Steve Cropper’s Final Album Features Clapton, May, Gibbons and Wood

Watching the Tide arrives August 28, completed just weeks before the Stax legend passed away at 84.

Steve Cropper's final studio album, Watching the Tide, will be released August 28 via Provogue/Artone Label Group, featuring guest appearances from Eric Clapton, Brian May, Billy Gibbons, and Ronnie Wood. Recorded at Nashville's historic RCA Studio C, the record was completed by songwriter and producer Jon Tiven just weeks before Cropper passed away on December 3, 2024, at age 84. Tiven says Cropper called him the night before his death to say it was the best record he had ever made.

A Record Completed Against the Clock

Watching the Tide is the follow-up to Cropper's 2024 Grammy-nominated release Friendlytown, and was recorded under the banner Steve Cropper & The Midnight Hour at Nashville's RCA Studio C. Tiven, who first met Cropper in the early 1970s, oversaw the project and completed 10 of its 11 tracks with Cropper before his death. The eleventh track was finished posthumously.

Tiven has described the emotional weight of the final weeks. “I finished the mixes about a week and a half before Steve passed, and we brought a CD to him at the medical facility,” he said. “He called me the night before he passed to tell me how much he loved it. He was playing it for everyone who came to visit him, telling them it was the best record he'd ever made.”

Tiven also reflected on Cropper's drive to keep creating. “Making music was Steve's greatest joy,” he said. “Steve was so encouraged by Friendlytown. He was adamant he wanted to do another record.”

An All-Star Guitar Summit

The guest list reads like a who's who of classic rock guitar royalty. Brian May and Billy Gibbons share the stage on the ballad My Angels Are Calling. Eric Clapton appears on the lead single Ticket First, and Ronnie Wood contributes to Until Now. Gibbons also appears alongside vocalist Ana Grosh on Stand Right Here.

Tiven has shared how Clapton's involvement came together quickly. “I sent out some emails to guitar players I knew who had a great affinity for Steve, and two days later, I got an email back from Eric Clapton's manager, saying he'd be in Nashville for a concert and could we do it then,” Tiven recalled.

The session produced something neither Tiven nor Cropper anticipated. Tiven says Clapton played around 11 takes on guitar, and the results were so transformative that Clapton was offered a co-writing credit. According to Tiven, Clapton's response was: “Well, anything to get my name next to Steve Cropper's.”

Track Highlights on Watching the Tide

The full album features contributions across multiple tracks, with Tiven himself taking on lead guitar duties on two songs.

• Ticket First — featuring Eric Clapton
• My Angels Are Calling — featuring Brian May and Billy Gibbons
• Until Now — featuring Ronnie Wood
• Stand Right Here — featuring Billy Gibbons and Ana Grosh
• Blood From A Stone — lead guitar by Jon Tiven
• Here & Gone — lead guitar by Jon Tiven

The Legacy Behind the Record

Cropper, known to friends and fans as The Colonel, co-founded Booker T. & the M.G.'s in 1962, the house band at Stax Studios whose tight, economical grooves helped define Southern soul. He played on landmark recordings by Wilson Pickett, Bill Withers, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas, Johnnie Taylor, and Albert King, among many others.

His most enduring compositional credit remains (Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay, co-written and produced with Otis Redding, which earned the Best Rhythm and Blues Song Grammy in 1968. He later became a fixture of the Blues Brothers, bringing his Stax sensibility to a new generation of fans.

Watching the Tide is available to pre-order now via Provogue/Artone Label Group.

What we know

• Steve Cropper passed away on December 3, 2024, at age 84.
• Watching the Tide will be released on August 28 via Provogue/Artone Label Group.
• The album was recorded at Nashville's RCA Studio C.
• Jon Tiven co-produced the album and completed 10 of 11 tracks with Cropper before his death.
• Eric Clapton guests on Ticket First, which is the lead single from the album.
• Brian May and Billy Gibbons both appear on My Angels Are Calling.
• Ronnie Wood contributes to the track Until Now.
• Watching the Tide is the follow-up to Cropper's 2024 release Friendlytown, which was Grammy-nominated.

The take

Steve Cropper occupies a singular position in American music history. As the architect of the Stax guitar sound, his spare, melodic approach on records by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Sam & Dave helped define soul music's commercial and artistic peak in the 1960s. That so many of rock's most celebrated guitarists lined up to play on his final record speaks to the depth of that influence across genre lines. Clapton, May, Gibbons, and Wood each came up in a world shaped by the Stax sound, and their presence here carries genuine weight rather than celebrity cameo energy. The pairing of May and Gibbons on a single track is particularly striking; both are known for tone-obsessed, highly individual playing styles, and the ballad setting of My Angels Are Calling suggests Tiven was aiming for something emotionally resonant rather than a guitar-hero showcase. Posthumous albums carry an inherent tension between honoring an artist's vision and the commercial machinery that surrounds a final release. In this case, the timeline Tiven describes, with Cropper actively listening to mixes in his final days and declaring it his best work, offers a degree of artistic closure that many posthumous projects lack. RCA Studio C, where the album was tracked, has its own storied history in Nashville, which adds another layer of intentionality to the project's setting.

Why it matters

For Classic Rock fans, Watching the Tide is a reminder that Steve Cropper's fingerprints are on some of the most enduring recordings in popular music, and that his peers knew it. The album captures a generation of guitar legends paying tribute in real time, while Cropper was still alive to hear it. It also underscores how the Stax legacy continues to resonate across rock, blues, and soul, with artists from wildly different traditions finding common ground in Cropper's work.

What's next

Watching the Tide is scheduled for release on August 28 via Provogue/Artone Label Group and is available to pre-order now. The lead single Ticket First, featuring Eric Clapton, is already out, with a lyric video available to stream.

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