Latest / Your Dark Companion Podcast / Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell & The Art of Musical Genius | Izze Stein | Ep 249
Transcript
- Nobody would have thought that I would be the one. Ryder, sports talk. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Oh, with the big mic. Oh, okay. Alright. Yeah. Okay. Now I get it. We got a lightning strike, boys. What happened over there, Grego? We had a little lightning strike right outside the window. Alright. Alright. Here's a tip for all these Americano League teams. Don't what? You said tip. Yeah. Tip. Okay. With a p. Keep jamming. The the ticket colon. Nothing but a big X jerk off set. This is a cool night or what? I wish somebody would hear that and go, bullshit. I'm back, bitches. Sir. Oh, man. I knew I should have backed out of this before I Our poor guest. Oh, my god. Well, hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Your Dark Companion. We are glad to have you with us no matter when you may be catching this podcast or no matter where you may be listening to it. You may listen to this at 03:00 this Wednesday morning. That's fine. You may be listening while you're taking care of whatever business in bathroom you have to take care of. That's fine too. See, these things don't matter in the world of the podcast. That's the great thing about it. One of the many great things about it. Anyway, we're here inside the nurturing biosphere of the mothership today, And, we have somebody with us today that I just found out there on the Internet. Now this is gonna require a little bit of a setup here because I usually don't go flitting about the Internet just looking for people or looking for stuff. But occasionally, I come up on something that may intrigue me just a little bit. And even more occasionally, I come up on something that grabs me really hard and says, okay, I gotta find out more about this. And that is the case with this person that we have today. I'm flitting about the Internet one day and I come across this girl, woman, lady, who is considerably younger than me. Of course, that encapsulates a very, very wide number. But she's way younger than me, and she is breaking down a Steely Dan song. Well, as many of you may already know, if you know anything about me at all, I love Steely Dan. I love them more than any other musical act out there, more than any other musical act ever. I always have, and I don't anticipate that ever changing. But when I see somebody like this breaking down a Steely Dan song, well, yes, I am intrigued. And I have to find out who this is, so I started looking around, and I landed on the name of this person. The name is Izzy Stein. And without further ado, I walked here in here in the room and told Shupi, we gotta find this person and get her on. Because I've never seen a person of her demographic, with the possible exception of my own young daughter, that into Steely Dan, that much into it. And I've certainly never seen anybody able to get inside what Steely Dan does the way that she did. And Izzy joins us right now. How are you? Oh, it is great to be here. Thank you, Mike. I can't wait to chat. I can't wait to chat either. And like I say, I I I don't go around looking for influencers or scene makers or this or that out there on the Internet. I literally just stumbled onto you. And I'm watching you talk about Steely Dan and because I know a lot about it too, although I don't know if I know as much as you, I would quickly learn that. But I was a skeptic at first saying, okay, let's just listen to this and see what this chick knows. And you started checking boxes left and right. And very quickly, I I recognize that this is somebody that may know more about them than I do. Maybe. I mean, who's to say? Yeah. Who's to say? And, you know, I'm I'm not here to to one up at anybody. I'm just I'm just I'm just mainly here to find out first and foremost, what got you into that? Yeah. So I am a musician, and I I actually got my start doing musical theater. I did a lot of shows when I was younger. I lived in New Jersey. I went into New York all the time and auditioned for Broadway shows. And then I ended up going to college for musical theater. I was in the musical theater program at the University of Michigan. And, really, I basically listened to musicals my most of my childhood. And my parents, who are from the Stila Dan era introduced me to a few essentials, the Beatles, James Taylor. But I my music was musical theater. But then a couple years into school, one of my teachers encouraged me to listen to nonmusical songs. And the first person I found was Joni Mitchell, which was Well, you're checking a lot of boxes for me here. Yeah. I just I I what happens is the way that I discover artists most of the time is I hear one song. And if I find myself listening to that song over and over again, I then listen to the album, and then I go into the whole catalog. So first, I heard Joni Mitchell. And then a few months later, I heard Black Cow by Steely Dan. And when I first heard Black Cow, it was so I'd never heard anything like that. And so I just dove in, and then I listened to Asia. And then I I re Spotify told me in the Spotify wrapped earlier this year that in the last ten years, I have listened to over eighty six hours of Steely Dan in the last decade, which, of course, I thought was a lot. But then when I posted that, all these people who've been listening for the last, you know, fifty years were like, you you know, try try eight thousand six hundred hours. And I was like, alright. I'll get there. I'll get there. But no. I mean, I had never really posted about Steely Dan before a few months ago when I got this Spotify stat. And then I posted that. It got a lot of responses, so I just leaned in and posted more about my love for Steely Dan. And then, like, the floodgates open, and I've just been connecting with this amazing Steely Dan fan base. And I've just loved it because everyone has so much I've been learning so much. So, anyway, that's my Steely Dan origin story in long form. Mine was a little bit different. I got there at the first. Heard do it again on the radio one night and