Michael McDonald Interview—

America’s Musical Chameleon Brings His Soulful Sound To Waterbury’s Palace

By John Voket

Pop music icon Michael McDonald said he always just wanted to sing and play. He never intended to become one of the music industry’s favorite collaborators, working like a musical chameleon as an on-again-off-again member of The Doobie Brothers, as well as a singing and songwriting partner to the likes of Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross, Patti LaBelle, Bonnie Raitt, James Ingram, and Steely Dan, to name but a few.

McDonald brings his soulful, signature sound to Waterbury’s Palace Theater on Wednesday, September 5, at 7:30 pm. His appearance marks the kick-off to the theater’s 07-08 Bank of America Celebrity Series.

Humbly contributing one of the most unique voices to the soundtrack to our times as both an artist and songwriter, McDonald has earned an impressive five Grammys while maintaining a comparatively low-key profile.

Though comfortable onstage, he has never been a flashy entertainer. Instead, McDonald has triumphed through music alone, with a highly distinctive voice and a body of well-crafted songs.

Many music industry insiders, as well as a worldwide legion of fans, agree that few have made such an impact with so much substance and so little hoopla.

The artist’s prolific consistency through more than 25 years of recording and performing was celebrated in 2005 with the release of Michael McDonald: The Ultimate Collection, highlighting the wide breadth of his career from his days with The Doobies to his solo hits, to his version of the Motown favorite “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”

He has also paid tribute to the Motown sound on back-to-back albums, and his 2005 holiday album, Through the Many Winters, also received positive critical notice.

McDonald was recently honored at the WHY-Chapin awards dinner with the prestigious ASCAP Harry Chapin Humanitarian Award for both his musical career and his vast charitable endeavors. The artist continues his fundraising efforts actively working with WHY’s Artists Against Hunger & Poverty program.

McDonald squeezed in a chat with The Newtown Bee recently in-between calls to a few morning radio programs.

The Newtown Bee: You get the prize as being my earliest morning celebrity interview. Are you typically an early riser?

Michael McDonald: Not really, generally. Unfortunately I’m still kind of a night person, but I’m facing the same thing everybody my age is…

NB: Oh, like breakfast at dinner time and lunch at 7 am?

MM: (laughing) …yeah, getting up just after midnight for breakfast.

NB: Do you do a lot of Good Morning kind of television and morning drive radio?

MM: You know we don’t. The days of doing a lot of press are over, for reasons I’m not even sure of, unless we have a new record out, which is rare. Honestly I don’t do too many interviews unless it’s when we’re coming in to play.

NB: Are you always ready to jump in and sing no matter the hour, or do you have some sort of technical or superstitious preparation processes to get you vocally primed for your concerts?

MM: One of my longstanding superstitions about shows like the one we’re doing in Waterbury is if the sound check goes too well, it’s almost the kiss of death. If everything checks out perfect, it’s a sure bet it’s going to be a crappy show. Conversely, if we have some huge fiasco at sound check, those are always better shows. We’ll almost go as far as if something doesn’t break, we’ll break it, just so we can walk out that night without a cloud over our head.

NB: You have transcended from the music business to become a pop-culture reference, most recently showing up as a plot line element in the NBC series 30 Rock, with the show’s star Tracy Jordan aspiring to release an album singing your greatest hits. Does getting permission to use your “brand” like that happen in a casual way, or is that kind of placement something that is actually pitched and vetted by legal and management consensus?

MM: It’s usually very casual. Like they used clips from my concert in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and I wasn’t even aware of it until people were telling me about it. A friend of mine was involved in making the movie, and in that kind of setting it’s kind of funny. I get a kick out of when like Wayne Newton shows up making fun of himself in a movie. It makes people realize you don’t take yourself too seriously. I’m pretty flattered that they would use me as a recurring bit in 30 Rock.

NB: I have enjoyed so much of your work, but my personal favorite has to be the Rock & Soul Review. Now, you’ve played with a lot of incredible musicians, but what was it like to go out there every night for a whole tour and sit in with that band, Fagan, Charles Brown — I mean just backing Phoebe Snow doing “At Last,” every night must have been wild.

MM: It was great fun, and that was one of those gigs where everybody was doing it for the love of that kind of music. It was [Steely Dan’s] Donald Fagan’s pet project, and I know he wanted to keep it as close to a purely-for-joy kind of thing. Before the tour he called each of the artists and asked us what were our favorite songs that we never got to do live, and he pulled from everybody’s wish list. I think that put that tour on another footing. I think Phoebe had been dying to do that song in front of an audience, and I think it was a career changing moment for her. It brought the house down every night.

NB: The sometimes inaccurate Wikipedia website says one of your early local band gigs in St Louis was with the “Reebtoors.” And if it’s true, I’m curious — what does that mean?

MM: It’s root beer spelled backward, buddy.

NB: Over the course of your career, you seem to have enjoyed as much success covering other songs as performing your own work. Do you attribute this multitude of success on the cover material to matching prospective songs to the unique quality of your singing voice, your ability to pick tunes your audience wants to hear — especially when it comes to R&B material — or a bit of both?

MM: Honestly, John, I wish I could take a lot of credit for that. But in the scheme of things, it often started out as one thing and changed to another in the process. I mean, we are going in with 10 or 12 all-time number one songs. It’s almost like cheating. One of the fears for me was not doing justice to the original Motown material. The producers came to me with the old Motown masters and they wanted to put contemporary vocals over it. But I didn’t want to go in and put my voice on top of Marvin Gaye’s record — or anybody else’s. So the challenge at that point was to steer away from that, and steer away from producers who would want to make this more of a hip-hop record. I mean, Motown is the original hip-hop foundation, it’s where all these guys get their beats from. There’s been a thousand hip-hop tunes recorded over “Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing,” and you can put a bunch of beats over it but you end up with the same record, just cheaper. We just went for the essence of the original stuff, and we were fortunate to have a producer, Simon Climie, who agreed — it was a stroke of luck to get him on this project.

NB: Can we talk for a moment about your contribution to the South Park movie. What extent did you get to work with Trey Parker? That whole team strikes me as huge fun, but deadly serious about making good comedy.

MM: It was a lot of fun because I got to work with them while we were making the record. The song was hilarious. The hardest part of making the record was when I went in to do the vocals, and Trey Parker and Matt Stone are rewriting the lyrics as I’m laying down the track, and they’re telling me, “Here Michael, try this.” And it was something I wouldn’t sing in a million years. I mean, you can go to hell for singing that. I told them, “Hey guys, I have kids at home, I have to go to church on Sunday.” So they were ok with that for a few minutes, and then they would come back in and say, “Hey, try this…” It was just an amazing experience.

NB: What are the folks in for when they come out to see you in Waterbury September 8?

MM: We try to play even when we don’t have a reason to play. We don’t have a record coming out until next year, but we’ll be trying out a few new songs. This is a new venue for us, but we love the old theaters, so I think it will be a really special night for the fans. This tour we’re trying some things, rearranging some of the tunes we’ve been doing the same way for a few years, so it will be a really interesting and intimate night for the audience. We’re also working with Artists Against Hunger & Poverty, which is a great organization that funds local charities in the greater Waterbury area, and all the funds raised go back locally through that organization.

Tickets for Michael McDonald are still available at all price levels through the Palace Theater Box Office, 100 East Main Street, Waterbury. Tickets can also be charged by phone at 203-755-4770 or online at palacetheaterct.org.