Little Feat

The members of Little Feat emerged from the pandemic with their sense of humor, chops, and collective joy in playing intact.  Over the past three years, they’ve focused tours on their epic live album Waiting for Columbus, re-issues of their second and third albums (Sailin’ Shoes and Dixie Chicken), and now in 2024 the fourth, Feats Don’t Fail Me Now.  Audience response has been rapturous.

Now it’s time for something new. Their creativity has been renewed, and May of 2024 saw the release of the brand-new GRAMMY nominated Sam’s Place, in which Feat backs their linchpin conga player, Sam Clayton, on vocals.  Really the blues.

The new album builds on a deep, over 50-year history.  Little Feat used a combination of elite musicianship and brilliant, idiosyncratic songwriting to create a repertoire that transcends all boundaries.  California rock, funk, folk, jazz, country and rockabilly mixed with New Orleans swamp boogie led to a powerful sound that has kept the audience dancing for decades.

And it’s all thanks to Frank Zappa, who didn’t like the trucker song his guitarist Lowell George had written.  “Willin’” had a chorus about “weed, whites and wine,” and the resolutely anti-drug Zappa suggested Lowell’s future would be brighter in another band.  He was quite right. 

Lowell took up with a keyboard whiz from the central coast of California named Bill Payne.  The two then found a slightly maniacal drummer by the name of Richie Hayward and, for a while, a Mothers of Invention alumnus named Roy Estrada on bass.  In fact, there were several bass players in the early years, even including a guitarist named Paul Barrére.  As Paul put it, “As most who know the story’s end can tell you, as a bassist I make an excellent guitarist…”  

Their name came from left field.  A member of Zappa’s band remarked on the petite nature of what Lowell stood on, complete with an expletive.  “Lowell deleted the expletive,” Paul noted, “and the name was born with Feat instead of Feet, just like the Beatles.  Neat, huh?”

They signed a recording contract with Warner Bros. and began to work on what would become twelve albums with that company.  Their first release, Little Feat, included that trucker’s lullaby, “Willin’,” and the second album, Sailin’ Shoes, added “Easy to Slip,” “Trouble,” “Tripe Face Boogie,” “Cold Cold Cold” and the title track to their repertoire, as well as a new version of “Willin’” that took it from pure Lowell to a fully-developed band tune.  It also established what would be a long-term relationship with the great designer Neon Park, who would produce cover after cover for them. 

Then Little Feat found its groove.  The new bass player, Kenny Gradney, established his permanent part in Feat’s sound.  He brought with him Sam Clayton on percussion.  With the further addition of Paul Barrére on guitar, the Feat sound was created, an enduring sound that shows no signs of stopping.

The third album, 1973’s Dixie Chicken, gave them not only an outstanding title track, but also one of the great blues tunes ever, “Fat Man in the Bathtub.”  The next release, Feats Don’t Fail Me Now (1974), gave us “Rock and Roll Doctor,” “Spanish Moon,” and “Oh, Atlanta,” and happily became their first commercially successful album. 

The next year saw The Last Record Album and “All That You Dream,” followed by Time Loves a Hero, with another classic title track.  In 1977 they delivered Waiting for Columbus, arguably one of the greatest three live rock albums ever.

It wasn’t all fun and games.  Paul Barrére’s first Feat song, “Skin it Back,” talks about touring as “Runnin’ around in the shoes of a clown / It’s those rock and roll hours, graves without flowers,” which should give you an idea.  The road cost them their founder, Lowell George, whose indulgencessws brought on a heart attack in 1979.  And it cost them, at least temporarily, their joy.  Shortly after, they disbanded.

A few years later, Paul, Bill, Fred Tackett and Craig Fuller wrote a song called ”Hangin’ On To The Good Times Here“— ”…although we went our own ways, we couldn’t escape from where we came, so we find ourselves back at the table again, telling stories of survivors and friends”—which was of course spot on, as with any righteous song. 

They had met up by chance at a jam session and found that the songs and legacy of Little Feat still had freshness and juice; in 1988 they returned to the road, where they’ve been, pandemic excepted, ever since, adding Craig Fuller on vocals and Fred Tackett on guitar.  Over the next few years they gave the world Let It Roll, followed by Representing the Mambo and then Shake Me Up.  Craig left and Shaun Murphy joined in 1993; early in 2009 she departed the band.   

