Copyright Rolling Stone
Several months ago, Little Feat keyboardist, singer, and co-founder Billy Payne, along with his bandmates, heard an interesting proposition from their managers. Little Feat had just released Strike Up the Band, a well-received new album that rebooted its funky, good-time sound, and tour dates were underway. But to Payne’s surprise, their team suggested it may be time to hang it up as a road band. “Everybody and their brother is retiring now,” says Payne. “But I’ll be honest, I resisted it at first. I’ll be 77 in March, and [guitarist] Fred Tackett is 80 and [bassist] Kenny [Gradney] will be 76 next year. But what’s the rush on farewelling this thing?” Eventually, the band came around to the idea. And next year, Little Feat, the beloved group that’s been blending Americana genres for over 55 years, will join the growing list of classic artists like Journey, Kiss, the Eagles, Elton John, John Baez, and Aerosmith who’ve completed or are in the midst of long-goodbye tours. The Last Farewell Tour, a nod to their cheeky 1975 album title The Last Record Album, will start next April and make its way around the world for at least two years (the band announced the first round of dates on Wednesday). “They’ve hit a major high note in their sound and career,” co-manager Brian Penix, of the Nashville-based Vector, tells Rolling Stone, “and we all want to celebrate the legacy of Little Feat one more time across the globe. And in the right way, while we still can.” For Payne, several factors played into him signing on, from the schedule to age to finances. “It’s not an immediate cutoff,” he says. “If it were, I would have said, ‘No, absolutely not.’ But when I really thought about it, if you play a venue, you just knock it off your list and don’t have to jump on a bus and go places every night, which is probably not a bad thing. And you can do residences, if they’re available, or play music with other people or do special events. It’s age related, but as a business model, I guess prices go up, since people think, ‘Oh, we need to see those guys.’” Editor’s picks At this point, Little Feat has encompassed many guys. The original lineup, fronted by the roguishly charming Lowell George, blended blues, boogie, and country and emerged with now-standards like George’s “Willin,’” famously covered by Linda Ronstadt. As the Seventies plowed on, their music, with Payne and guitarist Paul Barrere leading the way, tipped into jazz fusion as well. Little Feat remained, in Payne’s word, “a secret surfing spot” for music heads. But they were widely respected, and 1978’s Waiting for Columbus is still considered one of rock’s essential live albums. After George died of a heart attack in 1979, the group reconvened in 1988, finally trademarked their name, and recruited a new lead singer, ex-Pure Prairie League balladeer Craig Fuller. In the decades since, Little Feat have lost other core members (Fuller departed; Barrere died in 2019) but still retain core members Payne, Gradney, and percussionist Sam Clayton and longtime guitarist Tackett, along with two recent new-blood recruits, guitarist-singer Scott Sharrard and drummer Tony Leone. “It’s about the chemistry and how it sounds when people play together, and that sound is what makes this band still that band,” Payne insists. “When I played our last album for people, they said the same thing: ‘God, that sounds like Little Feat,’ with smiles on their faces. I go, ‘Yeah, it does.’ It’s a miracle.” Bringing the story of Little Feat full circle will be the release of a new Little Feat recording. Written by George around 1970, “Feathers of a Smile” was an unreleased portion of “Crazy Captain Gunboat Willie Suite” from the band’s debut. The new version features a vocal by Payne and a harmony from George’s daughter Inara George, a singer and songwriter in her own right best known as one half of the indie pop band the Bird and the Bee. “It doesn’t really morph too far from what Lowell did, although I’m playing piano instead of guitar,” Payne says. “We did that to illustrate the purity of what Lowell brought to us when we got it.” Related Content Inara George, who was barely of grade-school age when her father died, admits she wasn’t familiar with “Feathers of a Smile” until she’d heard about Payne resurrecting it. “I haven’t really ever heard my dad’s version of it,” she says. “I’m not a keeper of his history, really, because I was not even five when he died.” But she jumped at the chance to record it, at last, with her father’s old band. “There’s a sweetness to it, an innocence, that feels like it’s indicative of an earlier time,” she says. “The imagery is a little more Sixties. Part of my dad’s storytelling is that he used words that were not always expected, which is something I admire.” The fact that Little Feat carried on after George’s passing remains a point of contention for some hardcore fans, Payne admits. “People are not saying that directly to me, but it’s out there,” he says. “And my feeling about that is that people are more than entitled to hold that opinion. People can say, ‘Oh, God, without Lowell, it’s not this and that.’” He recalls attending a recent music conference in Colorado where the topic came up. “It was a tough room, a bunch of business types, promoters, and God knows who else,” he says. “As I’m ambling up to the stage for this panel, a guy in the back of the room goes, ‘Is Lowell with ya?’ I grabbed the microphone, and said, ‘Yeah, he’s always with us, he’s part of our family, you dumb-ass.’ I mean, come on. We do it without Lowell, but we’re never doing it without him, and the same with Paul.” When George died, he was on a tour promoting a solo album, and his future with the band seemed unclear. “Paul and I did not kick him out of the band or compromise him in any way, shape or form,” Payne says, alluding to the differences between George’s rootsy style and he and Barrere’s jazzier one at the time. “Unfortunately, he did that to himself. But there was this notion that we curtailed or took away his creativity. And my retort to that was, first of all, it wouldn’t happen. And if it were true, why are there so few Lowell George songs on his solo album? He wasn’t writing.” Whether Little Feat could continue without Payne, Gradney, and Clayton — mimicking classic-rock bands whose current touring lineups don’t include any original members — has not yet been decided. “I think it’s possible, if you take the paradigm Lowell and I set up in the beginning,” Payne muses. “We really didn’t know exactly what it all meant: ‘Do we need a horn section? Do we need another guitar player? What about more vocals?’ It was all kind of loose.” Trending Stories In one regard, the end of Little Feat as a touring ensemble is bittersweet for Inara George, since the band was keeping her late father’s songs alive on the road. “It’s so incredible that they’re still playing and they’re all such good musicians,” she says. “But all beautiful things come to an end, and they’re doing it on their own terms, which is a great thing.”
