Steve Cropper & The Midnight Hour release the groovin’ Stax-tastic ‘
Tandoori Chicken,’ the latest single from Watching The Tide, which will be released on 28 August via Provogue / Artone Label Group.
For an album whose title references the guitarist’s most famous co-write – Otis Redding’s 1967 standard (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay – Watching The Tide saw Cropper roll back the years. Writing alongside Jon Tiven, the acclaimed songwriter/producer and Midnight Hour vocalist Roger C. Reale – then tracking at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio C with a crack-squad band including Ana Grosh (vocals), Nioshi Jackson (drums), engineer Eddie Gore (keys/percussion), and a wishlist of guitar heroes (Eric Clapton, Billy Gibbons, Brian May, Ronnie Wood) – the 83-year-old sounds ageless and energised.
The album fades up on ‘
Tandoori Chicken’; the instrumental song is not just an irresistibly funky tone-setter but a knowing nod to ‘Green Onions’ (the 1962 single that established Booker T. And The M.G.’s as stars in their own right). The single is the latest gem from the tantalising prospect of the wealth of material that sits in The Colonel’s shimmering vault.
Tiven recollects, “About a month before Steve passed, we went out for an Indian lunch. Steve really loaded up on this tandoori chicken. We had this one kicking around as a song, but we never really thought the lyrics were very good. So then I started thinking, ‘Well, if I put a sitar on it, maybe it’ll hold together as an instrumental’, because Steve is playing some amazing guitar on it. Then I said, ‘Steve, is it okay if we call it Tandoori Chicken?’ A big smile came to his face, and he goes, ‘That’s my favourite’. And y’know, he’s got a lot of history with food-oriented song titles. So it was a nice way to tie it all together.”
This follows ‘
Until Now ’, which makes stellar use of Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood’s stinging slide, as Tiven recalls the session: “Ronnie Wood got back to me about 10 minutes after I sent off my email: ‘Oh, this looks like a lot of fun. I’ll jump in.’The first song to be released from the album, the tough Southern-smoked blues of ‘
Ticket First’, which started with a joke and ended up with Cropper and fellow rock royalty Clapton riffing nose-to-nose. “I told Eric, ‘Man, you just turned that song inside-out – I think we’re gonna have to give you a writer’s credit,” recalls Tiven of the legendary British guitarist’s transcendent solo. “And Eric said, ‘Well, anything to get my name next to Steve Cropper’s…’”
To anyone who knows the roots and branches of American music, the passing of Steve Cropper in December 2025 was seismic. As a guitarist, songwriter, producer and engineer – not just for the iconic Stax record label but on a forest of sessions and solo releases – the Tennessee soul man was the DNA that coursed through the post-war era, his fabled right hand setting the pace of rock ‘n’ roll for 60-plus years.
It’s a huge statement for a musical colossus who towered over the rock ‘n’ roll age. Yet to play this posthumous release is to hear an all-time great still at the top of his game, blending the burning passion of youth with the wisdom of an old master. Steve Cropper might have left us, but Watching The Tide indicates that there is much more still to hear from him.
