Little Feat- Sailin’ Shoes 50th- Bill Payne, the late Paul Barrere
Little Feat’s Sailin’ Shoes, coming as it did in May 1972, may not have been the band’s actual first album, but there is no question it is where this all-American band’s legend and legacy began. Little Feat lifers Bill Payne and Paul Barrere sat down with me to talk. Or maybe they should have been lying down on a couch. “I loved him, and I hated him,” said a clearly emotional Barrere in this intense conversation which inevitably begins and ends with the subject of the enigmatic musical genius, Lowell George. “Man, this interview was like a therapy session,” Bill Payne confessed, looking me straight in the eye.
If only the world’s most acclaimed rock musicians voted for election into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Little Feat would have been inducted on the first ballot twenty-five years ago. The list of famous Little Feat fans included the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Bob Seger, Bonnie Raitt, Robert Palmer, and Robert Plant just for starters. Led originally by the late talented, enigmatic slide guitarist/ singer/ songwriter Lowell George, my guests ace pianist Bill Payne and singer/songwriter/guitarist Paul Barrere (who passed away in October 2019), the critics loved Little Feat just as much as the superstars did. But as you will hear in this classic rock interview, for most of the Seventies they didn’t sell many albums.
“That first Little Feat album only sold 11,000 copies,” Bill Payne blurts out. “The second album Sailin’ Shoes only sold 13,000. Maybe 17,000 tops, initially. So I was incredulous that they would even let us do a second album.” Songs include “Easy to Slip”,”Sailin Shoes”, “Fat Man in the Bath Tub”,”Willin’ “,”Dixie Chicken”, “Oh Atlanta”, “Spanish Moon”,”All That You Dream” . This is a no-holds-barred insider’s look at the talented but troubled Little Feat co-founder Lowell George and his complicated relationships within the band prior to his death from a drug-induced heart attack in 1979. This show is dedicated to the memory of George, plus band co-founder/drummer Richie Hayward and now too guitarist/singer Paul Barrere.”Keep on playin’ that tambourine…”. – Redbeard
