For one member of the legendary rock band The Doobie Brothers, the band’s first concerts in Hawaii after more than 30 years are a bit like a return to one’s own backyard.

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famers are in the midst of a North American tour celebrating their 50th anniversary as a band. The current lineup features Tom Johnson, Michael McDonald, John McFee and Pat Simmons. The four were the primary creative forces during the band’s heyday in the 1970s and ‘80s when it sold nearly 50 million albums worldwide, won four Grammy Awards, and charted 16 top-40 hits, including “Black Water,” “What a Fool Believes,” “Minute by Minute,” “China Grove” and “Takin’ It to the Streets.”

The band performed at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center on Tuesday and will play Friday at the Tom Moffatt Waikiki Shell.

Simmons, whose folk and bluegrass leanings defined The Doobie Brothers' sound as much as Johnson’s driving arena-rock vocals or, later, McDonald’s AOR-friendly, white-soul stylings, has been an islander in heart and presence since the band’s last concert here in 1990, when he and his wife Cristine toured Maui on hog-back.

A lifelong biker who once operated his own vintage motorcycle shop, Simmons met Cristine at the notorious Sturgis Motorcycle Rally the previous year. On Maui, the couple rented a couple of Harley Davidson motorcycles and, in Doobie parlance, went rockin’ down the highway.

“We rode the entire island,” Simmons said. “We went around the west side all the way around and down to Kahului and Upcountry then all the way out to Hana, all the way around Haiku and up through Paia. We just loved it, you know?

“It became a fantasy of ours to come back and move here,” he said. “We came back again and again and loved it so much we started looking around. We finally found a piece of property and built the house ourselves.”

And just like that, the guy who once pleaded with the Mississippi moon to keep shining on him found himself a Hana homeboy.

The Simmons’ raised their children on Maui. His daughter has since moved away but his son, Pat Jr., is firmly rooted to the island, working in sustainable agriculture and growing his own music career (his debut EP “This Mountain” earned two Na Hoku Hanohano Award nominations in 2018).

It was from his home in Hana that Simmons recorded his portion of the band's viral video for “Black Water,” one of five “live-in-isolation” videos the Doobies produced during the pandemic with guests including Dave Mason and Peter Frampton. 

“We imagined that it was possible to do those kinds of things but we’d never applied it to anything other than emailing stems of songs back and forth to work on recordings,” Simmons said. “But to actually put whole songs together with other musicians, with everybody using their own home studio to record parts and then put it all together, was the coolest thing.”

The Doobies have been intermittent swimmers in the changing tides of technology and marketing. Their success in the ‘70s was a result of winning over radio programmers with their albums and a growing fan base with their live performances. Their years-long hiatus in the ‘80s coincided with the rise of MTV. When they reemerged, the torches of the digital revolution could already be seen on the near horizon.

With the band enjoying a pop-culture reconsideration with the tongue-in-affectionate-cheek emergence of so-called “yacht rock” programming, Simmons regards the current state of music making and marketing with curiosity.

“Facebook and TikTok, those kinds of platforms have more impact on the musical marketplace,” he said. “Certainly stuff like 'American Idol' or 'America’s Got Talent' have had a huge impact on people’s perceptions of artists. For bands like us, and upcoming bands, I think there are new opportunities because of easy-access formats like YouTube where you can present music however you want to. I don’t think it’s necessarily important to the audience how high-tech something is. It’s more like, ‘Can they sing and play?’ and ‘Is this a good song?’”

“It’s a little bit of serendipity how people just happen to be in the right place at the right time doing something that connects with an audience,” he continued. “That’s the long and short of it. A lot of it is just plain old luck.”

The Doobies, of course, just keep doing what works for them.

On this tour, that means spending more time at their performance venues with the people who keep the shows running.

“We end up coming to gigs earlier to do sound checks, loosen up, maybe work on some new stuff,” he said. “Then when we’re done, we just a lot of times hang out at the gig, just socializing between the band and the crew members. We’re probably different than a lot of bands. With some bands, there’s kind of an unspoken division between the band and crew, but we’re like a big family. We like to feel close to the guys we work with and we feel like we’re all in it together.”

For Simmons, appreciating the experience has been a key to the band’s longevity.

“People get old and get to complaining about what they’re doing,” he said. “For us, it’s the dream of a lifetime to be out here doing the things we love to do and hanging with different people. It’s supposed to be fun, so you want to make it as fun as it can be.”

Michael Tsai covers local and state politics for Spectrum News Hawaii. Email him at michael.tsai@charter.com.