If any Santa Barbara rocker had an excuse for begging off from benefit shows, it would have to be Michael McDonald. This is his second year doing Youth Interactive and he is booked pretty damned solid. What other local rocker is up at nine in the morning on a Saturday for an interview on his way before driving to Bay Area? “I have a gig playing with the Doobie Brothers up there, but I’d like to get there a day earlier because Ringo's band is playing the night before and I’d like to see them,” said McDonald, admitting that some feelers were sent out a few years ago to see if he wanted to join the ex-Beatles’ All-Starr band. “I was pretty busy at the time,” he said. “But who knows.”
Busier now. Last April, Stevie Wonder inducted McDonald into the Rock Hall of Fame, and just last week his blue-eyed soul got employment at the Carnegie Hall tribute to Bill Withers (“Aint No Sunshine”). “Carnegie Hall is great, and it was the anniversary of a live album Withers recorded there 27 years ago,” said McDonald. “I don’t own the album, but I’m going to get it now. It was the same great band with Booker T in it.” The evening featured many America’s other great voices, like Ed Sheeran, Sheryl Crow, and Dr. John. “I was asked to sing ‘Hello Like Before,’ a lovely ballad most people don’t know, and then they suddenly wanted me to do ‘Lean on Me.’ I had to learn it, but I mean, but who doesn’t know ‘Lean on Me’?”
His normal gigging schedule has him crisscrossing the U.S. offering three brands of McDonald: solo material, Doobie Brothers shows, and a Christmas show to boot. “Maybe it sounds strange, because I’ve played the Doobies songs for so long, but I still have a hard time remembering. I have to relearn them. I do get a little panicky before these shows.”