Live from Neon Park—the name choice was a tribute to the album cover artist most often associated with Feat— was a two-CD set taken from shows at legendary venues like San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium and Portland (Oregon)’s Roseland Ballroom.  The studio albums Under The Radarand Chinese Work Songs added new favorite songs, especially “Calling The Children Home” and “Just Another Sunday,” along with creative covers of Dylan, The Band, and Phish songs. 

In the early part of the new millennium, Feat started their own Hot Tomato Records and began to share their rich archives with their fans, producing the double CD collections of rarities Raw Tomatos and Ripe Tomatos from both fan and band tapes.  2002 also yielded Live From the Ram’s Head, a two-CD acoustic show, and in ’03 came Down Upon the Suwannee, a live show recorded on the banks of the river at the Magnolia Festival in northern Florida.  Hot Tomato also gave the musicians the freedom to deliver solo work as well, first with Fred Tackett’s In A Town Like This, and then Bill Payne’s Cielo Norte, an intimate, lyrical marriage of keyboards. 

Their studio album from 2003 was Kickin’ It At The Barn, produced by Paul Barrere, Bill Payne, and Fred Tackett. It’s named after the place it was recorded, Tackett’s barn-cum-studio in Topanga Canyon, which lent an invaluable ambience to the undertaking. In his liner notes, faithful Feat member Paul Barrere wrote, ”If music is a conversation between the players, then we are talking like never before…this has been truly one of the most memorable recording projects we’ve done. We started with an idea to write songs on acoustic guitar and piano, like the old days before computers and samples, and then let the band interpret the music.“

Little Feat’s rich legacy was acknowledged at the 25th anniversary of the monumental live album Waiting for Columbus when Rhino Records put out a special two CD edition of the original concert, plus outtakes, along with Hotcakes and Outtakes:  30 Years of Little Feat, a four-CD, 83 track boxed set featuring hits from all of Feat’s albums as well as alternate takes and rarities from a rich past, which has included playing with everybody from Bob Dylan to Beck, Willie Nelson to Bonnie Raitt, Robert Plant, John Lee Hooker, and…you name it.

Join the Band, in many ways a summing up of all that preceded it, came in 2009, with re-recordings of their classic songs bringing together a vast slew of musical friends on vocals backed by Feat—Dave Matthews on “Fat Man,” Jimmy Buffett on “Champion of the World,” Emmylou Harris on “Sailin’ Shoes.”  Bill Payne said it was about locating their influences.  In some ways, it documents the way they’ve influenced the musicians who listen to them.  And it certainly documents a musical career.

Rooster Rag followed, by critical consensus their best studio album in twenty years, featuring four songs co-written by Payne and the Grateful Dead’s legendary lyricist Robert Hunter, four breakout songs by Fred Tackett, and a superb collaboration between Paul Barrére and the late Stephen Bruton. 

If you play long enough—and Little Feat has—you will experience everything.  Richie Hayward, the sterling drummer who’d held down the beat for nearly forty years, was finally taken down by liver cancer in 2010.  The same grim pursuer caught up with Paul Barrére in 2019.  Paul will always be missed, yet paradoxically his absence also confirmed the stunning power of the music that Little Feat has made for so very long. 

Paul’s health was failing, and so the band needed a substitute for the last two shows in a three-week run in October, 2019, with Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams.  They found their sub in Scott Sharrard. Scott is best known for his role as guitarist and musical director with the late Gregg Allman, but he’s had a long and successful career in addition to that, first in Milwaukee and then in the capital of the blues, Chicago, playing with people like Pinetop Perkins. 

His time with Gregg Allman was rich, peaking when they co-wrote “My Only True Friend” for Gregg’s last solo album, Southern Blood.  The song earned a Grammy nomination for Americana Song of the Year. 

