Steely Dan fans are likely to be a little shaken by this news; Just 10 days after the group’s Walter Becker died, his partner Donald Fagen has canceled the last four dates of his current solo tour due to illness.
Fagen and his band the Nightflyers have called off this week’s shows in Portland, Seattle, Saratoga, Calif. and San Francisco, and no explanation other than illness has been given for the cancellations.
Fagen and company began the tour on August 3, playing a mix of Steely Dan favorites and material from Fagen’s four solo albums. Before the tour Fagen told us there’s a different between those two batches of songs:
“Well, I think that in my solo albums, um, tend to be, I tend to be more…I guess the songs tend to be more personal, maybe, and where in contrast to Steely Dan material in which Walter and I are perhaps more journalistic in some way, telling stories about stuff, commenting on things and so on. That happens with my solo stuff, too, but generally speaking they’re more autobiographical.”
Fagen is slated to take Steely Dan on the road for the group’s first tour since Becker’s September 3 death on October 13 in Thackerville, Okla.
Gary Graff is an award-winning music journalist who not only covers music but has written books on Bob Seger, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen.