DETROIT (Billboard) - A desire "to do something that would be different and give fans the chance to shape the shows" is behind the special album nights Steely Dan plans as part of its just-started Rent Party '09 U.S. tour.

"In the current climate of financial desperation, we figured there's no reason why people who are going out and buying tickets to concerts shouldn't get a little extra," the group's Walter Becker told Billboard.com. "We've been sort of thinking about this and talking about this for some years and never got around to doing it. And this seemed like a good time to do it."

During multi-night stands in Boston, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, Steely Dan will play select albums -- "The Royal Scam," "Aja" and "Gaucho" -- in their entirety on successive nights and then finish with an Internet Request Night of songs chosen by fans.

The three albums were recorded after the jazz-rock band's mid-'70s decision to forgo live shows. But Becker said he and partner Donald Fagen and the current incarnation of Steely Dan have not had trouble figuring out how to re-create them live.

"Everything sounds really good," Becker said. "For the most part we're sticking with the arrangements we used on the album, so we haven't substantially rearranged the tunes for the album nights. With the particular band that we have, it's not challenging in any way."

Becker and Fagen did, however, draw up a list of songs to limit choices for the Internet Request Nights. "As a practical matter ... in preparing the band for the tour, we had to sort of limit the tunes we'd prepare or else it would just be too much, sort of overwhelming," Becker said.

Steely Dan has no plans to record or film these shows -- "It's be there or be square," Becker said -- and there are no plans to record a successor to 2003's "Everything Must Go."

"We don't have anything in the pipeline right now," he said. "The question (about a new album) may be asked, but it hasn't been answered."

Becker, meanwhile, hopes to make a few more dub remixes of songs from his 2008 solo album, "Circus Money," and also has "a couple of tracks left over from that session that I'll finish and put online or propagate in some way."

(Editing by Sheri Linden at Reuters) (please visit our entertainment blog via www.reuters.com or on http://blogs.reuters.com/fanfare/)