by the pandemic, which kind of sucked," Johnston told The Associated Press in an interview at the group's rehearsal space as they prepared for the tour. “We did the virtual induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, that was pretty much it. Then it was a year of every day's Thursday and nothing ever changes. It was pretty much a lost year.” They're trying to make up for it with the tour that finally launched Sunday in Des Moines, Iowa, continues Tuesday in Milwaukee, and runs through late October, with previously scrapped dates rebooked for the summer of 2022.