thought, wow. This sounds a little bit different from the normal fare that we hear on the AM radio in those days. And I thought, okay, cool. And then I heard it again and again Yep. And started keying in on a few things like the eerie whirly vibe, Mhmm. The sitar solo. Mhmm. And, of course, there was Donald Fagan singing, which which I kinda gravitated gravitated to last, but started to realize that there's nobody out there who sings like that. Yeah. And at that time I was playing in a band and we were traveling around the Midwest and playing on the road quite a bit. Sweet. And the guy that I would ride with had can't buy a thrill on eight track at his car because, you know, it's the way we did things back then. And so we started playing that and before long, got way, way into that album, you know? And by the time that trip was finished, I'd pretty much memorized most of it, but went out and bought the record the very first day. And that was pretty much my gateway drug to it. Countdown to ecstasy came out. And I was a little late to the party there too. I was saying, well, you know, they put out one good album. This can't be this can't be better than that. Yeah. Well, I found out that, yes, it was better than that. And then Pretzel Logic came out and by then I was hooked. I was just absolutely done. I was just really, really eaten up with Steely Dan. Of course, by then we didn't know anything about them. They like it that way. And I thought that, you know, that it was just a band, Pretzel Logic rolled around and it was not a band. It was two guys and whoever they chose to be around at the time to play on their records. You know? Yes. Exactly. So there was, you know, kind of getting used to that a little bit, but that's my story. The the more they put out, the more I listened to it all, the more into it I got. Yeah. Yeah. That's so incredible that you even were there, like, a fan from camp by a thrill. That album is, like, a perfect album. Every track just hits. And it's amaze I mean, to have your first album be full of hits like that. Yeah. I mean, that literally happens. And it's also amazing for a first album to be unlike anything else that you heard on the radio back then. Now at that time, I, for one, was not smart enough to realize that, and I didn't hear a lot of other people talking about it either. So I I don't think that that's any kind of big failing on my part. But looking back on that now and listen listening to it now against the backdrop of everything else they ever did and then comparing it to what else was on the radio back then. And, yes, you see that this is a whole different animal. But even still, I mean, just I I if I could go back and be in an era of the world, I would hands down wanna be in the nineteen seventies just to turn on the radio and hear the variety that was available at the time. Like, I hear what you're saying that Steely Dan, they had a unique sound compared to the other artists at the time. But, like, the other artists at the time were also amazing. Like Yeah. Yeah. It was one after the other. And believe me, I don't say that throwing shade on any of the other artists at the time. I'm just saying that, you know, Steely Dan was a little bit different. I don't know if that necessarily makes them better or worse, but they were different. You know? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Unique. Yes. Unique. One on one. Yeah. So what got you into playing Steely Dan and what you, what got you into listening to Steely Dan so much that you would decided you would get on the internet and break down their stuff? Well, I, as far as playing live, I so I play a lot of shows where I play my original music, but I also do a lot of covers. And I, people compare me to Carol King a lot because of my look and also I play piano and sing. So I've done a lot of Carole King. And then because I really dove into Joni Mitchell, I started putting some Joni Mitchell on my set. And then the requests that people would give me were often just seventies, a lot of Elton John requests, Billy Joel requests. And, you know, especially once I started seeing how passionate the fan base was for Steely Dan, I was like, well, let me play some Steely Dan in my shows, you know, and really I mean, it's it's interesting because sometimes I'll play a Steely Dan song, and nobody in the audience will know what it is. I actually recently went on tour in The Philippines, and there were a lot of Steely Dan fans there that came because they saw my social media post, and so they showed up and asked for Steely Dan. But, also, there were some places that had no idea who Steely Dan was. So it's interesting because a lot of those songs are not necessarily, like, single like, sing along type, you know, everyone clap your hands. So if they're because they're in this sort of jazz rock fusion place. But there's a lot of people, especially a lot of people in my generation who I have talked about with Steely Dan and are now listening to Steely Dan that I've never heard of them before, which is just amazing. One of my close friends, I just saw him. He's like, yeah. Royal scam is great. And I'm like, this is amazing. Like, a whole new generation to love amazing music of from this catalog. And it is amazing music too. Yeah. I mean, the stuff that those guys compose and the meticulousness of their compositions, their recordings, everything about them is just it's just a cut above. You know? It's just a cut above everything you hear out there or everything I hear out there. Yeah. Like, also just the wisdom with which they come at the writing process. There's so many moments in their songs and in the placement of their like, even the single FM in between Asia and Gaucho, like that, it was just a cool, Like, to write about new like, music in that sense for a single in between two of their greatest albums. So smart. And Yeah. You know, they could've written about anything. I mean, something I love to discuss is their very last song, Everything Must Go. That song is beyond, you know, they they were so self aware in everything that they wrote, and we get to have that forever. So Yeah. Ones. That song always brings up a little bit of a tinge of regret for me, though. Everything must go? It it yeah. Because it was like they knew what they knew what they were doing. They knew that that was it, or Donald knew that that was it. Mhmm. Donald knew that anything else he was going to do from now on was going to be under his own name, and that was that was closing the chapter Yeah. Of, on Steely Dan. And as that song fades out, that's that's like a a like I'm standing on the shore and watching a whole segment of my life sail up into the wind just going like that. Yeah. Another thing that always got me about Steely Dan is and I'm really not not that much into this most of the time, but the lyrics. Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. Lee Dan because they were so, so murky, so mysterious. They made some sort of hint of sense to somebody, but I don't, I don't know who, maybe not even to them, but it's like, they just were really, really good at finding words that fit together, hang together, tell some sort of a story and sounded neat together. That I'm kind of a word nerd anyway. And that really tickled my funny bone. Yeah. Just when I spent the last p aster, I could borrow. Yeah. Yeah. Like, how do they even know? I mean, they both went to Bard. Right? So they were very educated, well educated. And but the thing is they don't use words that are not common. They don't use it in in a pretentious way. Like it actually is the right word for what they're trying to mean, and it encourages the listener to expand their knowledge rather than challenge what was written. So that's a gift too. I've I've heard a lot of people say that when they listen to Steely Dan, they feel like they're being talked down to, and they feel like that that those guys have the smartest guy in the room complex, that they've always gotta be the smartest guy in the room. And you know what? I can see both of those things, but, hey, give me more. I want more. I want you talking down to me, you know? And I want you to be the smartest guy in the room. Yeah. Yeah. And with the, so you asked about the, how I started to post about it. I mean, I really just took a leap of faith. I just thought I would do an album breakdown because I started actually with Pretzel Logic as my album breakdown because that album it a few of the tracks on that album just I think that was the first album that really had a unique character overall rather than just really great songs. Yeah. And, yeah, I just got a huge huge overwhelming response from people watching and commenting and following. And and then I was like, alright, let me do a breakdown of all of the albums, and and I can speak to as I was doing breaking down each of the albums and going track by track and really listening for all the moments that I wanted to talk about. When it comes to the lyrics, there were a lot of songs that I didn't know what they were about. But then when I looked into what they were about and went back in the lyrics, it was almost like everything was decoded. And it was fascinating that some of the topics that they chose to talk about were, like, super random and super unexpected. And also, like like, why were they even thinking to talk about this sort of subject? But it always the lyrics really told those stories every single time. It's incredible. It's definitely not run of the mill stuff. Not on any front. Nope. So do you play Steely Dan at your gigs a lot? Yes. I do. And especially now, people request. I have do? Yeah. So you're becoming known for this. Yeah. I guess so. I mean, it's also really fun because the only female voice that's ever sang on any of their songs was on Pixoline with Carolyn Lehenhardt. She sounds great. So I think maybe it's fun for people to hear a sort of different interpretation of the songs. And also a lot of the gigs I've been doing recently have been piano and voice. So they're like acoustic versions that really showcase the writing and the melodies of their their songs. Thank you for bringing up Pixelline. That's one of my favorite songs. Just wonderful. Yeah. Alright. Let's enough about them for right now. Let's talk about you. Alright. Tell me tell me a little bit about your musical scene. Alright. My scene. I have been in New York for seven years. And I so I mentioned that I moved to New York. I had this whole musical theater vision, went to school for musical theater, moved to New York, and then less than a year after I moved to New York, all of the theaters closed. And I really wanted to perform. So a little bit over a year after everything closed, I walked into this hotel that had a piano in the lobby, and I asked if they wanted a singer because it was I figured it might be COVID safe because it was pretty small. And they said, yes. So that's how my sort of my current trajectory started. I just started singing twice a week at this piano lounge in my neighborhood, and I then pursued more gigs. And as I was singing at all these different clubs and venues in the city, I I was doing mostly cover and mostly jazz gigs because there's a great jazz scene in New York City. And Mhmm. After doing covers for a while, I thought maybe I should try putting my own music out there and seeing what would happen. Because I had written a few musicals in the musical theater world, but I'd never tried writing sort of more, pop contemporary music. And I did a show at Rockwood Music Hall, which is no longer open, which is very sad because there was a lot of history there. And at that show, there was such a great response to what I was doing that I figured that the singer songwriter path was probably a good match to keep pursuing. And so then the songs that I performed that night at Rockwood, I ended up recording on an album, and I released the album last year. I went on my first three tours since I released my album last year. And now I'm continuing on that path. I'm starting the process of my next album. So that's where I'm at now. So questions, that's the album we're talking about here? That's the album. Yeah. What's what what's it like? I've not had a chance to listen to that to really any of it yet. Yeah. Well, I can tell you, as