Dale Ockerman
Dale Ockerman is an American keyboardist, guitarist and songwriter who has worked with many famous musicians since the late 1960s. He is best known for his role with the Doobie Brothers as their main keyboardist and a guitarist during the band’s reformation from 1988 to 1996. Before joining the Doobie Brothers, he toured with Doobie Brothers guitarist Patrick Simmons on Simmons’ solo projects, and they co-wrote songs together. The Doobie Brothers recorded two of his songs, and he appears on three of their CDs.
Ockerman has long worked with members of Moby Grape and has contributed to the solo work of Jerry Miller and Bob Mosley. When Ockerman was 16, Moby Grape’s Peter Lewis lent him valuable guitars—a Martin D-28 and a Black Les Paul—to help him develop his playing.
His first professional performance came with the Quicksilver Messenger Service in 1971 during the last weekend of Bill Graham’s Fillmore West in San Francisco. After that, he played with a number of California acts, including IAM, Snail, Airtight, The Ducks, Bill Champlin, Rita Coolidge, Steve Marriott, Tom Johnston, Michael McDonald, and Coco Montoya. He also worked with New Orleans musicians Zigaboo Modeliste, George Porter, The Wild Magnolias and Cyril Neville. Ockerman did session work with Bill Champlin and Jim Keltner, including a re-recording of Nat King Cole’s Nature Boy with Eden Ahbez; he played piano, Prophet 5, guitar, melodica and trumpet.
In recent years, Ockerman has been based in Santa Cruz, California, where he regularly plays piano, guitar, trumpet, mandolin and harmonica with the White Album Ensemble. This group recreates Beatles albums that the band themselves never performed live, from Rubber Soul through Abbey Road, using instruments like sitar, tablas and string arrangements to capture the original vibe. They have performed with the Santa Cruz County Symphony.
In 2008, members of the White Album Ensemble joined Omar Spence in tribute concerts to Skip Spence of Moby Grape; the performances were recorded for a 2009 release. Ockerman and Omar Spence had met at Skip’s memorial and jammed with Moby Grape.
In 2012, Ockerman had Omar Spence sing on his album What If…?, which also features former Doobie Brothers singer Richard Bryant. Inspired by the White Album Ensemble, he formed the Beggar Kings, a Stones tribute group focusing on the classic Rolling Stones albums Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street. Their shows have even opened for The Beatles, adding strings, horns and choir.
Ockerman is involved with Musicscool in Capitola, California, where he teaches guitar, keyboards and other instruments, counsels bands, and uses the school as a recording studio. The school houses a Hammond B3 with a Leslie speaker, a vintage Wurlitzer piano, Clavinet and various guitars, basses and percussion. His students formed GuitArmy in Santa Cruz, a group of young players who perform Led Zeppelin songs with multiple parts. The group has included bassist Tiran Porter and drummer David Tucker, and lead vocalist James Durbin, who later gained fame on American Idol, performed with the White Album Ensemble in 2008 to a standing ovation. Durbin later reached the American Idol finals in 2011. For a homecoming concert, Durbin asked Ockerman to assemble a backup group for him, using the White Album Ensemble with added horns and vocalists, which drew a crowd of about 30,000—one of Santa Cruz’s largest concerts. After touring, Durbin encouraged Ockerman to bring GuitArmy back for a Doors/ Led Zeppelin show in Turkey, which sold out; the band consisted of Musicscool alumni.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 12:53 (CET).