Steely Dan was the quintessential L.A. band, but Fagen himself has always been a New Yorker at heart. By Ben Williams New York Magazine Were you inspired by anything new when you recorded your new album, Morph the Cat? I basically listen to the same 40 albums that I listened to in high school, near […]
Tag Archives | Donald Fagen
Fagen Keeps His Cool
By Tom Lanham San Francisco Chronicle NEW YORK — For the past 35 years, with his smooth-jazz outfit Steely Dan, Donald Fagen has cultivated an ice-blue, cocktail-hour profile that’s always been several notches classier than whatever rock was happening at the time. Ditto for his three solo albums — 1982’s The Nightfly, 1983’s Kamakiriad and […]
Fagen Delivers NY in ‘Morph the Cat’
By Jeffrey Lee Puckett Louisville Courier-Journal Donald Fagen’s Morph the Cat is a series of fanciful Manhattan snapshots primarily connected by Fagen’s dry wit, uptown rhythm & blues and a curious fascination with death. It isn’t a narrative, by any means, but more like an envelope of photos found on a sidewalk, as evocative as they […]
Fagen’s Steel Somewhat Blunted but a Crowd-Pleaser Still
By Ricardo Baca Denver Post DENVER — Steely Dan co-frontman Donald Fagen was supposed to play the Paramount Theatre on Tuesday night, but his trucks got stuck on snowy Nebraska highways. Fagen was forced to postpone until Wednesday, when the sold-out crowd warmed him and his band from the cold outside with a display of […]
This isn’t Steely Dan, and There Ain’t No ‘Fagen’ It
By Devin Grant Charleston Post and Courier Morph The Cat Donald Fagen Reprise On the rare occasion that Donald Fagen decides to bless the music world with a solo release, it is cause for celebration among fans of his (also occasional) outfit, Steely Dan. You see, Fagen’s solo outings might as well be Steely Dan […]
Review: ‘Morph the Cat’
By Melissa Ruggieri Times-Dispatch Staff Writer RICHMOND, Va. — At his best, Donald Fagen is a peculiar curmudgeon, a sort of mad scientist mixing up elements of jazz, funk and pop and somehow making them stick. That Fagen, the one so prominent on his first two solo albums, 1982’s The Nightfly and 1993’s Kamakiriad, is the kind […]
Fagen relaxes his grip
By Thomas Conner Chicago Sun-Times The fastidiousness of Donald Fagen is well-documented among his band’s considerable contributions to rock ‘n’ roll. In the studio for Steely Dan records, six-hour sessions were common just to polish 12 bars of rhythm guitar. Noted session musicians would be brought in at great expense to play jazzlike guitar and […]
Donald Fagen on His New Album
After Steely Dan closed up shop in the early 1980s, Donald Fagen went solo with The Nightfly, an album which became an instant and timeless classic. Now a mere 24 years later he has finished his semi-autobiographical trilogy with the release of Morph The Cat. By Andy Gill The Independent NEW YORK — In the […]
Donald Fagen Band at the Chicago Theatre
By Paul Olson AllAboutJazz.com CHICAGO — Steely Dan founder/vocalist Donald Fagen’s concert at the storied Chicago Theatre wasn’t exactly the sound of surprise — this isn’t a jamband he’s fronting and anyone who came expecting loose, improvisational flights of fancy was destined to be disappointed. But the full house knew pretty much exactly what to […]
Storyteller Finds Comfort Onstage
By Doug Pullen Flint Journal DETROIT – Funny thing about Donald Fagen. Used to be he never wanted to tour with Steely Dan, which was more of a songwriting and studio partnership than a living, breathing, touring band. They made some of the greatest records of the pop era, but didn’t hit the road for […]
