Reeling In the Years

Steely Dan and Michael McDonald Jazz Up the Pavilion this Weekend

Mark Williams

Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, better known as the jazzy pop rock band Steely Dan that formed in the early 70’s, have been one of those on-again, off-again bands over the last 30 years. Lucky for their fans, 2006 happens to be an "on" year, as the band rocks the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion (2005 Lake Robbins Dr., The Woodlands) tonight (7/14), in a show with blue-eyed soul man Michael McDonald.

It's already been a mighty prolific year for Donald Fagen, who, in March, released his solo set "Morph the Cat," which continues an artistic renaissance that started in 2000 with fellow Dan-man Walter Becker on "Two Against Nature." And while Steely Dan was missing in action on the record racks with new material for two decades up to that point, their near-perfect 70’s catalog successfully reeled through the years, with newer artists giving Steely Dan props and making the duo, surprisingly, hip among new century music snobs.

While there hasn't been any new Steely material since 2003's critically drubbed "Everything Must Go," their current excursion, dubbed the "Sugartooth McDan" tour, reunites Steely Dan with soul crooner Michael McDonald, who revived his career with a pair of Motown tribute discs and got his start with the Dan singing backup on seminal albums such as 1976's "The Royal Scam" and 1977's "Aja."

McDonald, who played with Steely Dan while he was part of the Doobie Brothers, admits, "we haven't done a lot of pre-planning on that part of it," while Steely Dan's Walter Becker agrees that "it's going to evolve sort of organically."

But Becker notes that McDonald's history in the band make some degree of collaboration a certainty. "Prospectively, there are certain songs that Mike played on stage with us back in the '70s and recorded on as well," Becker says. "Those are strong contenders for his participation. But I really think it's up to Mike, and we'll just see how the situation evolves. It's such a natural collaboration it seems to me there's just so many ways it can work."

Also joining Becker and Fagan this summer are Keith Carlock on drums, Freddy Washington on bass, and Jon Herington on guitar. Concertgoers can expect to hear the best selections from Steely Dan’s extraordinary catalog of three decades, including “Do It Again” and “Reeling in the Years” from the band’s 1972 debut album, “Can’t Buy a Thrill.”

Steely Dan carved out its own musical niche, straying at times from the traditional rock sound and focusing more on a sophisticated jazzy, R & B style. After a few member switch-ups, the band releases 1974’s “Pretzel Logic,” which yielded the classic hit, “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.” 

There’s an engaging quality to Donald Fagen’s songwriting and perfectionism that makes Steely Dan fans flock to his solo albums. While 1982’s “The Nightfly” and 1993’s “Kamakiriad” were expressly Fagen, Morph the Cat closely resembles Steely Dan without Walter Becker. The lineup partially reflects the ensemble that recorded Steely Dan’s 2003 release, “Everything Must Go,” and toured with the group that year.

For many years, Steely Dan was keyboardist-lead vocalist Fagen, bassist-guitarist Becker and an ever-changing lineup of session musicians, including McDonald, Larry Carlton, Steve Gadd and Wayne Shorter. On a typical album, no two songs had the same lineup. However, in 1993, around the release of “Kamakiriad,” the songwriting duo began to assemble a complete band.

Several of the musicians who toured with Steely Dan over the next decade also appeared on 1995’s “Alive in America,” 2000’s “Two Against Nature” and, three years later, on “Everything Must Go.” Meanwhile, Fagen’s solo albums, beginning with “The Nightfly,” have represented something of a trilogy that takes a look at his personal life. 

“Morph the Cat” presents an older Fagen who now faces mortality. The title song is a tale of a strange but almost endearing visitor to Manhattan, who might also be a thinly disguised Grim Reaper. “What I Do” is a laid-back tribute to the late Ray Charles, while “The Great Pagoda of Funn” is one of the few straight-out romantic ballads in Fagen’s repertoire; the longest selection on the album is an escapist story of two lovers whose time together offers respite from today’s headlines of “psycho-moms” and “dirty bombs.”

One of the best things about Fagen’s music -— both with Steely Dan and as a solo act — is his ability to meld thought-provoking and sometimes suggestive lyrics with extended instrumental solos. “I like it when songs develop in some way, and four minutes isn’t usually enough time for something to develop musically usually,” he says. The additional time — six of the nine tracks are longer than six minutes -— allows him to get his lyrical message across while giving plenty of room to the musicians. 

Whether singing about death (“Brite Nitegown”), living in bomb shelters (“New Frontier,” from “The Nightfly“) or athletes and drugs (“Glamour Profession”), Fagen has a unique ability to make the dark things in life enjoyable. Blending his experiences in jazz, blues, rock and soul, he makes “Morph the Cat” another in a long list of keepers.

