Doobie Brothers Announce Lineup for Country Tribute Album

New details are emerging about the upcoming Doobie Brothers tribute album. 'Southbound,' a collection of some of country music's biggest stars performing songs from the iconic group, will be released on Nov. 4.

While the group are remaining quiet on which of their dozens of hits made the record, they have revealed which artists will appear, and the list is quite impressive. The acts who are confirmed for the project include Brad Paisley, Blake Shelton, Zac Brown Band, Toby Keith, Chris Young, Charlie Worsham, Sara Evans, Jerrod Niemann, Amanda Rivera and Love & Theft. In addition, Vince Gill, Hunter Hayes and Dann Huff will each play guitar on the upcoming project.

The album, which was announced in March, was the brainchild of producer and songwriter David Huff.

"We were on the road, and he came and visited us," band member Tom Johnston recalls to Lagniappe Mobile. "He came to us with the idea, and everybody thought it would be a cool thing to do. We had never thought of that ourselves. At the same time, we didn’t know there were people in the country genre that were fans of the band. He thought it would be a really great idea for us to pair together with a bunch of big names in country music. It was all driven by Gary Overton at Sony. It turns out that he’s a big Doobies fan. The first concert that Gary ever went to was a Doobies concert in 1972 in Phoenix, Ariz. He’s been the driver behind promoting this through the company and getting it done that way."

Johnston says the end result was a collaborative project that he is proud to stand behind.

"David produced the album," Johnston adds. "The artists picked the tracks. It’s a best-of, if you will, but it’s re-done by incredible Nashville players in the studio, who were incredibly good and fast. We had three guitar players going at one time, and Michael McDonald playing keyboard on his tunes. So, we would go in and cut the track using one or two takes, and it was done. It had guitars, drums, bass and pedal-steel, and it was phenomenal. I’ve never done anything like that before, and I was just blown away at how efficient and good they were. Then, we had the artists themselves come in. Most of the time, we weren’t there to witness their performances. I was in L.A. when Blake Shelton did his performance. I got to see Chris Young do the vocal on the song he did. So, it’s been an interesting project and having heard the results, I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised."

'Southbound' is available for pre-order here.