Dirty Logic pays tribute to Steely Dan with a hometown show

The recent interest in so-called “yacht rock” — sparked by a new HBO documentary on the subject — has brought the names of several bands from the ’70s back into the public consciousness. One of the acts mentioned in the film is Steely Dan, the three-time Grammy Award-winning group. But in the minds of some of Western North Carolina’s top musicians, the appeal of Steely Dan’s music has never waned.

Nearly a dozen of those WNC players and singers have come together as Dirty Logic, a tribute band devoted to the idiosyncratic and unconventional group. Dirty Logic plays the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, Jan. 11.

Like everyone who eventually joined Dirty Logic, Patrick Armitage is a busy, in-demand musician who has been involved in many high-profile musical projects in and around Asheville. In 2018, the former drummer for the Jon Stickley Trio was in discussions with other performers after performing in a one-off “pickup gig” in Asheville, when one of the musicians asked Armitage what his dream project would be. “What I’ve always wanted to do,” he replied, “is put together a Steely Dan tribute.”

High standards

Steely Dan came together in upstate New York in 1971, when studio musicians Walter Becker and Donald Fagen decided to do something more interesting and challenging than their previous gigs. While the earliest Steely Dan lineup was a proper band, by the mid-1970s Becker and Fagen retreated to the studio and worked with carefully selected artists chosen for what they could bring to each track.

Between 1972 and 1980, Steely Dan released seven studio albums, six of which would go Platinum (1 million copies sold) or better. Though more of an “album band” than a purveyor of singles, Steely Dan nonetheless landed 10 of its 18 singles of that era on the U.S. Top 40 charts. Songs like “Do it Again,” “Reelin’ in the Years,” “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” “Peg, “Deacon Blues” and “Hey Nineteen” are among the band’s many classics.

Those and other songs in the group’s catalog are catchy and memorable. Any serious musician will tell you something else that characterizes Steely Dan songs: They’re not easy to play. The arrangements are complex, and the jazz-tinged (and sometimes just plain jazz) compositions require real skill and commitment.

Armitage realized that if his dream were ever to become a reality, he’d have to aim high. “I knew that I had to get some of the best session [musicians] in town,” he recalls. “And that it would be hard to put something like that together and get people to commit.” But when he made the decision to move forward and started making calls, he found the collaborators he needed.

One week after that fateful postgig conversation, Dirty Logic held its first rehearsal. “We set a superhigh standard,” he says. “We rehearsed every week.”

Five months later, the new group played its first show, at the now-shuttered Isis Music Hall in West Asheville. “That show sold out,” Armitage says with pride. “We knew right there: ‘OK, this is really a thing.’”

Inevitably, there was some turnover in the group’s lineup. But overall, Dirty Logic has remained remarkably stable since its early days. Bassist Jake Wolf joined a few months after the group’s launch; then as now, he’s impressed by the caliber of musicianship within the band. “Everyone is really good at walking that tightrope: having deep respect for the music as it was written and recorded, and doing the thing authentically while still being themselves,” he says.

Armitage notes that because of the demands of such a large ensemble — typically 11 people onstage — when a show is booked, each musician has a replacement lined up. “Every person in this band has at least two people that they can call on if they can’t do a gig,” Armitage says.

Not just yacht rock

Because of the band members’ many commitments, Dirty Logic plays an average of only eight shows each year. The farthest the large ensemble has traveled for a show was a “crazy festival” in Alabama. (“We all got food poisoning,” Armitage recalls with a pained laugh.) In general, the group books shows within a few hours’ drive from Asheville.

Against that backdrop, hometown shows for Dirty Logic are rare. The upcoming performance at the Wortham Center will be the group’s first local gig since an early September show at Salvage Station shortly before the venue fell victim to flooding from Tropical Storm Helene. Wolf says that in the aftermath of the devastation to the region, the upcoming show “feels like a homecoming. These shared experiences — to be performing and to be in the audience — feel really meaningful,” he says.

For this show, the group — which Wolf estimates has at least 50% of Steely Dan’s music in its current repertoire — will play two albums in their entirety. The program will feature hardcore fan favorite The Royal Scam (released in 1976) and the 1977 blockbuster album Aja.

Wolf says that while The Royal Scam isn’t the best-known Steely Dan album, “from a musician’s standpoint, it’s a big, big album. It signaled a departure from what they had been doing and toward jazz-rock.” Aja is immersed in a jazz vibe as well, and it holds the distinction of being Steely Dan’s biggest-selling record. “Playing Aja shows the true versatility and the essence of why we wanted to do this band,” Armitage says.

The Dirty Logic performance in January will also feature a selection of popular hits from other Steely Dan records. Emphasizing that the group enjoys all of the songs in its deep repertoire, Armitage chuckles and says, “You kind of have to play [the hits]. … If you play a bunch of B-sides, maybe they’re not going to come see you again.” 

On the subject of that yacht rock, neither Wolf nor Armitage is on board with describing Steely Dan with that label. “They have some hits that coincide with that movement,” Wolf allows. “But I always think of Steely Dan as a bunch of jazz prodigies playing pop music.”

WHO: Dirty Logic
WHERE: Wortham Center for the Performing Arts, 18 Biltmore Ave., avl.mx/eay
WHEN: Saturday, Jan. 11, 7 p.m. $40