Typically, Fagen spins sad experience — such as the recent death of his mother — and his own mortality issues into a lightly ironic, cinematic groove. "That was one of the elements," Fagen says. "Just getting older and also I'm a New Yorker, so 9/11 on a broader level had something to do with it. I work as I go so I have a file of things that go back a few years and I think probably the last Steely Dan album had some things on this theme too, but this is on a more personal level." 

Still, Fagen's morbid sense of humor about the subject comes through on the new song, “Brite Nitegown,” which gets its title from W.C. Fields' nickname for death, "the fellow in the bright nightgown." "You can either approach things you have no control of with fear and dread or with humor, so I can only choose humor," Fagen says. "I have my moments of fear and dread also, but if possible I think you should try to have a laugh." 

Politics also plays a part in Fagen’s music. “‘Morph the Cat’ the song started out as just me taking an aerial view of New York,” says Fagen. “But it became a surreal way of depicting people being narcotized by a short-term high. The mass-media, advertising-saturated brain death in our country can be alarming.”

"Basically, from a political point of view, life has always seemed like a cartoon to me. It has gotten more ridiculous. I remember a Stanley Kubrick film, Dr. Strangelove, which was really the sort of humor I loved as a kid. It's really hard to do satire now because life has really caught up to the material of films and books. You just gotta hope that things will get better. I think the pendulum always swings the other way is the general movement of history." 

Fagen's own frequent, post-9/11 security checks at airports inspired the new song “Security Joan,” which tells the story of an airline passenger who becomes stimulated after his search by a female security guard. "I often get chosen for the deep security line," says Fagen. "It might be the picture in my driver's license. I always get asked to take my shoes off and get wanded by the security person and all that, and it's just so boring and anxiety-provoking. In fact, the last time, while all that was happening to me, the security guy was saying to me how much he liked my work, so he obviously knew who I was and yet it was the most severe security check I'd ever had."

Another new song, “What I Do,” imagines a conversation between a younger Fagen and Ray Charles, who gives him "dating advice." "I always loved his music," Fagen says. "And when I was a kid, I was a jazz fan when I was pretty young, and you didn't get to see jazz musicians on TV. But you did get to see Ray Charles occasionally on TV. It was kind of crossover music. For a white suburban kid, just to see him on TV in the late 50’s was a revelation. Just the way he moved his body and was just sort of openly sexual and so on, especially his relationship with the Raylettes was always interesting to me." 

At age 58, Fagen developed a taste for performing; in the 1990s, the stage-shy Steely Dan returned not only to make more Grammy-winning records but to tour for the first time in decades. "Gradually, I've gotten into it," Fagen says. "I wasn't originally thinking of becoming a singer of any kind. I was a player basically. I started as an amateur player and developed my technique as I went on and really crossed into being professional after I was actually playing for money. Singing was really something I never expected to do. It was only when we couldn't find a singer for our band that I started doing it. But the last few years, I've gotten comfortable with it." 

Even as college students in the late 1960s, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were already immersed in obscurity: George Gershwin, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, William S. Burroughs. Naturally, they formed a partnership. They wrote catchy tunes, and played them well, but they could barely sing; and they wrote dense, wry lyrics that weren't exactly what was playing on top 40 radio at the time. Becker says that Steely Dan was "encoding higher cultural information in cheesy pop songs played by a rock & roll band." 

Fagen and Becker had reputations as notorious perfectionists and seemed more comfortable as a studio band that rarely toured. "We were never really perfectionists," Fagen says. "But we grew up listening to jazz and we were used to hearing things performed with a certain polish that wasn't much valued in the rock & roll world at the time. Now, as we're getting older, I'm finding we kind of like to leave a few mistakes in."

Over the years, Fagen and Becker played less and less on their own albums, favoring sessions musicians instead, until their re-emergence in 1993 with a hugely successful tour. "The band seems to have this really long life," Fagen says. "And I know there's a lot of people out there who are there for the nostalgia and so on. But if we had no new ideas and if I thought we were just out there doing these things as 'oldies,' I think I'd quit. But I know that Walter and I always seem to have something to say about what's going on. I think we're still evolving, so it's still a lot of fun."

And if Steely Dan are now enshrined as rock royalty, with their fair share of Grammys and membership in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, they still don't sound like anyone else. "What we're doing is much closer to the type of R & B records being made in the '50s by Ray Charles and Bobby 'Blue' Bland, a thread that was never really followed up on," Fagen says. "We were fortunate to come up at a time when something that far off the mainstream path could get exposure, when FM popular radio was just beginning and deejays chose the play list. The underground held some sway over the mainstream..."

