There comes a day when any major dude will tell you that… you’re off the tour. Aimee Mann revealed Wednesday that she’s been dropped from a Steely Dan tour that she had been announced to join this summer. “No one is entirely sure why,” she wrote, “but it seems they thought their audience wouldn’t like a female singer-songwriter?”
Mann dropped the news within one of the four-panel cartoons she has recently ben posting on Instagram to document her life, and subsequently followed it up with a handful of Twitter replies about the unexpected severance.
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The alleged dismissal took Mann particularly aback because, she wrote in the illustration, “As it happens, Steely Dan is the one band that I 100% love, with no reservations, so it really sucks.”
Not surprisingly, given the overlap between their fan bases, expressions of distress over a mystery rift between Mann and Donald Fagen, two of the most revered singer-songwriters in modern pop history, quickly began appearing on social media.
Among the fans of both weighing in with support for Mann was fellow artist Jason Isbell, who tweeted: “Aimee opened for us, and I’m so glad to say our audience loved that shit. I was very much honored she’d do it. … My wife (Amanda Shires) hates Steely Dan. I have discussed that with Aimee Mann, who truly loves Steely Dan. Now I’ll never again try to convince my wife that Steely Dan is good.”
In the final panel of her cartoon, Mann writes, “But you know what? People are allowed to not like you, for whatever reason.” An additional thought bubble reads: “Good luck to all bands.”
When the tour was first announced, Steve Winwood was billed as a hear-co-headliner, but on Feb. 1, the news went out that Winwood was off the tour and Mann and Snarky Puppy would be Steely Dan’s opening acts in his stead. Snarky Puppy was — and presumably still is — booked for the first part of the tour, from May 20 through June 19, and then Mann was to have opened June 21 through July 3.
Reps for Steely Dan could not immediately be reached for comment, but the group’s tour page does not currently list any opening acts for the concerts happening after Snarky Puppy takes leave June 21. A number of individual venues’ websites continue to advertise Mann as the opening act on her scheduled dates, although Ticketmaster no longer lists her.
Mann hasn’t lost her sense of humor about the situation, as she tweeted, “All is forgiven if Donald just tells me what Brooklyn is about,” referring to the not entirely self-explanatory song “Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me).”
Mann fans, meanwhile, are clear in their feelings that the Dan camp owes the woman who made the “Charmer” album an explanation.
Mann has been open about her Steely Dan fandom in the past. In an interview last fall for Forbes, she talked about her love for the song “Home at Last” and added, “I love Steely Dan and to me Steely Dan has an enormous amount of feeling that I feel like nobody ever gives them credit for. There’s an enormous amount of feeling. The characters are sad, and pathetic, and despairing, and drug addicts, mostly involved in these terrible dead-end relationships. What’s not to like?”
In response to Isbell’s tweet about how well his shows with Mann went, and his wavering feelings about Steely Dan, Mann wrote, “You sweetheart, thank you for saying that. I was so proud to be a part of your scene.”
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