a Steely Dan fan, I think the three tracks that you'll vibe with the most, body of gold has a big major minor play, which is sort of when the music sounds well, you're a musician, so you know. But but for the people who are musicians, major minor, it goes from making a song sound emotional and a little bit sad to sounding bright, but in the span of seconds. So that's body of gold. Talk to me is another track on there that's very seventies inspired. There's a long outro there that's similar to a lot of silly dance songs. And then also, there's a track called unaware, which is very seventies coded, the chord progression. I hear a lot of also, in addition to Steely Dan, Kenny Loggins in that particular track. So a good groove there too. I had amazing musicians with me on this album, but the album itself is somewhere between soul and jazz. Nice. Nice. Yeah. Who are some of the other artists you like besides Steely Dan? Well, what I've been I mean, I'll ask you this too after I share, but I I love asking people what their Mount Rushmore of musicians are. So the four people that, like, you know, you put them in stone, who would they be? For me, it's Steely Dan. It's Joni Mitchell. And then I would also have my other two be Erica Badu and Amy Winehouse. Okay. Soul. Yeah. All across the board, but all under the umbrella of soul. So who is your Mount Rushmore? Alright. Steely Dan for sure. Yeah. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Heck yeah. Is another. Got it. I gotta have them in there. I really can't do this without McCartney. Mhmm. Gotta have him in there somewhere both for the Beatles and for what he has done on his own. A lot of people laugh at me, but I'm a sucker for McCartney. I've always been. Thanks. Don't care how silly I don't care how silly or how schlocky people might think he gets. I love it. Yeah. And, number four, for the moment, I think I'll stick with Theodore Roosevelt. His mixtape. Let let mixtape. Let let think about that a little bit. But those three are for sure. Yeah. That's great. I mean, I gotta have those three. Yeah. Do you ever like play with bands or anything like that or are you just a solo performer? I do both. I often play piano and sing, and there'll be a bassist and a drummer added. I've done gigs with a sax. I also do gigs where I stand and I have a pianist to play. Yeah. I love and I really don't collaborate with guitarists often, but I would love to. I mean Yeah. Especially for the Steely Dance stuff. I think if I keep playing it more, I'm gonna need some people who can nail those solos. Like, would be a big enhancement, I would say. I've seen some of your videos doing that. You got some moves, girl. Thank you. You got some moves. I mean, you can dance. You can move around and not look stilted or anything like that. It's just it just flows out of you. I appreciate that. All those years of dance training, you know, Broadway dance. And I I actually dance was the first thing I did before music. And, yeah, I mean, the only style I haven't really been able to incorporate in my steely dances is tap dance. So maybe there's something. Maybe with, like, Parker's band or or or some no. East East Saint Louis Toodleoo could probably have some tap soft shoe. It'd probably fit into something like that. Yeah. So what is the hometown music group that you're part of? Oh my gosh. Ah, it's it's always blows my mind to have a chat with someone, like, on a podcast, and they actually look into what I do because, you know, you just never know. Yeah. Hometown. So I so we're called Hometown Music Group because we're six friends who are all from the same hometown in New Jersey. And, actually, my brother is in the group with me, which is cool. And the four of us, we have been getting together in Nashville for the last few years and creating a songbook of our own, collaborating on sort of melding all of our different styles. And we put out our first album a couple years ago as well, and we yeah. We have a whole catalog of songs, and they're they're really they're songs that come from the heart and songs that speak about things that are related to home, hence the name hometown. And one of the other members, John, has also been really skyrocketing on social media, which is so cool. He's been posting. His name is John Pasiga, and he's been posting these this series. He plays piano, and the series is what is it called? Like, songs that shouldn't have a piano solo on them, and then he plays an amazing piano solo. And all those people come in, and they're like, oh my god. You did it again. And it's cool because he also covers in the that series a lot of songs from the sixties, seventies, eighties, and he nails them. So, yeah, John and my brother Merrick and Kyle and Brent and Carol and I, we have been creating music, and we're just we're hoping to get the song. I mean, a lot of the songs we've written are for specific intents. Mhmm. We have a song about moms, which we really would love to see featured one year for Mother's Day in some way because it's it's literally called mom song. And we actually recently wrote a song about In N Out Burger called In N Out, and we also wrote a song called Buc ee's, which I'm not sure if you saw that when you saw hometown music group. No. No. I didn't see that. Yeah. You wrote a song called Buc ee's? Oh, yes. And it is More Buc ee's? It is about Buc ee's. Oh, man. I'm a thief for Buc ee's. I can't I can't drive past one. No. It's impossible. What does your brother play? My brother is a writer, singer, rapper, and he also plays piano. He yeah. My brother, he writes music and lyrics, and he also wrote a book a few years ago. So he's a writer extraordinaire, and it's really fun to be collaborating with him. It's not like me. He's older than me. Yeah. You know, Billie Eilish and Phineas, they have that vibe, and I'm lucky to have my my only sibling is also a musician. I feel really lucky about that, and he's just the best. Do you have a set group of players that you play with when you do something other than solo stuff? You know, when I I guess I'm what I'm asking is, do you have a band of some sort? I I play with a band. And the