My Old School - A Tribute To Steely Dan - The Walnut Room - Saturday November 3 2012



My Old School at the Soiled Dove Underground - Photo by Monique Jenkins

 



My Old School at The Walnut Room - Photo by Barry King

My Old School - A Tribute To Steely Dan was at The Walnut Room on Saturday night, and they cover a great number of Steely Dan songs that Fagen, Becker and company did in concert last time I saw them, which was during the Think Fast tour in 2008, at Red Rocks.  But the Dan fans My Old School does the original band one better. Make that two better.  Three.  Okay, more.  The reason is that when I saw Steely Dan at the Rocks, there were still so many songs that I wished they had played that they just didn't do.  Fagen seemed to content to concentrate on more of the mellower, jazzy tunes.  That's fine, but there's a lot of great Steely Dan rock numbers too.  My Old School does these songs!  And does them very well!  They rocked out and did the kind of show I wanted to see and hear when I saw Steely Dan.  I finally got my wish fulfilled, thanks to My Old School.  No static at all.

They do very tasty cuts from Pretzel Logic album, like Rikki Don't Lose That Number and the title track, among others.  In their previous Denver appearance at The Soiled Dove Underground, they also did Night By Night too, from that album, and some great selections from The Royal Scam, including Green Earrings, The Caves of Altimira and Kid Charlemagne.  My Old School cover great songs like Dr. Wu, Bad Sneakers and Chain Lightning from the Katie Lied album (all of which were ignored by SD in 2008); and they cover their early work, including Dirty Work and Reelin' In The Years. Plus later SD songs such as Hey Nineteen ("nice!"), Time Out Of Mind and Babylon Sisters.  They also cover songs from the Aja album, including the incredibly difficult title track, with so many changes.  And they do it to a "T".

My Old School's front man is a dead ringer for Steely Dan's front man, and he also sounds like him, which makes the My Old School/Steely Dan experience so much more authentic.  I would like to see My Old School's "Fagen" appear alongside Mr. Fagen himself.  I think it would be great, possibly hilarious, along the memorabe time of when Joe Cocker and John Belushi (as Cocker) appeared side by side, choreographed to perfection, on Saturday Night Live. 

A tip of the hat to everyone else in the band as well: great sax, confident and knows the lines in the songs; the bass player never misses a note, he's the glue that keeps everything together; the drummer plays tight and powerful, and was a joy to watch, especially during that drum part on Aja; also, the keyboard player tinkles the ivories, keeping it together and occasionally throwing in some additional improvisation that works well within the song; great guitar too, both of them play with the fluidity the songs demand (though I will wait for them to tackle something like King Of The World); and we even heard a cool trombone.  Plus, the band has two terrific ladies who do the back-up singing, and even get to take the lead vocals on a couple of songs.  They're great to watch dance too, and they keep things interesting on stage.

I'm hoping they will add some Donald Fagen solo numbers too to their repertoire, like something off The Nightfly, and also Fagen's new one, called Sunken Condos, which was just recently released and is getting great reviews and doing very well on the charts.

Steely Dan sold gazillions of albums back in the day, and Red Rocks was packed when I saw them in 2008.  If you're a Dan fan, do yourself a favor, get out of the house (it'll do you good and you should do it more often!) and see this band!  And I will be going back, to My Old School.