His relationship with Little Feat goes all the way back to the age of 12 when he stayed up late to watch Feat play “Let It Roll” on “Saturday Night Live.” So when he got a call from Bill Payne to fill in for Paul on two gigs at the end of a tour, “I took it as seriously as a heart attack.  I came to do the first gig, and I had never met Kenny, Sam or Fred before.  As I was checking out my rig and getting to meet the crew, the word came that Paul had passed away.   When I met Kenny and Fred and Sam for the first time, the first thing I had to do was give my condolences.  And then the announcement of his passing was the first thing that happened when I went on stage with Little Feat to hit the first note with them.  The fans didn't even know he passed away.”

Tony Leone was announced as the new drummer during the pandemic.  Best known for his 2002 collaboration with Amy Helm, Olabelle, his work in the Chris Robinson Band, Phil Lesh and Friends, and as a member of Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble Band, Tony actually moved through Little Feat orbits several times over the years, such as when Paul and Fred played on Levon’s Ramble show.

Tony recalled “fanboying” out on Richie when they first met, and assuming his seat is an honor he takes seriously.  “I can honestly say that almost every time I sit down behind the drums, there are a few guys that I always think of.  One of them is Levon Helm, and another one is Richie Hayward.  The thing that both of them had in common was their feel.  It wasn't necessarily their pyrotechnical abilities to astound the audience with their virtuosity or anything like that. It was like, no, when they sat down to play a song, immediately that thing had a groove that made the music dance, and made the people want to dance…”.   

“Whenever I'm going to play those tunes, I'm always going to consult what Richie played first and I'm always going to try to play those parts with integrity.  And not to be a clone, but to try and give them a certain feel that he had.”

The time on the stage is dessert; traveling the road is the hard part.  You can react to it in a number of ways.  You can be consumed by the wear and tear and lose the passion that brought you to music.  Then you can either quit or continue playing for all the cynical wrong reasons.  Or you can hold on to the music and the joy of the people out front and keep your priorities straight.  That’s the Feat way.  They know where they belong—standing or sitting behind their instruments, playing for you. 

And that’s why they wanted to make Sam’s Place.  The idea started with Bill, but the whole band jumped in.  They started working on songs at sound checks.  Sam, Scott and Fred wrote a new song, “Milk Man.”  Visiting backstage at a Feat show, Bonnie Raitt suggested the Howlin’ Wolf tune “You Will Be Mine.”  Scott suggested “Why Are People Like That,” a Bobby Charles tune which Muddy Waters had done with Levon Helm on the Woodstock album.  Sam chose “Don’t Go No Further,” a rather deep Muddy track.  And they included a live version of “Got My Mojo Working.”

Scott had recorded in Memphis, and they eventually found their way to the second Phillips (the first was Sun Studios, where Elvis began his career) studio there, complete with Jerry Lee Lewis’s piano, which Bill noted “practically played itself.”  Feat’s a rock band, but as Scott observed, at the end “the blues is home,” and they basically recorded it live in the studio, in the tradition.  Their playing is at an all-time high, and Bill thought their musical conversation was “flawless.”

Sam was a happy vocalist. His own “Milk Man,” which is about his nephew, has lyrics from his wife, Joni.   The duet with Bonnie on “Long Distance Call,” he humbly admitted, was classic.  “We go good together, man.”  “Last Night” was done in memory of Sam’s very good friend, the late Ed Bradley of Sixty Minutes.  And “Why People Like That” was particularly satisfying.  “I just like the way the slide sounds and everything.  I knew Scott is a great slide player too, plus he is a great lead guitarist.  And I know we would put our touch to it, the Little Feat touch.  So we just sort of did it.  Scott just adds a lot to it and he answers to what I'm singing.”

Sam’s Place scratches a deep itch.  Sam added, “I'm very happy because I was never expecting anything like that.  I mean, I have wanted to, but I just wasn't expecting it to come to the fruition.  It was a long wait, but it’s satisfying.” 

The members of Little Feat 2024 are:  Bill Payne, Keyboards and Vocals; Sam Clayton, Percussion and Vocals; Fred Tackett, Guitars and Vocals, Kenny Gradney, Bass; Scott Sharrard, Guitars and Vocals; and Tony Leone, drums and vocals.  

 Press:  D. McNally ([email protected]).