The Doobie Brothers have recorded a new five-track EP set for release next year, the band’s Tom Johnston said.

The material was created in collaboration with producer John Shanks – who's previously worked with Bon Jovi, Sheryl Crow, the Goo Goo Dolls and others – and the new way of working produced results that pleased everyone involved, the frontman noted.

“It's rock n' roll, basically," he told Billboard in a new interview. "There's one that's kind of a ballad, but the rest of them are rock, with a little modern edge to it. It's totally different from anything we've ever done before, which gets me excited right away because I hate rubber-stamping something we've done already. These songs are in totally different directions, things I've never tried before vocally, musically. Everything is kind of different from what you expect to hear from normal Doobies, but it's still recognizable.”

Saying that all five songs had been co-written with Shanks, Johnston added the Doobie Brothers "might have gone in there with the idea, but it was always co-written. And it was rapid – you'd have the song pretty much squared away and done in a couple of days. … We got a lot done in a very short period of time."

The untitled EP doesn’t have a release date yet. It will be the Doobies’ first new material since their 2010 album World Gone Crazy and their first studio work since 2014’s Southbound LP, which re-imagined many of their most popular songs. The band is now touring North America with Santana; they'll follow those shows with a run of their own appearances beginning Sept. 11.

 

 

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