Over the years, Payne has worked with a Who’s Who of musical icons including Bob Seger, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Stevie Nicks and Linda Ronstadt. Some of those collaborations may be revisited onstage, but Payne says he’ll be doing more recent collaborations assisted by Gabe Ford, guitarist Robben Ford’s s son and Feat’s current drummer. “It’s gonna be a pretty good collection of songs,” Payne says. “I don’t usually sing “Dixie Chicken,” but who knows – if people want to hear it, maybe I’ll play it. I’m not here to do a watered down Little Feat set, that’s for sure.” The idea is to take people on a journey. “It’s music, interspersed with photography and stories.” Payne says he thinks he’s gonna be his own opening act, so his opener will consist of a q&a with the audience before he gets down to music and photography and between song banter.
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The stories will undoubtedly include some early Feat anecdotes. “There was a song called ‘Dance With The Nubile Virgin Slaves.’ We played it for Ahmet Ertegun, who used to produce Ray Charles, was head of Atlantic Records,” Payne recalls. “And when we played it for him, his quote was very simple. He said, ‘Boys, its too diverse.’ And that was all he said. So we went back to the drawing board and created ‘Hamburger Midnight,” Strawberry Flats,’ ‘Truckstop Girl,’ ‘Brides of Jesus,’ ‘Gunboat Willie’,” Payne says, referring to their first eponymous ’71 release.
He says “Easy To Slip,” from the next album, Sailing Shoes, was Lowell’s attempt at hitting the mainstream market. “It didn’t,” Payne says, “but it’s a great tune. We had an argument one time, over an album or two later, and he says to me, ‘You can’t write a good song.’ And the song I wrote, my idea of a hit song, was ‘Oh Atlanta.’ Again, that was not a hit, but it was a mainstay of Little Feat. So, we never did write any hit records. None of us did.” But Payne contributed some classic tunes to the Feat lexicon, including “Day or Night,” “Time Loves a Hero” and “Gringo.”
Payne believes that Lowell was trying to center Feat a bit more, “but not all the time. His main problem with us, when we did Time Loves A Hero, people thought Paul and I had hijacked the band form Lowell. He asked us to get more involved because he had some health issues he was dealing with, and when we did, it was one of those classic things, oh my God, I didn’t know they were going to actually do what I asked them to do.” Payne says that the ’79 breakup was not the first. “That’s a band for you,” Payne says. “You’re gonna argue over everything everybody does. When Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were at each others throats one time, people are like, ‘Oh, they’re gonna break up,’ and I’m like, ‘No they’re not. They’re talking to each other in the press. Lowell hasn’t done that for years,” Payne laughs.
Payne may also share music from his’05 instrumental album, Cielo Norte. He says the liner notes from Bill Evans’ ’68 release, Alone, sum up what he was trying to do perfectly, then, and now on Tracing Footsteps: “’This is as close to me as you’re gonna get in my living room.’ Is it self indulgent? You bet. But it gives you a key insight as to what you’re like when you’re not trying to shield yourself with an image. Hey, this is what I do, and when I’m not thinking about it, this is the way I play, and I want to share that with you.”
