I’ve never seen Steely Dan in concert. I’ve been casually aware of their music for a long time, having heard a few of their hits on classic rock radio for most of my life, but I really didn’t start taking a deep dive into their catalog until the last year or so.

Tribute acts are often hit or miss, in my book. I’ve only seen a couple of really great ones, and the rest were really just bar bands devoted to covering one band’s music.

Madison, Wisconsin’s Steely Dan tribute act Steely Dane is one of those great ones. I bought a ticket to last Saturday night’s show earlier this year expecting not much more than a fun night out at one of my favorite venues in Green Bay, listening to some old school yacht rock. (I realize that Donald Fagen would likely tell me not-so-politely to “go —- myself” for lumping the Dan into that category. If you’ve seen HBO’s recent Yacht Rock documentary and stuck around for the end credits, you’ll know why.

Put simply, Steely Dane is an outstanding tribute act, and I’ll absolutely go see them again the next time they come to the Green Bay area. I’ll talk a little more about the show in a minute, but first, some background info about the venue and my memories there.

The Meyer Theatre is a really special place for me, one of my all time favorite entertainment venues in town. It opened in 1930 as a vaudeville theater and a single screen movie palace called the Fox Theatre (owned by William Fox of 20th Century-Fox), and was converted to a three screen triplex in the late 70s. When I was younger, the balcony area served as the upstairs “big” screen, with a fake floor installed from the edge of the balcony to the stage. The main theater floor was then split down the middle to make two smaller screening rooms.

I loved seeing movies on the massive upstairs screen back in the day. I have vivid memories of seeing Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare there on opening night in the fall of ’91 when I was 14, with that last 15 minutes in old-school red/blue 3D. It was the second R-rated movie I was ever allowed to see in the theater. Incidentally, the first was Terminator 2: Judgment Day earlier that summer – but that was at a different theater.

I also remember seeing Batman Returns on the big upstairs screen at the first matinee on opening day in ’92 and Wayne’s World 2 on opening weekend in ’93. And later, the Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back Special Editions and Batman & Robin when that theater turned into a second-run house.

I remember seeing So I Married an Axe Murderer in one of the smaller downstairs screens on opening day with my sister, her best friend at the time, and one other dude we didn’t know who walked out halfway through. Until the theater was restored to its original configuration in the early 2000s, I always wondered why the downstairs screening rooms had one wall that looked so ornate and fancy, and the other was so plain looking.

In its modern incarnation, I’ve seen quite a few memorable shows at the Meyer. I saw “Weird Al” Yankovic there a few years ago, when he played all deep cuts and rarities and left the hits off the setlist. I saw Taylor Tomlinson perform there on Oscar night a couple of years ago, the night Will Smith slapped Chris Rock in the face. I saw Richard Marx and Edwin McCain there one night about 20 years ago, each performing a “Storytellers”-like acoustic set with their behind-the-scenes commentary and memories between songs. In the summer of 2007, I witnessed my cousins’ local band Berken opening for The Bangles. Now, that was a great show.

Another great show at the Meyer was Green Bay’s own Pink Floyd tribute act, Project Pink, performing The Dark Side Of The Moon in its entirety one night and The Wall from start to finish the next night – complete with an actual wall built in front of the stage and everything. Their attention to detail and showmanship are awesome in their own right.

The 14-member Steely Dane opened Saturday night’s show with Peg, one of the definitive yacht rock classics, and followed with two sets of Steely Dan classics that included Dirty Work, Do It Again, Hey Nineteen, Any Major Dude Will Tell You, Kid Charlemagne, Bodhisattva, Aja, Deacon Blues, Don’t Take Me Alive, Rikki Don’t Lose That Number, Reelin’ In The Years and others, before capping off the show with Donald Fagen’s solo track Maxine and the crowd-pleasing My Old School.

Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were notorious perfectionists in the studio, demanding a lot from the session musicians who played on their records. It takes a tight band with top flight chops to be able to credibly pull off their music in a live setting, and Steely Dane has them in spades. A phenomenal tribute act, they play all over the Midwest. If you’re even a casual fan of the Dan, go see this group when they come to your town. You’ll have a blast.