Having passed through ice —the COVID winter of the past two years — Little Feat is ready to bring some fire with their heralded Waiting for Columbus tour of March-April 2022.  Little Feat is set to perform at DAR Constitution Hall on Saturday, April 16th, and bringing none other than Hot Tuna along with them - Happy Feat, indeed. 

Waiting for Columbus was Feat’s first live album, and it perfectly captures their consummate playing skill with extended versions of their early classic tunes. Feat fans have been waiting for this tour for quite a while.  What makes this concert so special for DC Metro Area residents is that this legendary album was partially recorded in Washington DC at Lisner Auditorium. 

Little Feat is very possibly the last-man-standing example of what used to be the norm in American music, a fusion of a broad span of styles and genres into something utterly distinctive. They combined earthy, organic material with first-rate musicianship in a combination that transcends boundaries. Feat took California rock, funk, folk, jazz, country, rockabilly, and New Orleans swamp boogie and more, stirred it into a rich gumbo, and has been leading people in joyful dance ever since. 

It all began in 1969 when Frank Zappa was smart enough to fire Lowell George from the Mothers of Invention and tell him to go start a band of his own. Soon after, Lowell connected with Bill Payne, which stirred up sparks. They then found drummer Richie Hayward, and for a while had Zappa veteran Roy Estrada on bass.  The name was part of the legend. A member of the Mothers happened to mention Lowell’s small feet to him “with an expletive,” said Paul Barrere. “Lowell deleted the expletive, and the name was born with Feat instead of Feet, just like the Beatles. Neat, huh?”

They were quickly signed by Warner Bros. and began working on the first of twelve albums with that venerable company. The first album, Little Feat, featured the instant-classic tune “Willin’,” and the follow-up Sailin’ Shoes added “Easy to Slip,” “Trouble,” “Tripe Face Boogie,” “Cold Cold Cold” and the title track to their repertoire, as well as a new version of “Willin’” that took it from pure Lowell to a fully-developed band tune. Estrada departed, and the band signed up (on guitar!) Paul Barrére, Kenny Gradney (bass), and Sam Clayton (percussion), and the latter remain rock-solid members of Little Feat’s rhythm section. 

In the early part of the new millennium, Feat started their own Hot Tomato Records and began to share their rich archives with their fans, producing the double CD collections of rarities Raw Tomatos and Ripe Tomatos from both fan and band tapes. 2002 also yielded Live From the Ram’s Head, a two-CD acoustic show, and in 2003 came Down Upon the Suwannee, a live show recorded on the banks of the river at the Magnolia Festival in northern Florida. Hot Tomato also gave the musicians the freedom to deliver solo work, as well, first with Fred Tackett’s In A Town Like This, and then Bill Payne’s Cielo Norte, an intimate, lyrical marriage of keyboards. 

Little Feat’s rich legacy was acknowledged at the 25^th anniversary of the monumental live album Waiting for Columbus when Rhino Records put out a special two CD edition of the original concert, plus outtakes, along with Hotcakes and Outtakes: 30 Years of Little Feat, a four-CD boxed set featuring hits from all of Feat’s albums as well as alternate takes and rarities from a rich past, which has included playing with everybody from Bob Dylan to Beck, Willie Nelson to Bonnie Raitt, Robert Plant, and John Lee Hooker amongst others.

Their latest studio work is Rooster Rag, by critical consensus their best studio album in twenty years, featuring four songs co-written by keyboardist Bill Payne and the Grateful Dead’s legendary lyricist Robert Hunter, four breakout songs by Fred Tackett, and a superb collaboration between Paul Barrere and the late Stephen Bruton. 

If you play long enough and, as Little Feat has, you have had to to face everything - stress of the road, band departures, health issues - and Little Feat has seen it all. You can go a number of ways when you spend your life on the road.  Instead of being eaten up by the stresses and quit the Feasters have held onto their music and their friends and the joy of the people out front and keep their priorities straight. Despite their joyous outlook on life, Richie Hayward, the sterling drummer who’d held down the beat for nearly forty years, was finally taken down by liver cancer in 2010. The same grim pursuer caught up with Paul Barrere in 2019. Paul will always be missed, yet paradoxically his absence also confirmed the stunning power of the music that Little Feat has made for so very long.  Each new member has been an inspired student of their predecessor working to keep the original passion of the music intact and also breathing new life and new inspiration into this bands legendary catalog.  The members of Little Feat 2022 are: Bill Payne,(Keyboards/Vocals); Sam Clayton (Percussion/Vocals); Fred Tackett, (Guitars/Vocals), Kenny Gradney (Bass); Scott Sharrard (Guitars and Vocals), and Tony Leone (drums). 

Fifty years on, they’ve been up and they’ve been down and they know where they belong—standing or sitting behind their instruments, playing for you. And anything’s possible, because the end is not in sight.  We are extremely fortunate to have live music back again, and excited to relive Waiting for Columbus where it all began - in Washington DC.  Hope to see everyone at DAR Constitution Hall on April 16th as we joyously dance our Happy Feat off!

(Cover Photo Credit: Hank Randall)

To learn more about Little Feat, please see the following web resources:

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To learn more about Hot Tuna, please see the following web resources:

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