Michael McDonald still taking it to the streets, more cool than ever, thanks to Thundercat and Grizzly Bear

Michael McDonald performs Tuesday at California Center for the Arts, Escondido.

The solo star is the only former member of Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers to have performed at the 2017 Coachella festival

Oct. 5, 2019

7 AM

Up until just a few years ago, only a fool would have believed that Michael McDonald would suddenly become cool again, four decades after rising to prominence as a member of Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers-turned-solo-artist.

But cool McDonald is, thanks to the rise in popularity of yacht rock and his collaborations with such much younger admirers as Grizzly Bear and Thundercat, whose 2017 Coachella festival performance featured McDonald as a special guest.

To McDonald’s surprise and delight, the Coachella audience not only sang along, word-for-word, to the Thundercat/McDonald slow jam “Show You The Way,” but also to the McDonald-led 1979 Doobies’ hit, “What a Fool Believes.”

As McDonald noted in a 2017 Union-Tribune interview, “It’s been a wild ride!”

You can join in when McDonald, 67, and his band perform here Tuesday.

Michael McDonald: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. California Center for the Arts, Escondido, 340 North Escondido Blvd, Escondido. $45-$125; VIP packages range from $175 to $350 each. (800) 988-4253. artcenter.org.

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George Varga

Veteran San Diego Union-Tribune pop music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Ray Charles, Miles Davis and Britney Spears to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Bruno Mars. A double first-prize winner at the 2018 Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga lives with his wife in North Park.