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Joseph Allen "Country Joe" McDonald

1 January 1942 – 7 March 2026

Country Joe was an American singer, songwriter, musician
and film composer, who was the lead singer and co-founder

of the 1960s psychedelic folk-rock group Country Joe and
the Fish.

McDonald recorded 33 albums
and wrote hundreds of songs
over a career that spanned

60 years. Country Joe & the
Fish were a pioneering
psychedelic rock band
known for their eclectic

performances at the Avalon
Ballroom, the Fillmore
Auditorium, the 1967

Monterey Pop Festival, and
the original 1969
Woodstock Festival and the
1979 reunion.

McDonald was born in
Washington, D.C., and grew
up in El Monte, California,
where he had moved with

his parents, Florence and
Worden McDonald.

Introduced to music in high school, he became the president and conductor of the

Marching Band. At 17 he joined the US Navy and was stationed in Japan. After his
service he attended California State College in LA, later dropping out in the 1960s
and moving to Berkeley where he started busking.

McDonald became involved with the Free Speech Movement and the wave of

demonstrations against the Vietnam War at UC Berkeley. Together with Barry "The
Fish" Melton he co-founded Country Joe and the Fish. The band's best known songs
included "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixing-To-Die-Rag" a song about the Vietnam War, whose

familiar chorus – "One, two, three, what are we fighting for?" – became widely known
amongst the Woodstock generation and Vietnam veterans of the 1960s and '70s.

McDonald died of complications from Parkinson's disease at his Berkeley, California,
home, on March 7, 2026, at the age of 84.

Ian K McKenzie