Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary

My thoughts on the latest release from Ringer Films, which takes a look at one of the most bizarrely popular and also one of my favorite sub-genres of music.

I won’t lie—when I heard that Ringer Films were making a yacht rock documentary (excuse me, a dockumentary) a palpable wave of anxiety and concern washed over me. It didn’t matter that it was being made by people who do a good job with music documentaries (the Woodstock 99 documentary was outstanding), it didn’t matter that one of my favorite music writers and critics (Steven Hyden) was involved— I was worried.

Yacht rock, ever since its enshrinement as a genre (?) in the awesome web series from the early 2000s, has become not just a cliche but something so misunderstood. I, as an avid Steely Dan fan, was ahead of the game when it came to loving this music, but the other artists and groups associated with this sound and vibe became something I enjoyed and not just in an ironic way. The technical precision, the sheen, the production, I recognized how great it was at being exactly what it was. There was no (or very little) irony there.

Though I’ve taken my title for this newsletter from High Fidelity and there’s a lot of that in my view and approach to music/culture/life, I find myself rejecting some of the snobbish tendencies that go along with that. I’m a little more ecumenical in my tastes and not binding myself by some of the more conventional wisdom/thinking when it comes to musical taste. Now, this is to certain degree—don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of stuff where I can be a real typical music snob. But something like yacht rock, I can really appreciate and enjoy it because I take it for exactly what it is and don’t try to make it into something else.

While I had these worries, and honestly found the first part of the documentary to be concerning because it seemed to play into those anxieties, ultimately Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary was a success in my eyes, probably only bested by that Woodstock 99 documentary in my eyes amongst the Ringer Films/Music Box series.

One thing I really appreciated is that the documentary featured two of the major contributors (J.D. Ryznar and Steve Huey) to the early Internet comedy series that came to define the genre were prominently featured in the documentary. I’ve found it kind of upsetting that as yacht rock has become a distinct genre of music (with its own Sirius XM channel) that the people who really created this term and defined this kind of music got a bit lost in the shuffle. It all starts with those people and they should be properly recognized by anyone who’s writing/thinking/working on this music.

Getting Hollywood Steve and J.D. Ryznar on there to talk about this music they did so much in terms of defining and bringing to people’s attention, I was extremely happy about that and was won over by that choice.

I also liked that they moved quickly past the cliche of people wearing boat captain hats and drinking sweet drinks as the epitome of yacht rock. While there is some of that nautical element to the music (see Christopher Cross’ “Sailing”), that’t not really what that kind of music is about and the makers of the documentary correctly identify that. What they get into is both the people and the sounds that make up yacht rock, which is the most important part of the equation.

What the documentary makes quite clear is that a big part of what makes this genre what it is comes from the people playing on the tracks. They’re talking about the rotating cast of session musicians, usually who gained notoriety playing on Steely Dan records, that appeared on the different records. The musicians who played on these records were at the top of the heap when it comes to pure virtuosic skill. That’s one of the things that is under appreciated about the music we’d put into this category. The people playing on the tracks and writing these tracks are REALLY good at what they do. The Porcaro brothers from Toto (who also pop up on Steely Dan and Michael Jackson tracks), David Paich (who worked with Boz Scaggs), Jay Graydon, Tom Scott (I mean, look at this guy’s credits as a sideman!), just to highlight those who were a part of the documentary. Now, you might not enjoy it or appreciate it and that’s ok (not everything is for everyone). But these musicians are as talented as you get. Then you couple it with people like Fagen and Becker, Loggins, McDonald, just to name a few of the central figures of this music, and you get groups and a sound that’s really… good.

The talking heads in the documentary are also sure to identify some of the sonic trademarks of the yacht rock sound (the more I think about it, the more I think the genre really should just be called “smooth music” because the yacht element of it is so tenuous). Some of those sonic qualities, first identified by the Yacht Rock webseries creators and then emphasized in the documentary are:

• High production value

• Use of "elite" Los Angeles–based studio musicians and producers associated with yacht rock

• Jazz and R&B influences

• Use of electric piano

• Complex and wry lyrics about heartbroken, foolish men, particularly involving the word "fool"

• An upbeat rhythm called the "Doobie Bounce"¹

The electric piano, that distinctive rhythm you hear on “What a Fool Believes” or “Rosanna” by Toto, all really jump out and you notice them as you listen to more of this kind of music. I also think the influence of jazz, specifically in things like the kinds of chord changes and even that individual virtuosity, is quite apt and how I tend to think about this kind of music. There is certainly that R&B element to the songs too; the way that the Pointer Sisters can so effectively and smoothly cover the Doobie Brothers’ “Nothin’ but a Heartache” tells you this music has real roots in R&B.

While there is and can be emotion coming through the songs and felt by me as I listen, what really is the focus is hearing these people (musicians, producers) at the absolute top of their game producing something of the highest quality. It sounds like a criticism or a dig to say the music resists our notions of authenticity (and, to some degree, I don’t think it’s true and there is authenticity on these records), but I think that’s the thing. I can appreciate this in all its virtuosity in the same way that I can appreciate a punk or rock song that’s so earnest the people playing the music are doing so in a kind of sloppy/loose manner.

I also enjoyed hearing so much from Michael McDonald, the man whose voice defines so much of this music. McDonald seems like Huey Lewis in the sense that everyone seems to have a good opinion of him even if they’re not really into his music. Throughout the documentary, I find McDonald to be not just a compelling figure but also a profoundly pleasant one. He’s charming, introspective, and self-effacing. There’s a version of McDonald’s life and career where he’s not like that… maybe the yacht rock notoriety he sees as something negative and bad. But he clearly doesn’t.

While we talk about the musicians playing on these yacht rock songs as being exemplary, the same can be said of the frontman McDonald (though he did get his start singing backup for Steely Dan, so he’s got some of that sidemen element to him). I think about this 2014 performance of “What a Fool Believes” with the Dukes of September supergroup (Donald Fagen and Boz Scaggs) as showing just how great he really is.

I went into Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary with a decent amount of apprehension and anxiety. Ultimately, I think the film succeeds in investigating this strange little world of music, and I think it does so lovingly while clearly grasping what about this music makes it so popular. If you want to know what this whole yacht rock/smooth music thing is all about, I would highly recommend you watch.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yacht_rock#Yacht_Rock_creators