way that I did my tour last summer, which was my first tour, was I actually I traveled solo, and then I had trios in the different regions that I played. So I played with a trio in Texas. We did three we did Austin, San Antonio, and Houston three days. Did not do Dallas, but I have to come back and do Dallas at some point. I had a Northern California trio. My Nashville the hometown group is my Nashville group, and then I also, of course, have a New York trio. And I actually really like playing with different I mean, maybe I'm just like Steely Dan. I can't you know, I don't wanna stick with the same musicians all the time Right. Because I love getting different flavors of different musicians' backgrounds and the way that they play. And I get a lot of ideas for my own writing and and the styles that I perform when I play with different musicians. So I didn't even think about how that's actually very similar to Steely Dan with bringing in all those session musicians. I'm just doing it live. You know, I don't know how familiar with the lay of the land of our Fairburg you are. Maybe not at all. This may not be a question you feel even slightly qualified to answer. But if you were going to play here, what type of room would you would you wanna play in? In Dallas. Yeah. I mean, what type of type of room do you play in at these other places you play? Right now, I'm living in this world of smaller venues where it's really intimate. I love filling up a room of, like, 50 to a 100 people, and it's like it becomes a listening room experience. Yeah. I mean, I'm not really I love outdoors. I love indoors. It could be a supper club where people eat. It could be a theater where there's your seats. I'm I'm pretty open. But, no, I really would I tried to play in Dallas for my tour. It's just the dates didn't work out. But I'm definitely due to come back to Dallas and do something, especially I'm connecting with a lot of Steely Dan people in Dallas, so I think there's probably Dallas on the horizon for some some event. Who do you think she would fit in at? I'm I'm speaking to Becca now. I mean, that opening bell where we're gonna listen to May Lynn and Jay Joyce coming Yeah. Is a really good place. That'd be good. But there, yeah, there's a lot of great small venues. Yeah, there would be a fit for you somewhere here in our Fairbird. The Echo Room would be interesting. Yeah. That would be interesting. Yeah. Alright. Now, I see you are headed down this way to play at Geraldine's Yes. In Austin before long? Yes. At the end of the month. That'll be with my my Texas trio. So that'll be a good time. Are any of those local guys that I might know? They're in Austin. Oh, okay. Yes. Okay. I I don't have that kind of reach. Hey. If you make it down to Austin, I will play I will play Steely Dan if you come, for sure. I don't want you to do that for me. I want want you to do what you wanna do. Oh, I wanna do it too. It would be a perfect match. Well, if you didn't do Steely Dan, what would you do? Oh, I mean, any honestly, I've learned so many songs over the last I guess I've been doing this for, yeah, like five or six years. I mean, I love anything from the seventies, as I mentioned, but I also I mean, I I love doing like early two thousands. I do Alicia Keys. I'll pull out some Britney Spears. I play some Bruno Mars, which people really love, Lady Gaga. I do some Adele. Sort of top 40 across the board. That's where I I know most of the songs from. Yeah. Your debut album, questions, was released in 2025. I don't think we touched on that too much yet, have we? No. What what's We could keep going. Yeah. What's that like? Question. So the music style of the jazz soul, I really want to pay homage to a lot of the women in in jazz and also r and b from I mean, really, from the beginning of the jazz era. There's some Ella Fitzgerald influence on there. There's a lot of Erica Badu, Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys influence. And the songs are just about a time in my life where I felt I had a lot of questions about where I was at in some romantic relationships and with my career, and hence, the title questions. So, yeah, there it's mostly romantic, but there's a song on there, Back to My Life, which is a total jazz standard. It sounds like it comes from the musical Chicago. And Yeah. It's just about the the story of what I was living in New York, which was I would perform on stage and it would be amazing. And then I would wake up the next day and things would be completely hard and difficult. And it just was a roller coaster of up and down, so I wrote a song about it. And that's a song that when I play, people really connect with across the board, I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see here. You've got your show at Geraldine's coming up in Austin Yes. That's right. On August 30. Yes. Right? Yep. That's right. And says a virtual concert is coming up August 15 at seven. Alright. Now tell tell us how that's gonna work. So the virtual concerts I've been doing for I started earlier this year, and they've been really fun because people can tune in from wherever they are. In the last show, there was a friend from The Philippines who came. And then the show before, someone from Russia tuned in, which both of those are wild to me because I, you know, I was doing it at a normal time for The US hours, and they were tuning in like way early in the morning. So with the virtual concert, I set up similar to this, but I have my piano, and I just play an hour of songs that original music and also a lot of people give requests. So that's always really fun, and anyone could tune in from anywhere for that. So if you're free on Saturday the fifteenth or the fifteenth or the sixteenth. Yeah. Yeah. Is what I've got. Sweet. Sweet. Yeah. Come through to the virtual concert. And if not this one, I'll do another one in September. So What is the web address for that? Well, if you sign up for my email list, I send everyone on my email list the link. And you can sign up for my email list on my website, which is izziestein.com, izzestein. And I send out the link the day of and then you can just hop on in. Alright. Yeah. That's pretty fantastic stuff. Also, you got on Patreon. You're Izzy Stein. Right? Yeah. And the Patreon is also new. I'm looking to add more as people come in. Right now, the part of the Patreon is that I do the virtual concert, and then I'm gonna do a q and a with just Patreon members after the show. But I really would like to add another event like, perhaps a vinyl listening session where maybe we listen to an album like a Steely Dan album and we just talk about it. I think that just sounds really fun to me. Well, that'd be fun. Yeah. I would get in on that or try to get in on that if you'd let me. