Northeast Corridor: Steely Dan Live

First live Steely Dan album in over 25 years, recorded across tour dates at Beacon Theatre, The Met Philadelphia & more. Featuring Hey Nineteen, Aja, Reelin' in the Years & more.

First live Steely Dan album in over 25 years, recorded across tour dates at Beacon Theatre, The Met Philadelphia & more. Featuring "Hey Nineteen," "Aja," "Reelin' in the Years" and more.
Most rock & roll bands are a tightly wound unit that developed their music through years of playing in garages and clubs around their hometown. Steely Dan never subscribed to that aesthetic. As the vehicle for the songwriting of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, Steely Dan defied all rock & roll conventions. Becker and Fagen never truly enjoyed rock - with their ironic humor and cryptic lyrics, their eclectic body of work shows some debt to Bob Dylan - preferring jazz, traditional pop, blues, and R&B…

A companion album to Northeast Corridor: Steely Dan Live, Donald Fagen's The Nightfly Live captures a 2019 performance of the 1982 album by Steely Dan (or the Steely Dan Band, as Fagen chooses to call them in the years following Walter Becker's 2017 death). Original producer Gary Katz is on board to capture all the sonic intricacies of this concert, helping the live album to sound remarkably similar to its studio predecessor. There are differences, to be sure: the digital punch of the 1982 record has been warmed, the beats swing a bit more, Fagen's voice is thin and wispy, the backup singers take the lead on "Maxine," and there's a bit more emphasis on R&B rhythms – all elements that make this feel like a concert despite the precision of the production and performances. It's enough to keep Donald Fagen's The Nightfly Live fleet on its feet, which is enough to keep this record fun.