Saturday, July 13, 2013

Steely Dan: A new album still not out of the question

With the start of the 2013 tour less than a week away Donald Fagen and Walter Becker have been doing interviews that are starting to appear here and there.

Here's one Donald did with Los Angeles radio station KLOS.
(Is that a Frank Zappa reference at the 1 minute mark?)

And here's Billboard's article on the upcoming tour.

If you've read/listened to interviews for previous tours they pretty much rehash the same subjects once more.

One such subject is the possibility of a new Steely Dan album. The most recent one titled Everything Must Go was released ten years ago back in 2003.
The Billboard article takes Walter's answer as the headline:

New Steely Dan Album? 'It's In the Air'

The quote in full reads

"It's in the air, it really is. It's just a smell now. The next thing is then you taste it, then you start to feel it. You know how this goes."


Donald Fagen added that they have "some songs, these really good ones that we only half-finished back in, like, 1984 that we keep threatening to work on."

And Walter added that they actually finished a couple of those.

"Any other band in the world would have finished or mixed these old things that were lying around and issued them with a great ta-da fanfare. But we just don't. We don't play it like that, necessarily. It's not the way we roll." 
 
Cue excitement from the fans, but even if it has been worded a bit differently in past interviews we've always known that ideas for a new album has been discussed and a new Steely Dan album a real possibility. News - and sad news at that - would've been hearing Donald and Walter say that they've decided that Everything Must Go is the final one from Steely Dan and whatever more music they make as Steely Dan will be touring.

As far as the 2013 tour goes we have speculated in the possible addition of dates abroad after they finish up in New York on October 8. Japan? Australia/New Zealand? Europe?
In our blog post in May our assumption was that it probably won't happen, and now that drummer Keith Carlock has updated his touring page with information saying he'll be playing in Europe with Mike Stern Band October 11 - 31, well...

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