By George: Little Feat’s Bill Payne and the myth of the ‘folk hero’

Earlier this month, the members of Little Feat were in Los Angeles, playing at an all-star tribute to singer/songwriter John Hiatt. As they left the stage to rapturous applause, the emcee bellowed “Let’s hear it for Billy Payne and Little Feat!”

Payne, 75, froze in his tracks. “I was laughing with the other guys,” Payne tells the Catalyst. “I said “It cost me twenty bucks to get that guy to put my name first.” Privately, it stung a little.

It’s been a long, strange trip for Little Feat, which will play the Capitol Theatre Wednesday (Feb. 26).

Pianist Payne started the jazz/rock/funk outfit with singer and slide guitarist Lowell George in 1969. A critical favorite that launched “Dixie Chicken,” “Time Loves a Hero,” George’s “Willin’” and Payne’s “Oh Atlanta” into the FM radio stratosphere, Little Feat maintained an audience of the faithful but never quite broke through on a commercial level. Five gold albums and one platinum (the live opus Waiting For Columbus), but no hit singles.

This was one of the reasons Lowell George left the band in 1978. The following year, as he was recording his solo debut, he was felled by a heart attack. In his last interview, George said he’d broken up Little Feat, in part, because he and Payne were no longer seeing eye to eye.

As the years went by, the mantra on Little Feat became “oh, that was Lowell George’s band.”

“It wasn’t Lowell’s band,” Payne explains. “He was a big part of it. But it was always about great musicianship married up with really interesting and good songs. It wasn’t ‘Lowell George and Little Feat,’ although I’ve read that a couple times.”

Little Feat in 1975 (Lowell George is front and center). Warner Bros. Records publicity photo.

Without their frontman, a dispirited Payne and his bandmates assumed, there was no future for Little Feat. “Lowell’s not there – what do you do? I went off for seven or eight years playing with James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Stevie Nicks, on and on.”

Payne did session work, as did bassist Kenny Gradney, drummer Richie Hayward, guitarist Paul Barrere and percussionist Sam Clayton.

In 1987, they re-formed Little Feat (with added guitarist Fred Tackett, who’d guested on the earlier albums) and landed a hit album in Let it Roll. “People would say “The amazing thing is that it sounds like Little Feat.’ I’d go yeah, well it does sound like Little Feat because of the style of music, of the way it was played with the keyboards, with the slide guitar, with the rhythm section of Kenny, Sam and Richie. It sounds like Little Feet.”

According to Payne, he’s heard the same about Sam’s Place, the band’s most recent album (the band now includes drummer Tony Leone and guitarist Scott Sherrard, along with Payne, Gradney, Clayton and Tackett). “Look, if we played ‘Happy Birthday’ it would sound like Little Feat. We have a certain sound.

And it’s not because we play ‘Dixie Chicken’ ad nauseum in terms of constructing tunes, it’s because of the rhythm section, it’s because of the slide, it’s the rhythm guitar that blends in with the keys, which blends in with the drums, which blends in with the congas and bass.

“It’s a style of musicianship that is complex – but sounds like it’s rolling off a log, right?”

Payne’s memoir-in-progress is called Carnival Ghosts. A friend asked him how he was going to deal with the “Lowell George, folk hero” myth.

My purpose,” he says, “is not to denigrate Lowell George. That guy was one of my heroes when I first joined the band. It took a long time for the layers of the onion to start peeling to where we were at odds with one another.

“Even at that, we were still friends. It’s just that tug and pull that comes from being in a band.”

True to form, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has thus far given Little Feat, perhaps the biggest American cult band of all time, the cold shoulder.

“They ought to have us in there,” Payne pronounces. “I think it’ll happen for us. It’s another year or so away. I mean, if you can’t put Little Feat in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, then who are you putting in there?”

Little Feat plays the Capitol Theatre in Clearwater at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 26. Jim Lauderdale opens. For tickets and all other information, visit this link.