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I would love it. So, Mike, do you have a favorite Steely Dan album? Don't do that to me. Don't make me do that. Right now, what are what are you leaning towards right now? Right now, I would probably be leaning toward, because I mentioned them earlier, Countdown to Ecstasy or Pretzel Logic. Mhmm. But give me a couple seconds and I'll start thinking about Katie Lied or the royal scam. And I'll go, no. No. I I think I'm gonna go with the royal scam or something. You know? I mean, it I I just like it all so much. Yeah. And it all hits me in such a way that nothing else does. Yeah. And speaks to me in a voice that that I didn't even know I had and nobody else could even get to. That it's just singular stuff for me. You know? It's it's just they they stand alone. I mean, love all other kinds of music and everything, but Steely Dan is just they they just they just speak to me in a way that nothing else does. And I know that makes me sound weird. No. It's true. It's you can't And then, you know, making it sound weird, they'd probably have it no other way. They'd probably look at me and say, okay. You're one of us. Yeah. No. I mean, as because I've now broken down every single Steely Dan album in a video. And as I did each breakdown, it's like every album has incredible moments. I mean, I kinda feel a little bad actually asking that question because it's I can't really choose a favorite. I mean, right, like on I recently did a long road trip and I listened to Royal Scam. And, I mean, Royal Scam is just every track is so special and put together so well. But also Gaucho is really interesting as far as the character goes, but every single album there's moments. So how can you even it's like picking a favorite child. You just don't do it. Okay. Let me ask you this about Steely Dan. Okay. They put out Gaucho and then they sort of dropped off the face of the universe. Yep. We had no idea for a long time whether we were ever going to see anything from them again. Walter was having a lot of troubles and eventually died. Yeah. And along the way, somewhere in there, they come back with two more albums. Talk a little bit about the difference in those albums and their other earlier stuff that you see. Well, I think before talking about the difference, I think just the fact that they actually took a twenty year hiatus and then came back and did more. I am not aware of any other band that has done that. And that it's really I mean, yeah, people take a few years of break, But, I mean, twenty years is a really long time, and a lot of life happens. And it it's just remark they could have put together bad albums, and I still would be singing their praises because that is just incredible to pick up with something after you've changed for decades of time. And and not I mean, both of them changed in different ways. I mean, Donald Fagan did all his solo albums or a lot of his solo albums in between. So he had his own personal musical growth, and I just think then on top of the fact that they actually put out these two albums, the fact that there are so many amazing moments on these albums is just it it just speaks. I mean, to me, that is what puts them on my Mount Rushmore. The fact that they created excellence for less than a decade in a row, and then they come back and they continue to create excellence. And then, of course, the two against nature was the Grammy award winning album. Mhmm. It's a great album. I mean, I love Jack of Speed. That's was one of the first Cecilia dance songs I heard as well. It's a great great horn arrangements on there. And yeah. I mean, everything must go. Godwacker is I mean, I mentioned Pixelline. I mentioned everything must go. I I also I love Godwacker. I think that song is just so much fun and also an interesting topic. The topic is that it's like hitmen that are like going after God. That's what it's about. I actually didn't know that until I did the album review and I looked into it. And it's like, oh, wow. Like, how do you even think of that? Like, came up with these topics before ChatGPT and before AI. Like, they were just using their minds. And I but, like, who comes up with that? Like but as far as the difference between those two albums versus the ones in the seventies, I think the context and the culture of the seventies was so rich and they had so much inspiration around them. I mean, from the first album, the song that is sort of a clap back to John Lennon's Imagine, people debate about it, but the Only a Fool would say that. I mean, that song is so, has such a great point of view, but the reason they were able to create that was because of, maybe not specifically John Lennon's Imagine, but, you know, the whole sentiment at the time of this counter culture, like, oh, we're gonna be hippies and we're gonna world peace, but we're not really gonna change or do anything. We're just gonna, you know, smoke a lot of weed and, you know, free love. It that, I think, the tension of I mean, a lot of their songs were created from this place of tension. Right? Like, this this wanting to challenge the world around them. And I think the seventies was the perfect environment for them to have that friction. When the February came around, I mean, it was just completely different world. I think two against nature, it came I believe it did it come out in 2000 or 2001? Now I'm not really sure. I think o one. Think. Yeah. I mean, you know what? We have resources. Let me see what the because I'm curious when it was in