Interview: Pat Simmons

COTTON MOUTH

An interview with Pat Simmons

Talk about a long train runnin’ – it’d be hard to find a music group with the kind of renown and career longevity that The Doobie Brothers have enjoyed in their near 50 years of busting out classic American folk-infused rock.

Named for a shared proclivity for the humble joint back in 1970, the Brothers have kept up their musical efforts with reinvention, re-appropriation and renewing of their signature style.

Founding member and fingerpicking master Pat Simmons will be revisiting our shores this year for Bluesfest and more, and in a fortuitous turn of events, he’ll be joined by fellow founder Tom Johnston and their stadium-smashing Latin peer, Carlos Santana.

“I think the first time we were ever in Australia touring, we were actually playing some shows with Carlos – the very first time we were there, back in the, oh gosh, mid-’70s or something like that,” says Simmons. “Always a thrill. An honour, really. I’ve been listening to Carlos for such a long time, since the ’60s, and seen him quite a few times through the years. We have played quite a few shows with him through these decades, so it’s always really fun.”

Simmons, all warmth and calm at 68, says the setlists nowadays alternate between the hits “as they call them”, mixed in with “a few oddball tunes” for good measure, along with deep cuts for those who’ve been keeping up pace with the Doobies’ 14 studio albums.

“The music is such a gift for me, personally,” he says. “It’s what I’ve always enjoyed doing my entire lifetime and to still be doing it, gosh, 50 years practically into the career of this band is… you know, I feel very blessed in that regard.”

Imagine the bond formed between artists over 30-plus years, especially two whose skills are as complementary as Simmons and Johnston.

“We’re probably more than brothers in so many ways just because of spending so much time together,” says Simmons. “I think art and creativity brings people closer together than you can imagine, so we’re very close as friends and as colleagues.”

Of course, there’s more to the name than brotherhood. With marijuana culture having been core to the band since its inception, and becoming a beast of its own in the years since Woodstock, one would think a musician of Simmons’ calibre would rue the old title, but he’s comfortable leaning into the connotations of the name.

“I have pretty much smoked most of my life, on and off,” he says. “I’m not averse to taking hits – somebody offers me a hit of a joint, you know, that’s not a problem for me – but I don’t find that it defines who I am, necessarily. Some people really are into it and it really is a huge part of their identity, I guess, and their reality, but I’m not a different person when I’m stoned, as to when I’m not.”

For Simmons, the recent legalisation of pot across eight of the United States was more or less an inevitability, and his interest in mind-altering substances is leisurely and non-committal. It’s just one of many ways of shaping one’s perceptions.

“There’s certainly an altering of your consciousness a little bit when you get high, but it’s so much less than if you had a couple of shots of tequila or something,” he says. “Then your reality really gets altered! I remember when I first started smoking pot, it was hard to identify the fact I was even stoned. And I’ve had so many people, noobies who never smoked weed before, and they smoke it for the first time, and always, almost without exception, people go, ‘I don’t feel anything, what’s the big deal, what am I supposed to be feeling?’

“It’s so subtle, and it’s such an altering of your consciousness that it’s not necessarily something that maybe you haven’t felt before under certain circumstances. Oftentimes when people are creating or they’re reading a novel, you’re into kind of an altered consciousness in terms of where your attention is at, and I think that’s true of smoking pot.”

Naturally, removing the stigma around the substance lifts the barriers to its free and uninhibited use, but Simmons sees this as a positive, given marijuana’s comparatively low social cost compared to Sydney’s own and far worse poison: alcohol.

“I think that if the majority of people who maybe have a hesitance about what that [experience] might be or how that might affect the culture in general, if they understood that it really is not a game-changer, it’s not a life-changer, it’s simply a momentary experience, that most people would be much less averse to it, you know what I mean? Especially when you compare it to, you know, having a cocktail or something, and most people – I would say the majority of people, a good portion of the populace – has a drink once in a while and doesn’t think twice about it, and they know that it alters their consciousness but not in such an adverse way that it completely changes their lifestyle.”

Of course, the real trip for Australian audiences is going to be the dual experience of these seasoned veterans alongside the wild style of Santana, along with the rest of the shifting Bluesfest legacy lineup. And who knows – maybe some lucky attendees can share more than just a melody with Simmons.


Bluesfest 2017, featuring The Doobie Brothers, runs Thursday April 13 – Monday April 17, at Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm, and they also appear with Santana at Qudos Bank Arena, Thursday April 13.