That Eric Alper

Today, Little Feat – criminally underrated pioneering rock band – dropped a spectacular music video for new song “Shipwrecks,” which featured on their recently released studio album, Strike Up The Band, out now, via Hot Tomato. LISTEN HERE.

GLIDE MAGAZINE premiered the music video, describing the track-which was penned by new lead guitarist and vocalist Scott Sharrard- as “deeply passionate,” praising Scott’s impressive guitar skills, which “Clearly, he’s learned his lessons well, from the ABB namesake in addition to his current bandmates via their own redoubtable legacy.”

Sharrad added, “There’s an old saying that when we invented ships we also invented the shipwreck. This song is a reflection on mortality and life’s journey that was fueled by some lyrical inspiration from the late French poet Blaise Cendrars. The singular open A tuning chord voicing’s of the great Lowell George also informed the structure of the riffs that provide the backdrop. The cherry on top is the ride out of the track which finds Bill Payne revisiting an old Moog synth that we found at the studio over an odd time groove that cooks.” 

Little Feat continue to tour through the summer (dates below) are hosting a three-day festival in Woodstock, New York for August 30 through September 1 with plans to record performances for a new live album. Tickets go on sale via littlefeat.net.

At this point in its illustrious, nearly 60-year career, rock legends Little Feat could be excused if they wanted to take its proverbial foot off the gas. However, that wouldn’t be in Little Feat’s DNA. From the very first note of Strike Up The Band, you will hear Little Feat–who have been rocking and rolling since 1969– mean business. 

Little Feat built a cult following in the late 60s and 70s for their pioneering gumbo of New Orleans rhythm-and-blues, country, hard-rock, funk, and jazz. Celebrated as a key influence by icons from Bonnie Raitt to The Rolling Stones (and more recently current stars like 1975’s Matt Healy), yet, commercial success remained at arms length. Songs like “Dixie Chicken,” “Spanish Moon,” “Fat Man in the Bathtub,” and “Rock and Roll Doctor” are legends in the rock and roll songbook. Through the ups and downs, love and loss, the lineup shifts, and endless touring they have remained together and the closest of friends. 

During their wilderness years, when the band was on periods of hiatus, individual members collaborated with a laundry list of legends including Bob Dylan, Boz Scaggs, J. J. Cale, Buddy Guy, Jimmy Buffett, Doobie Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Bryan Adams, Pink Floyd, Bob Seger, Toto, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Carly Simon, James Taylor, Stevie Nicks, Robert Palmer, Bob Weir, Mick Fleetwood, Phil Lesh – you name a musician from the classic rock era, they have likely played with them! 

Their elastic lineup has included the late great Lowell George, founding drummer, Richie Hayward,  and guitarist Paul Barrere, and to this day features founding member Bill Payne on keys, alongside the classic lineup of Fred Tackett on guitars/vocals, Kenny Gradney on bass, and Sam Clayton on percussion/vocals. They recently enlisted younger members Scott Sharrard on lead/vocal and Tony Leone on drums/vox which reinvigorated their creative spirits and live show. 

The seeds for Strike Up the Band may have been initially planted in 2019, but the current iteration of the band coalesced in 2021. Following a year of zapping files back and forth due to the pandemic, that November was when the band first started jamming with guitarist/vocalist Scott Sharrard, who joined in 2019, and drummer Tony Leone, who joined in 2020. 

“Once again, we’re introducing something that we’re going to call Little Feat to people who would be accepting and some who would not,” Payne says. “The ramp to believing in ourselves was in the songs we wrote. And the minute we had this new band, we wanted to be realistic and that was to make a record.”

To solidify the writing, Payne left his home in the West and headed to New York. In just four days, he wrote three songs with Sharrard and Leone. That window spawned one of the album’s finest tracks, “4 Days of Heaven, 3 Days of Work.” 

“Bill brought this title to Tony and I, and I knew immediately that we were going to cook something up that would be special,” Sharrard says. “The lyrics and music embrace what I call ‘Gonzo Funk,’ Little Feat’s unique brand where you combine a slinky groove with some far-out lyrical imagery.” 

Together with producer Vance Powell (Phish, Chris Stapleton, Jack White), and collaborators including Blackberry Smoke’s Charlie Starr and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, they created their new album in Nashville, and Strike Up The Band is destined to be considered their later year magnum opus. Songs like funk-fueled “Too High To Cut My Hair,” which tastemaker PASTE MAGAZINE described as sounding, “as good as ever, cutting a funk track with the fire of a wicked blues tempo,” as well as “Shipwrecks,” are as dexterous, considered, and creative as any song Little Feat has created to date. 

Their lyrics are inventive, transportive, abstract, and emotive in their pursuit of celebrating the good times and holding you close in the bad. Guitars scream and slide, pianos rock and boogie, and drums shuffle you down the road in a way that only Little Feat can. This is the album Little Feat fans have been waiting for and is an undeniable statement from a band who in many ways are just getting started in their 56th year. 

With buzz off the back of their GRAMMY nomination for their recent album Sam’s Place, their own festival, a newly announced national tour, and much more in the works, Little Feat are not weathered statues in the hall of rock fame. They remain the collective and creative force they have always been. The beauty of Little Feat perhaps lies in the band’s ability to continuously evolve yet keep the spirit of what we all know and love about them, constant and alive. At this stage in a band’s career, few, if any would be willing to evolve at the level Little Feat does. That in itself, is quite the feat.