With a Gun

Well Zoo Freaks, the Crew is spinning a deep cut off Pretzel Logic that still rides like a two-lane highway out of some dusty western town. With a Gun clocks in at just over two minutes and feels like the most country-flavored number the Dan ever cut, the kind of chugging acoustic strummer with pedal steel that makes you picture a guy settling every score the hard way. Biographer Anthony Robustelli called it out as that exact thing, a second-person tale of a hapless loser who answers every problem with murder. The lyrics lay it out plain: the narrator spots a face he has seen before, the man running from his door after he owed money but paid with something more. Did you pay the other man with the piece in your hand and leave him lying in the rain? That is the whole story in one sharp question.

It is pure Becker and Fagen irony dressed up in western clothes. The second verse has the pair founding a clinic on the hill until the partner catches fingers in the till and the bill gets settled the same way. Then the bridge tips the hat to every cowboy picture the fool has ever watched: when you are born to play the fool and you have seen all the western movies, woe to the one who does you wrong. You hide in the bushes and murder the man with Luger in hand. Short, sharp, and dry as the dust on a desert road. Jeff Skunk Baxter laid down the pedal steel that gives it that edge, while the acoustic guitars keep the gait simple and the drums push it forward without any of the usual Dan sophistication under the hood. It sits right there on side two of Pretzel Logic, right between the title track and Charlie Freak, one of those quick genre sketches the band never tried again.

That kind of storytelling is pure Donald and Walter, two cats who started writing together long before they ever had a band name. They met up at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson back in 1967. Fagen was walking past the Red Balloon cafe when he heard Becker practicing electric guitar and it sounded so clean and professional he figured the guy had to be from somewhere with real chops. He walked right in and asked if he wanted to be in a band. They discovered they dug the same mix of jazz, Chicago blues, soul, and the British Invasion stuff, so they started writing songs on the piano in the common room of Becker’s dorm. One of the early outfits was called the Leather Canary and it even featured Chevy Chase on drums, the same Chase who later made a name for himself in comedy. They played the usual college gigs and began figuring out that their songs were a little too twisted for the straight pop market.

After college they drifted down to Brooklyn, living cheap and hustling songwriting gigs. They even landed a spot touring as part of the backup band for Jay and the Americans, picking up sessions with cats like Kenny Vance and getting a taste of the midtown studio world. One of their early tunes ended up on a Barbra Streisand album. By 1971 the city was turning mean and Gary Katz, who had become an A&R man at ABC/Dunhill out in Los Angeles, pulled them west to work as staff songwriters. Officially they were supposed to grind out hits for the label’s teen acts, but they used the office piano to plot their own band instead. Early in 1972 they started rehearsing after hours with guitarists Denny Dias and Jeff Baxter plus drummer Jim Hodder. Donald handled keys and Walter the bass, and they cut their first album at the Village Recorder with engineer Roger Nichols. That became Can’t Buy a Thrill, and the rest of the story rolled out from there.

By the time Pretzel Logic hit the shelves in 1974 the band had already stopped touring and turned into the studio duo we know, calling in the best session players for each track. With a Gun is one of the last glimpses of that early lineup still present, with Skunk Baxter’s steel giving the outlaw pose just enough bite. The whole album is full of those tight little stories about hustlers, time travelers, and lost souls, and this one keeps the same cynical eye while wearing a cowboy hat for two minutes and change. You will be what you are just the same, the chorus keeps reminding us, no matter how many times the gun comes out. That is the Dan in a nutshell, watching the human comedy from a safe distance and writing it down with perfect chords.

If you want to dig deeper into the whole catalog the official site is the place to start at steelydan.com, where the bio lays out the early years and the later studio years in their own words. The verified Facebook page keeps the news and the old photos rolling at facebook.com/SteelyDan, and the official Instagram is the only one that counts at instagram.com/steelydan_official. For the fans who keep the conversation going there is a public appreciation group called Fire in the Hole that preserves the music and the stories at facebook.com/groups/181913608561346. Meanwhile the Zoo Crew keeps the freeform rock spinning right here on THE ZOO for every Zoo Freak who still likes the deep cuts with the long stories attached. That is the whole ride, brothers and sisters, from a Luger in the bushes to the first piano in a college dorm. Keep the volume up and the dust off the needle.