Full Albums: Steely Dan’s ‘Katy Lied’

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

Usually an artist’s popularity wanes after fifty years go by. But nothing about Steely Dan counts as usual. Even in the seventies, their impossibly smooth sound, their obscure yet hyperliterate lyrics, and their focus on the studio in lieu of performing made them stick out like sore thumbs. But Walter Becker, Donald Fagen, and company du jour knew what they wanted, and now, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, it turns out to be what people want, need, can’t get enough of. The book Quantum Criminals, portraying the characters in Steely Dan songs with words and paint, was a critical smash, and Rolling Stone just published a listicle ranking every Steely Dan song.

Katy Lied, released fifty years ago this month, saw Becker and Fagen giving up their road-tested bandmates in favor of the best studio musicians money could buy, including twenty-year-old drummer Jeff Porcaro and not-much-older Michael McDonald, whose Doobie Brother days had yet to come. It saw the band getting a little cooler, a little warmer, a little jazzier. Like every Steely Dan album (at least, every one from Steely Dan Mark I), it has champions who say it’s the best thing they ever did. In 1987 Rolling Stone named it to their list of the best 100 albums of the past 20 years, the sole Steely Dan album on that roster. (This, after calling it “exemplarily well-crafted and uncommonly intelligent schlock” in their review twelve years earlier.)

Steely Dan’s unique combination of iconoclasm and tasty licks make them a band that covering artists tend to approach tentatively, if at all. How many other bands see tribute artists be so eager to throw out the lyrics and take their best instrumental whack at it? You’ll find more than one instrumental in this Katy Lied cover collection, along with live covers and one cover that’s a tribute to another band altogether.

Lake – Black Friday (Steely Dan cover)

“Black Friday” was the hit single from Katy Lied, if you consider peaking at #37 a hit. Here’s a cover by Lake, a prog-pop outfit which AllMusic calls “one of the great unknown bands of the 1970s.” This is from a years-later reunion gig, and you can tell the band is super-steeped in all things Steely.

Brian Chartrand – Bad Sneakers (Steely Dan cover)

Brian Chartrand’s Home at Last EPs saw him spending his COVID days covering his Steely Dan faves. This “Bad Sneakers” cover is from volume II, which finds Chartrand trading cynicism for tenderness as he softens the song’s approach.

Sara Isaksson & Rebecka Törnqvist – Rose Darling (Steely Dan cover)

Fire in the Hole, Sara Isaksson and Rebecka Törnqvist’s 2006 cover album, has become a highlight for collectors of Steely Dan covers. With far fewer instruments and far prettier harmonies, they cut out all the snarky bruises of the songs and bring focus to the beauty of the remaining fruit. “Rose Darling” is a good example of this, as they take the sardonic tale of an adulterer (or a masturbator, depending on who you believe) and turn it into a tender love ballad.

Gov’t Mule – Daddy Don’t Live in That New York City No More (Steely Dan cover)

Gov’t Mule put out Live at the Beacon Theater, a record of their 2017 New Year’s Eve show, in 2020, with front man Warren Haynes saying, “While there’s nothing like being in a room with all of you, we wanted to release a series of live recordings to share some of that live electricity that we all miss so much.” The second set on the album, a.k.a. the Rocking Mule Review, saw them covering nineteen songs, most with a change/revolution theme. The set starts with “Daddy Don’t Live in That New York City No More,” and they nail the sound you might not expect Gov’t Mule to nail.

The Sons of Atom – Doctor Wu (Steely Dan cover)

People who know their Steely Dan covers know that the Minutemen’s cover of “Dr. Wu” is the definitive one. This cover pays tribute to the Minutemen more than Steely Dan – the midwestern band the Sons of Atom are flyin’ the flannel at this Halloween gig. Like D, Watt, and Hurley before them, they eliminate the first half of the song to no ill effect.

Rockgarden – Everyone’s Gone to the Movies (Steely Dan cover)

Side two of Katy Lied opens with “Everyone’s Gone to the Movies,” an older song of Becker & Fagen’s. They recorded a version with Flo & Eddie in 1971, before Can’t Buy a Thrill came out, but by the time they included the song on Katy Lied, they had fully reworked it, giving it a smoother sheen that made the story of pervy Mr. LaPage and his 8mm films just a little more palatable. This cover comes from Rockgarden, a band from Quebec who released a couple of singles; it’s most notable for having come out in 1976, long before the current Danaissance.

Herbie Hancock – Your Gold Teeth II (Steely Dan cover)

Herbie Hancock’s 1996 album The New Standard saw him looking to make jazz music out of popular pop songs. His success rate was a high one; Peter Gabriel and Don Henley certainly sound jazzier in this light than they ever did on their own. With Steely Dan already well versed in jazz, it wasn’t so much a huge leap for Hancock to take on “Your Gold Teeth II,” which he uses as a starting place for improvs of his own.

Cornelius Bumpus – Chain Lightning (Steely Dan cover)

Saxophonist Cornelius Bumpus has Steely Dan lineage in him just as surely as Michael McDonald, his old bandmate in the Doobie Brothers. He played on Fagen’s solo album Kamakiriad, and he toured with Steely Dan throughout the ’90s. His 2000 album Known Fact saw him covering “Chain Lightning,” easily capturing the groove of the original and floating his own lines above it.

Darrell Scott – Any World (That I’m Welcome To) (Steely Dan cover)

Darrell Scott brings far more country to this collection than any other artist, being one of Nashville’s top session musicians. He’s also written hit singles for Travis Tritt and the Chicks. His own albums show him to be a fine vocalist as well. He gives “Any World (That I’m Welcome To)” a welcome brushing of bluegrass, and the lyrical dreams of escaping one existence for another certainly ring true in any musical genre.

Joe Roccisano – Throw Back the Little Ones (Steely Dan cover)

When Donald Fagen was asked what his favorite Steely Dan cover by a jazz artist was, he said, “I still like one of the first — ‘Do It Again’ by Herbie Mann. Also, Joe Roccisano did some nice charts where he just used the tune as a jump-off point. That’s the best way to go.” What better way, then, to wind up this collection than with this instrumental sax-based jazz that gets a seal of approval from the man with the Dan himself.

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