relation to it came out okay. So it came out February 2000. So it was before 09/11, which was kind of a really big shift in culture Mhmm. In many ways. I mean, 2000 might as well have been the nineties, and there was a lot of change. There was a lot of new technology, but it wasn't the same tension as the seventies. Everything Must Go coming out a few years later, that was the post 09/11 world with all that came with it. So perhaps there was a bit more tension for them to create from in that album. Yeah. But I I think both eras have merit, honestly. I I when I did my album breakdowns, the albums from the seventies definitely had a lot more love than the ones from the February. But I think that the February albums have a lot of amazing moments on them. That's what I'm They certainly have their place for sure. Yeah. They definitely have their place. Alright. This is Izzy Stein, and, you can chill out for just a couple seconds because I got a little something here that I've gotta do. We'll be back with a little bit more with Izzy coming up here. But first, let us tell you that, the Stolen Water Media Fantasy Football draft party is coming up tomorrow, the August 11 at what what is that? Dudley's. At At 06:30. At 06:30. This will be at Dudley's Sports Grill on Henderson. That is on Henderson just to the southeast of the fabled Knox Henderson exit. Just go there, head Southeast on it. You'll see it there on your right. And it'll be with, all the hosts from the Sunset Lounge, Norm, Rob, Alex, Mac, Ingle will be there. If you'd like to get even with something that guy has written lately, then here's your chance. Shuby will be there, and a friend of the show, the great and hilariously funny Paul Varghese is gonna be there too. So grab your friends and join us for all the chaos that comes with with all of us together and a fantasy football draft. And, of course, the great food at Dudley's. That is tomorrow at when? 06:30. 06:30. So you can either be by the channel or join us in person if you can. We'd love to see you there. Early, five is fine. Yeah. Get there early and get yourself a good seat. Alright. Izzy Stein back with us. She is a musician. We've been talking Steely Dan. Do you have anybody else that even approaches Steely Dan in your in your musical pantheon? As far as artists that I cover or that I That that you really well, both that you cover and that you really have that kind of regard for. You know, I mean, I would love to speak about Joni Mitchell for a bit because she was sort of my, she's the reason that I started writing. And I just think, going through all of her albums, she's another person that just really create, I mean, what's so cool about Joni Mitchell. If you were to talk about be Joni Mitchell, be my guest. I love her too. Oh, good. Good. And I know it's really weird for a guy, especially a guy of my demographic to say that, but greatness is greatness, and she is greatness. No. That that means a lot actually that you love her music because I I heard stuff is, I think a lot of the topics she writes about are very much geared towards women and I mean, she writes about, like my favorite album of hers is Hissing of Summer Lawns. Even though, of course, they all have their moments, but just that's the one I keep going back to. And there's she yeah. I I believe oh, no. I I'm thinking she writes this one song where she's talking about a girl looking at a a wedding dress in a window. And I'm actually that's actually on Hijira, now that I'm thinking of it, another amazing album. But what's so cool about Joni's albums is that she I mean, first of all, she wrote pretty much solo for a lot of I think I have to look into if she wrote all of her songs solo, but she did music and lyrics. You know? I mean, her guitar tunings are unbelievable. Yeah. I I've always thought of her as a a solo artist. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I mean, she certainly played solo, and she had bands with her too. But, no, I mean, she really transformed throughout her career in a exceptionally baffling way. I mean, started out doing folk, and then Mhmm. She was doing more pop. I mean, blue. She was playing piano on blue, and she played piano. I mean, I I have to do a deep dive. I I would love to do a deep dive video wise on all of Joni's albums. It's just every and then, you know, the late seventies, she had this whole era of sort of funk added into her folk sound. And I mean, I I like, now that I'm thinking about Joni, I've always wanted to learn her songs with the tunings that she used, and maybe that'll be my retirement. I'll just, like, spend five hours a day just trying to figure out how to play guitar like she did. She is so great. I've always been just a huge fan of hers. Yeah. And like I say, I know that's really weird for a guy to say, but No. No. Greatness is greatness. I don't care who it is. I don't care what it is. If it's greatness, it's greatness. And if I love it, I love it. Yeah. I think another artist I would put there is Billy Joel. His, did you watch the documentary that just came are you a Billy Joel fan? I am. Good. Did you see the document or, yeah, the docuseries that just came out about him? I think it was a few months ago. It told his story of, like, his whole career and life. If you haven't seen see this. I'd love to. Where is it? I am not sure. You know what? Let's figure it out. It it's just I learned so much about everything about him that it really yeah. It rounded out guys that when I'm into somebody, I wanna know everything about him. I wanna go all in, find out just how it is that they do what they do and why they do what they do and just everything I can. Yeah. That's how I'm wired. That's the way to be, dive in. Billy Joel and so it goes is on HBO. It actually premiered a year ago, but I watched it a few months ago. God. I I must have seen this. I I can't imagine that being out there without me seeing it, but It's it's really remember it, so maybe I didn't. Yeah. Yeah. But no, a lot of, I mean, he has some perfect albums in his anthology too, and another solo artist. He's just written some of the best songs. He's written so many of the best songs of all time. And that is, you know, when someone's able to if someone's able to write one song, that's great. But if someone can write dozens, it it puts you in a whole other category. Yeah. And you do it over and over again, then you can kinda look around at the room and say, any questions? