Features

Little Feat Reflects on Waiting for Columbus : Relix Revisited (1979)

Part of the Little Feat mystique revolves around the band’s very ability to disappear from the public eye for long stretches of time, only to bounce around again as a more unified organization and a hotter concert item. Payne says that much of the reason their audience grows steadily is due to the fans’ fear that if they don’t catch the band now, they might never get the chance.

“Yeah, that’s a claim to fame for us all right,” Payne laughs, “that we broke up again. What happened to us was that we’d put out one record a year, tour the states for a month, and disappear for eight months. But you can’t just disappear for eight months like that, because the real key to success for us is being visual. It’s just taken some of us a while longer than the others to realize that we’re no longer young kids out for a lark. But people seem to like what we’re doing, so it can only get better.”

Lately, things have not only gotten better for Little Feat, but the band’s individual members have been more active than at any time in recent memory. Payne, for one, is one of the most requested studio musicians on the west coast. He recently finished work on the new Doobie Brothers album, Minute By Minute, and also pitched in on the critically-acclaimed debut LP by Nicolette Larson. Lowell George, the band’s ultra-talented lead guitarist and unofficial figurehead, recently finished work on his long-awaited solo album, and spent some time producing the Dead’s latest, Shakedown Street.

Payne finds the choice of George as producer for the Dead an amusing notion. Asked how that came about, he shakes his head in wonderment. “I don’t know, man,” he jokes. “I think they must have been dropping some acid up there in Marin, and sent down some vibes that rebounded off the pyramids and hit Lowell.” Payne says that once he tried to reach George by phone while he was working with the Dead, and everyone he spoke to was so spaced that they didn’t know where Lowell was, and eventually he just hung up the phone.

Payne had his own days as a spaceman, though, in the late ‘60’s, before there was any Little Feat to speak of. His immediate experience previous to forming the Feat with George in 1969 was playing in a southern California acid-rock band. “I was hanging out in Santa Barbara,” he recalls, “and I did one record on the Psychedelic Records label called Tripping Out. It was done by Acid-Head Productions and the band was called Something Wild. We had this routine,” he continues, breaking up into hysterics, “where we held a mike in front of an amp and swirling mikes and feeding back was in the old days, but the Feat are resigned to the life, knowing it’s their ticket to recognition. “To tell you the truth,” Payne admits, “I was feeling pretty comfortable sitting around Los Angeles before this tour. But, I don’t know, I guess that experiences you get on the road you definitely take back with you. One builds the confidence of the other as far as I’m concerned.”

Payne also finds that the more the band tours, the more he feels at home with the life in some ways. He says he was never able to write on the road before, but now he’s able to get work done when he’s on tour. “I’m starting to feel comfortable writing just about anyplace. You have to write whenever that urge hits you, and it doesn’t hit that often, so I just grab it when it comes.”

From the looks of it, though, the road is not all that exciting most of the time. On this particular rainy afternoon in New Jersey, for example, George and the Feat’s other guitarist, Paul Barrere, are nursing colds—being checked out by the local rock ‘n’ roll doctor. Drummer Richie Hayward finds himself locked into battle with the hotel’s coffee shop manager over the merits of the steak he had ordered. And both bassist Ken Gradney and percussionist Sam Clayton are oblivious to anything beyond their intensely raging backgammon tourney. Payne agrees that the time between gigs is often better forgotten.

“Thankfully, we got in at 5:30 this morning,” he says. “So we can sleep most of the day. But there’s usually not much to do. A couple of days ago we were down in Williamsburg or Harrisonburg, or one of those burgs in Virginia,” he says sarcastically, “and we did get to play some golf. And, as you saw, some of the cats are into backgammon. It’s just a floating crap game around here, that’s what it is.”