Today, Little Feat – criminally underrated pioneering rock band – released their 17th studio album, Strike Up The Band, out now, via Hot Tomato. LISTEN HERE
Accompany release was a video for very much non-bluegrass song “Bluegrass Pines,” which features Molly Tuttle on guitar and Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams on backing vocals and was co-written with Grateful Dead’s lyricist, Robert Hunter and Relix Magazine stated “establishes a big band sound, with the quick trill of instruments and a mood of Romani folk that begs for a skirt-twirling embrace far from the title’s suggested bluegrass lean.”
This song, which was from a batch band co-founder and keyboardist, Bill Payne co-wrote with Hunter, like the best Little Feat songs, combines complicated music ideas and takes people on a sonic journey with many twists and turns.
“When Robert Hunter and I began writing, he usually sent me the lyrics first,” recalls Payne. “After several times of doing it this way, he suggested I send him the music first. I had a short instrumental entitled “Banjo Wanderings.” I was amazed at how this small clip inspired the expansive and wonderful lyrics he called “Bluegrass Pines.” The music I gave him essentially covered only the chorus. Everything else was the result of his imagination and my mining of the melody and chords from the scenery he painted. He asked at one point through e-mail—the only way we ever communicated—if I knew who Lash LaRue was, and I told him yes, he used a whip to go after the desperados rather than use a gun.”
Payne continues, “I love this song and its influence on those who performed it. I love the intelligence and spirit that Molly Tuttle, with grace and beauty, created, through her legato acoustic guitar lines with Scott’s soaring slide, a dance of kinetic magic. Larry Campbell and Teresa William’s vocals, powerful, and at times angelic, provided the perfect tapestry for me to sing against. I thank Robert Hunter for his gift.”
Little Feat tour the US with shows including Montclair, NJ this evening and culminating in 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. They have released a total of 16 studio albums and 10 live albums to date. Through the ups and downs, love and loss, the lineup shifts, and endless touring they have remained together and the closest of friends.
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 it 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.
TRACKLIST:
4 Days of Heaven 3 Days of Work
Bayou Mama
Shipwrecks
Midnight Flight
Too High To Cut My HairWhen Hearts Fall Strike Up The Band (feat. Larkin Poe)
Bluegrass Pines (feat. Molly Tuttle, Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams)
Disappearing Ink
Love and Life (Never Fear)
Dance a Little
Running Out of Time with the Blues
New Orleans Cries When She Sings
TOUR DATES:
May 9 Fri – Montclair, NJ – Wellmont Theater *
May 10 Sat – Ithaca, NY – State Theatre
May 12 Mon – Akron, OH – Goodyear Theater *
May 13 Tue – Shipshewana, IN – Blue Gate Performing Arts Center *
May 15 Thu – Nashville, IN – Brown County Music Center *
May 16 Fri – Davenport, IA – Capitol Theatre *
May 17 Sat – Des Plaines, IL – Rivers Casino Des Plaines *
May 19 Mon – Peoria, IL – Prairie Home Alliance Theater *
May 23 Fri – Chandler, AZ – Gila River Resorts & Casinos Wild Horse Pass *
Jun 13 Fri – Santa Cruz, CA – Rio Theatre *
Jun 14 Sat – Napa, CA – Blue Note Napa Summer Sessions at Meritage Resort*
Jun 15 Sun – Reno, NV – Grand Theatre at Grand Sierra Resort *
Jun 18 Wed – Eugene, OR – McDonald Theatre *
Jun 19 Thu – Boise, ID – The Egyptian Theatre *
Jun 21 Sat – Airway Heights, WA – Spokane Live at the Spokane Tribe Resort & Casino #
Jun 22 Sun – Redmond, VA – Marymoor Live #
Jun 24 Tue – Bonner, MT – Kettlehouse Amphitheater #
Jun 25 Wed – Pocatello, ID – Portneuf Health Trust Amphitheatre #
Jun 26 Thu – Salt Lake City, UT – Red Butte Garden #
Jun 28 Sat – Winter Park, CO – Blues From The Top
Aug 29 – Charlestown, RI – Rhythm & Roots 2025
Aug 30 – Sep 1 – Woodstock, NY – Feat Fest at Bearsville Theater
Sep 15-21 – Ketchikan, AK – Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea – Alaska 2025
Oct 14 Tue – Birmingham, AL – Alabama Theatre *
Oct 15 Wed – Franklin, TN – Firstbank Amphitheater <
Oct 17 Fri – Raleigh, NC – Red Hat Amphitheater <
Oct 18 Sat – Charlotte, NC – PNC Music Pavilion <
Oct 19 Sun – Atlanta, GA – Atlanta Symphony Hall *
Oct 21 Tue – Richmond, VA – Allianz Amphitheater at Riverfront <
Oct 22 Wed – Wilmington, NC – Live Oak Bank Pavilion at Riverfront Park <
Oct 24 Fri – Baltimore, MD – The Lyric Baltimore *
Oct 25 Sat – Huntington, NY – The Paramount *
Oct 26 Sun – Red Bank, NJ – Count Basie Center for the Arts *
2026
Jan 11-18 – Fort Lauderdale, FL – Sandy Beaches Cruise 2026
Jan 18-25 – Fort Lauderdale, FL – The Big Easy Cruise 2026
* Strike Up The Band Tour
# Little Feat & Nitty Gritty Band: Dirty Feat Tour
< With Tedeschi Trucks Band (Live in 25 Tour)