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Who else tickles your fancy? Well, I mean, Erica Badu and Amy Winehouse. I did say on my Mount Rushmore, they're more, Amy Winehouse is from the early two thousands. Erica Badu from the late nineties, early two thousands. Both of them I mean, Amy Winehouse doesn't have a big anthology for obvious reasons, but her first album, Frank, is a masterpiece, and she wrote a lot of her songs solo too. She just had such a great point of view, and her voice is so distinctive and delicious. And she also something that I've taken from learning about Amy Winehouse is she did not like to sing a song the same way twice live. She would always change it up, change the melody or change the way she sang words, and that's I I love that, and that's what I do too. I really sometimes I go too far with changing up how a song sounds, but I just think it's fun to get you know, trick the the ear. You were so used to hearing something. And and you're a solo artist who's gonna say anything to you. Right. I mean, you know, I definitely wanna honor the artist. I don't wanna be out here stepping all over someone's work or or making it sound so different that you can't even hear the song anymore. But I think there's a way to do it tastefully, and she definitely did that. And then Erykah Badu also has a near perfect or I would say a perfect anthology. Every one of her albums is so interesting, and she she is, like, the queen of flow and soul. And her first album was similar to Steely Dan's in that it was every single song on there was a hit, which Mhmm. Like, to create any album where every single song is a hit is incredible. But if it's your first album, it that's mad respect because that's like you didn't even have to figure anything out. You just you know your sound and yourself so well that you can just come right out and lay it down. Yeah. Have them first try. I saw Erica Badu perform live in Madison Square Garden a few years ago, and it was the best live show I've ever been to. She is so talented. She's so good at telling a story and keeping an audience along for the ride. And and she just did so many performance art choices. She was making tea on stage at one point, like brewing tea and pouring it, and it was so small and so engaging. She played all these instruments in the show, she's gonna be at the Hollywood Bowl in a few weeks. So I am hoping that I will get to see her again. So, yeah, those those are my those are my top choices, I would say. What's Madison Square Garden like? I've I've never been to any that's an off the wall question, I know, but I've never been to anything there. Oh my gosh. Well, the next time you go to New York, try to see something. It might even if it's a sports game too. It's huge. I mean, the thing is, I'm sure you've been have you been to the Houston Rodeo? I've never been to the Rodeo, but I've been to a few things in Houston. Yeah. Well, I would say Madison Square Garden compares to the Houston Rodeo as far as the just like the size of it's like, it's thousands of people. I mean, something else I I got to do last year was I sang the national anthem at a Brooklyn Nets game at the Barclays Center, which is another huge stadium. Mhmm. And when you're in something like that, especially when you're on the floor and actually performing, it I mean, you just you can't really understand tens of thousands of people right in front of you. And that's what's so wild about these posts that I've been doing is the video breakdown I did of Asia has almost 500,000 views on Instagram. And to just think about what it feels like to sing for 60,000 people in the stadium, and now we're talking about this video has five or, I guess, like, eight times the amount of people that I saw in person is is it's hard to believe, hard to conceptualize numbers that big. And then people, you know, that go viral, they get millions of views, and that's just beyond. I mean so so in short, Madison Square Garden is is just a great it's it's immense, and there's a ton of history there. And if you're going to Madison Square Garden, you're probably seeing a team or an artist that's great, so you'll have a great time. I just had to see what you'd have to say about Madison Square Garden. It's New York, baby. I mean, Taylor Swift got married there for a reason. Yeah. Alright. Now we gotta we'll wrap things up here. But before we do, I wanna give you a chance to tell everybody where to find your stuff. I am Izzy Stein on all social platforms, and I spell it I z z e s t e I n. So Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube. YouTube. I also have my my website, izzystein.com, and my email list, which you can sign up for on my website. And as we talked about before, I do a monthly virtual concert, which you can tune in from wherever you are. The next one is this Saturday, August 15 in the evening, which I will send the link out to my email list sign up. So if you wanna be a part of that and request some Ceili Dan or request another artist, definitely sign up for the list and come to the come to the virtual concert. Girls got chops, kids. You need to get in on this. She's good. Izzy, cannot thank you enough. This has been fun. Yes. A lot of fun. Mike, thank you so much for having me and the whole the whole podcast team. Appreciate your guys' time. Alright. She is Izzy Stein. Check her out. We are your dark companion. We thank you very much for being by the channel today. We do need you to help us out by sharing us on your social media. And you know the way we used to say telefriend back in the day? Well, this is kinda the same thing. Share us on your social media, get us out there, and we will stay after this thing because we like it, we like you. Till next time. Bye. Alright. I'm gonna go take my pants off. You're Dark Companion is a stolen water media presentation.