With the announcement of Steely Dan performing at Coachella in 2015, the Internet’s all a-buzz with millennial echoes of “WTF is a Steely Dan?” and secret admirers coming out of the woodwork with their “been on that Steely Dan tip since __ (insert year that proves little because people who tweet are inherently born after Steely Dan was Steely Dan)”. Meanwhile, there’s a collection of Rangers songs entitled Session Man that were it performed with other session men and women would likely eclipse the Coachella set in transformative power. Point being: fuck the past, better tomorrows.
Session Man was recorded by Joe Knight, the mastermind known as Rangers, between May and November of 2014. Did he coin his project with the optimism that players would be added? We may always wonder, as it’s going on four years since the release of Pan Am Stories and lone Knight keeps cranking out the sessions for a faithful few able to track down his scattered nuggets across tape labels and his Bandcamp page. Session Man embarks on a familiar journey through soft rock pastures calibrated to equal parts psychedelia and Americana. Joe Knight has his niche and writes it like nobody is listening or pushing him to be more than consistently himself. As long as it remains this way, there will be no reunion tour, no 25 year anniversary set at Coachella, and there will be no bad Rangers records.