Meantime, Michael McDonald has gained a reputation as one of America's most enduring white soul singers — immediately recognizable with his husky, arresting baritone featured on many of the most popular pop, rock and R & B hits of the last four decades. 

Born and raised in St. Louis, McDonald’s earliest gigs when he relocated to Los Angeles in 1970, recording with such notables as Steely. But he thrust into the spotlight five years later, when the illness of Doobie Brothers lead vocalist Tommy Johnston — who sang on such early hits as "Black Water," “China Grove” and "Listen To The Music" — led the band to tab McDonald as his replacement.

During those years, McDonald’s rousing leads were a focal point for driving, celebratory up-tempo soul-packed rockers, sentimental ballads and reflective jazz-tinged slow jams; he’s also credited for helping the Doobie Brothers make a major musical shift — moving away from being predominantly a straight rock ensemble, instead embracing a fuller, smoother and more soulful style.

McDonald earned a Grammy in 1979 for Song of the Year with “What A Fool Believes,” but perhaps his finest — or at least most influential number in terms of cultural impact — was 1976’s “Takin’ It To The Streets.” While McDonald departed the Doobies following their first farewell tour in 1982, he’s periodically reunited with them for recording sessions and special concerts, most notably the two-record set “Rockin’ Down The Highway: The Wildfire Concert” in 1996.

McDonald’s profile has expanded mightily since he became a solo performer — despite the fact that he’s periodically taken extensive breaks from recording and performing just as his songs have topped the charts. Besides winning another Grammy for his duet “Ya Mo Be There” with James Ingram in 1983, McDonald became known for collaborations with such performers as Patti LaBelle for “On My Own” and solo hits like “I Keep Forgettin’” and “Sweet Freedom.”

Through the years, McDonald has recorded two tribute LPs revisiting Motown classics, made contributions to film and television projects, and has done session work for his friends in Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers — but is probably best remembered in that capacity for his cameo on Christopher Cross’ 1980 hit “Ride Like The Wind.” 2005’s “The Ultimate Collection” gathered the best McDonald tunes from group and solo projects, while he received a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 2003. 

Michael McDonald says backstage is different than when he first went on the road with the Doobie Brothers in 1977. "Now there's bottled water, treadmill and masseuses," he says with a laugh. "At our age, band members are lucky to remember each other, let alone groupies."

After nearly 30 years on the road, McDonald, now 54, says that wile he still loves the live shows, he concedes it's a bit tougher these days to fire up his signature husky, soulful voice, even though he quit partying in the mid-'80s. His best way to prepare for a show: sleep.

"It was an eye-opener to go on the road and get some sleep and be somewhat rested for the next show," he says. "I learned to do a much better job not hitting myself with a hammer. 1986 was my last hurrah. It's been much better ever since."

Still, he says, there are mornings when he, like a lot of singers of any age, wakes up hoarse. "Sometimes it's a real effort. I need ginger tea, warm-ups. I'll start really low and not really pushing it, not going near any notes that are a least bit of a strain. Many times, the voice gives out. I've perfected the art of hiding in the weeds. You kind of sing around. A lot of time there's a two-note range of notes, those two notes, your voice is strained, I'll sing around those notes until I feel like I've warmed up. 'What a Fool Believes' seems to be getting higher. On a good night, it's not bad. When I am really tired, that one's the hardest. But I usually get there."

Tickets: Prices range from $27.50 to $67.50 to $87.50; Preferred parking is now available at all Ticketmaster locations and the Pavilion Ticket Office for $15 plus service charge. Gates open at 6PM, show time is 7:30.

More to Come at The Woodlands Pavilion: Sunday, July 16, it’s an evening with rockin' songstress Melissa Etheridge; legendary singer-songscribe Paul Simon plays on Saturday, July 22; 90's holdovers Hootie & The Blowfish rock the Pavilion on Friday, July 28; Saturday, July 29, it's pop princess Kelly Clarkson and Rooney; on Sunday, July 30, it's an evening of classic rock with Def Leppard and Journey; on Saturday, August 5, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers with Trey Anastasio; slip on your boogie shoes for KC & the Sunshine Band, Sister Sledge, Tavares and Gloria Gaynor on Friday, August 11; on Friday, August 18, it's the Dave Matthews Band with O.A.R.; Counting Crows and the Goo Goo Dolls play the Pavilion on Thursday, September 7; on Saturday, September 30, it's the Steve Miller Band with Texas blues-rocker Delbert McClinton and guitar man Jonny Lang; and on Saturday, October 7, it's Bonne Raitt with Keb' Mo... 

send your comments to
mark@thebulletin.com