Is 2026 the year of Little Feat?
More than half a century since its inception, the acclaimed and eclectic classic rock ensemble may be busier than ever with a hotly anticipated tour as well as a book and film on the way. But, to hear founding pianist Bill Payne tell it, it’s high time for a change of pace. Hence, the band is embarking on what is being billed as The Last Farewell Tour.
“I thought, ‘You know what? Jumping on the bus, that’s not something I want to maintain,’” said Payne, 77. “I want to play music as long as I can – bop til you drop, that kind of attitude, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. … It’s a means to end the cycle of jumping on buses and planes and that sort of thing, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t play a residency or a maybe festival that looks inviting or that would like to invite us to play, to record more albums should we want to do that. It just seemed like a more civilized approach to all of this.”
With dates currently scheduled through the fall, The Last Farewell Tour includes stops on Saturday, July 25 at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood, New Jersey and the Great South Bay Music Festival in Patchogue, New York on Sunday, July 26.
“It takes us out of that cycle of just putting your head down and if you’re going to stumble, stumble forward because it gives the illusion of progress,” Payne said. “We can kind of take a deep breath here and there and say what is important in all of this. We know that the music is important, but when you have guidelines or signposts that are possibly leading you to an exit – putting on the brakes is not always a bad thing; slowing down, viewing your surroundings is not a bad idea. Who is it you would like to work and play with? Who would you like to invite up on stage with Little Feat? What is it you want to say, what do you still have to say? That kind of focus I think is essential, always, with bands, with artists, with creative people. This makes it moreso.”
The band’s banner year also includes a pair of special releases for Record Store Day on April 18: Little Feat’s self-titled 1971 debut gets the Rhino Deluxe treatment as a two-LP vinyl set including a bonus disc of previously unreleased alternate versions and outtakes, and “Rock and Roll Doctor,” a tribute to the band’s late singer/songwriter Lowell George featuring the likes of Willie Nelson, Randy Newman, Little Feat and others, makes its vinyl debut.
Payne is at work on a memoir, “Carnival Ghosts,” and he and the band are the subject of a new film, Little Feat: The Documentary.” Directed by Jesse Lauter, the film had its world premiere in February at Montana’s Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Utilizing rare archival footage, live performances and interviews with the band and peers such as Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and members of the Grateful Dead, the film is narrated by Jeff Bridges.
Rather than solely focus on the band’s classic George-fronted era, it’s an epic telling of the band’s whole story. George’s 1979 death, for example, comes 90 minutes into the movie, with 45 minutes or so left to go to chronicle the band’s many phases and stages that came in his wake.
“It’s easy to get stuck in the past with this group, with Lowell and with the ’70s and all that stuff, and (Lauter) promised me that he would be taking it much further than that, to where we are now,” Payne said. “And he did, which was gratifying because the legacy in the band is certainly intact with what he showed but it reveals more when you show how that legacy connects to what we’re doing now. There’s not a lot of bands that can pull that off.”
