The Stacey Brothers’ Big Band Steely Dan project at Ronnie Scotts

The Royal Scammers’ January residency at Ronnie’s has become an annual fixture and hopefully will be for years to come on this showing. Jeremy and twin brother Paul Stacey’s 14-piece sets out to honour the singular talents of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, the founders and leaders of Steely Dan, whose sardonic, surprising, catchy and downright groovy songs continue to light up pop, rock and jazz since their origins in the early 1970s. 

There could be several ways of doing this: go big band instrumental as Woody Herman did on his 1978 record Chick, Donald, Walter and Woodrow; go guitar-heavy and focus on the more stripped-back and rocky early Dan tunes; or take the hardest road – assemble a fabulous group of musicians and reproduce each tune as faithfully as possible. This means tackling some of the most famous guitar, sax and drum solos in rock history and reproducing a smorgasbord of sounds, often used just once or twice during a set – the marimbas on Aja, the timbales on My Rival for example. And this is exactly what the Royal Scammers set out to do, with tunes like “Hey Nineteen”, “Deacon Blues” and “Black Cow” being brought to life in vivid detail, as true to the composers’ vision as is possible. 

It makes sense. After all, Becker and Fagen were notoriously fastidious, with every note and sound counting for something and each painstaking album utilising the skills of the best players in town. The Scammers are treating the Dan’s work as respectfully an orchestra would a Mozart symphony. Of course there is inevitably individual input, for example, Andy Caine sings those amazing lyrics with great clarity but he does not attempt to impersonate the idiosyncratic Donald Fagen (that would have been weird), but in every other way all the intricacies of the originals are beautifully realised here. 

The horn voicings, the backing vocal phrasings, even the triangle part on Gaucho (which brought the house down!) and of course, that guitar solo on “Kid Charlemagne” – each were rendered with swagger, accuracy and dynamism. And the backing vocals – so crucial on these tunes – were beautifully rendered by the trio of singers, each of whom were familiar from seeing Jools Holland’s band, David Gilmour, Beverley Knight, the Strictly band and Van Morrison’s group. As for the tune “Aja” itself, left for the set’s climax, Jeremy Stacey’s take on the famous Steve Gadd outro was jaw-dropping and fully committed. But as impressive, though more quietly, were the sonic details from keyboardists Dave Arch and Gary Sanctuary.

None of this can be easy. Only a lifetime of absorbing the originals could enable Paul Stacey to embody Larry Carlton, Denny Dias, Jeff Skunk Baxter, Steve Khan and Elliott Randall on the same night. His frankly incredible rendition of Randall’s wild solo on Green Earrings would surely have got the thumbs up from current Steely Dan guitarist Jon Herington, and had this audience on its feet (well, me anyway).

It was pleasing to me that the Scammers chose, for this set, to avoid some of the better known Dan hits such as “Do It Again”, “Reelin’ in the Years” and “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number”. Instead we were treated to rarely heard killer tunes such as “The Glamour Profession”, “My Rival” and the labyrinthine Keith Jarrett-derived masterpiece “Gaucho”. Of the earlier Dan classics there was “Night by Night” and the brilliant Pretzel Logic, as an encore, but even if the set was double the length it would be hard to fit in all of Don and Walt’s great tunes – I’ve been to five or six Steely Dan concerts and gigs by cover bands and still not heard earlier gems such as “Doctor Wu”, “Your Gold Teeth” and “Throw Back the Little Ones”.

On “Josie”, brilliant backing vocalist Bryan Chambers took on the lead vocal part – a smart move, as he brought another tone and a new slant on the tune, and enabling Caine to switch to lead guitar to nail that lovely, wistful Walter Becker solo. And on tenor saxes, Andy Ross and Jim Hunt channelled multiple reed personalities from the later Dan albums – Wayne Shorter, Tom Scott, Mike Becker and Pete Christlieb, with Ross’s Deacon Blues solo – a tribute to Christlieb – truly searing the soul.

One of the benefits of hearing these tunes in a smaller space is that the lyrics don’t get lost – as they tend to in the cavernous Wembley Arena or the 02. Caine, Chambers, Sumudu Jayatilaka and Louise Clare Marshall each seemed to relish the often humorous but also dark, poignant, substance abuse-drenched lyrics. 

The Royal Scammers is a truly ambitious project from some of the UK’s most in-demand musicians and the night left me moved, and utterly in awe yet again at the songwriting, lyric writing, arranging, thinking and feeling of Steely Dan.

BAND LIST

Paul Stacey, lead guitar, Jeremy Stacey, drums, Andy Caine, lead vocal, guitar
Robin Mullarky, bass, Dave Arch, keys, Gary Sanctuary, keys
Sumudu Jayatilaka, Louise Clare Marshall, Bryan Chambers, backing vocals
Jim Hunt, Andy Ross, saxes. Trevor Mires, trombone, Simon Finch, trumpet,
Pete Eckford, percussion