In his 43-year career as a founding member of Little Feat and as a highly sought-after session artist, Bill Payne has worked with thousands of musicians. It is only now, at 63, that the keyboardist/songwriter has collaborated with Robert Hunter, famed lyricist for the Grateful Dead and writing partner of the late Jerry Garcia. What has resulted is a set of songs that comprise nearly half of Feat’s 16th and latest studio entry in their storied discography, Rooster Rag. Just prior to the start of the band’s lengthy summer tour, Payne talked to us from his Montana home about the new album, the creative process, and the effect of change on a band now in its fifth decade in rock and roll.
What makes now the time for a new Little Feat record?
We hadn’t done anything for probably seven or eight years. Right before we took off for that one venture with Jimmy Buffett and Friends, a record we had called Join the Band, there was an idea of putting together a blues record, an idea that I had while wandering the streets of Cleveland. Turns out, we didn’t write very much in the way of blues songs, and the idea shifted to just doing a regular Little Feat record. About that time, I was introduced to Robert Hunter.
How did that introduction with Hunter come about?
Cameron Sears, who used to manage the Grateful Dead, got in touch and said, ‘Would you be interested in writing some stuff with Robert Hunter?’ I said, ‘Yeah!’ I think Paul (Barrere) had sent him (Hunter) some music if I remember correctly, and the two of them didn’t quite hit it off. I was sent a couple things. I dove into one and thought that I could write something to it. It started off with one song and has blossomed into ten, and I’m now working on an eleventh. It’s been quite the journey.
Did you get the sense that these were things Robert had worked on for your specific project or were they things he had and was looking for a home?
My sense of things, and I’m not really sure, was that he knew we were writing a project. I didn’t get a sense that they were things sitting in a pile for him. On a couple, he said, ‘I was listening to a record of yours and that is what inspired me to write this.’ What I took out of that was that he was taking our music and putting his stuff on top of that. At least, it led him in a certain direction. More often than not, the freedom that he and I developed in this relationship let the lyrics guide me.
Can you give me an example of that process?
“Rooster Rag” is a good example of that. When I started out with that, I was sitting there trying to figure out the lay of the land. My way of writing is pretty exploratory. I was reacting off of some key words like ‘Tubal Cain’ or ‘kings of creation,’ and what emotion did that drive with me. With Tubal Cain, I wasn’t sure what the reference was, it reminded me of something that would be best served with some chords that had a ragtime history or feel to them. Each verse in that song is different because the lyrics suggested to me that they be different. At the beginning, I think I wrote everything the same, but then I thought about taking each thing for what it is. I know how to write an A/B/Chorus, but the way I like to write is with a lot more freedom, and Robert’s lyrics certainly gave me that opportunity.
I’m curious about the idea of looking for indicators in the lyrics to inform you musically. Were you trying to visualize it, like the lyrics reminded you of a setting, and that led to your musical choices?
That’s a good question. My music is visual. I come from a very visual place. When I got to that part about Tubal Cain, I’m going… (Plays ragtime section on the piano.) I didn’t literally play that kind of music, but I took it as an indicator of a certain style. We just lost Levon Helm, and when I got to the ‘kings of creation,’ that almost had, to me, a Band feeling. I can’t talk for Robert. For me, I’m borrowing from influences all the time. I wasn’t lifting anything, just that, for lack of a better word, there was a feeling attached to it, an emotion attached to it. It seemed to me a pinnacle of something. I think, in effect, what I was doing was scoring the lyrics. At first I thought of it as a song, but I also thought of it on a visual level. What are we looking at?
Did you apply this same process in the past to your own lyrics, or when collaborating with others, as well?
I certainly applied it to my own. “Red Streamliner.” “Gringo.” Those kinds of songs are very visual tunes. The song I co-wrote with Gabe Ford on this one, “The Blues Keep Coming,” was visual but in a slightly different way. Some things are done by feel. “Oh Atlanta” was just taking a rock and roll song with a couple of extra chords thrown into it- let the lyrics convey what they are going to convey. It’s like a Rolling Stones song; you know the chorus but you couldn’t sing a verse to save your life.
Is it true that “Oh Atlanta” was your answer to a bet from Lowell George that you couldn’t write a pop hit?
(Laughs) Yeah, it sort of was. And he was right, I couldn’t. My idea of a hit song was a chorus at 42 seconds in, and so it was somewhat of an exercise. The lyrics to that were from a poem that I had written. It was more in a poem layout from a journal. I used to keep journals; a couple of which are in the Rock and Roll museum up in Cleveland.
Lyrics to me have always been a hallmark of a Little Feat song. The band has introduced to its fans so many characters and vignettes, “Representing the Mambo” to use one example, the songs are almost like travel guides to your world. Was there any concern or reservation about turning over something that is so much a part of Little Feat to someone outside of that? Granted it’s Robert Hunter, but did you wonder if he could capture that Little Feat essence?
In the beginning I did. I was worried about if I was starting to connect with the lyrics, could I do what I do musically beneath it, which was take people on a journey. Sometimes what happens, though some people do it brilliantly- where the music matches the intensity, the music is a perfect handshake- sometimes I hear people dress up in a far-out fashion but the music is pedestrian. “Representing the Mambo” is a perfect example, where you are leading people down this path.
How difficult was it for you to match the music to the lyrics?
Because I wasn’t talking to him- I’m just sitting there writing this stuff- the challenge was the freedom. I’ll make the decisions to do something and then present it to him later and he’d say, ‘Yeah, sounds great.’ Robert works from his own place. He’s certainly not huge on dissecting anything, so I don’t want to put words in his mouth. For whatever reason, we seemed to have a good read on each other. It was really complementary at the end of the day. Anybody that has written songs with Jerry Garcia and Bob Dylan, I kind of had to pinch myself a couple of times, thinking, ‘Gee, I’m writing with this guy?’ But I couldn’t let that get in the way of what I was doing. This was about creating something. It’s Little Feat, and your inclination to ask that question is spot-on. We don’t let a lot of people into this club.
I can imagine writing a Little Feat song comes with its own set of unique qualities.
Most people that come in think, ‘This is what a Little Feat song sounds like to me. Does it sound like one to you?’ By virtue of the fact of taking that approach, they have already lost us. I don’t want to go down a hallway of mirrors with people. I have to say, Fred Tackett came up with some really nice things on this record. The concern I have as a writer is to be able to sing something, and this sounds crass though it isn’t meant to, and sell it. To believe in it.
When you say sell, I assume you mean deliver it truthfully.
Exactly. Thank you. It’s having a belief in what you are putting forth. That was paramount for me. I don’t want to have a disingenuous ego.
You are also a photographer. A parallel I see between photography and art is the aspiration to try and convey a thought or emotion through a medium to an audience.
When I write something or take a photo of something, I’d love for some people to get what I’m saying, to get it on a level that I feel, and sometimes they do. Other times, people say, ’I really love those lyrics you wrote. This is what it meant to me.’ It was like 180 degrees from what I meant it to be, but they translated it to their baggage. That’s always a component. If you set out to write something or take a picture of something that is universal, that’s much harder to do than putting out an image that people can read into. I don’t mean that either one is easy to do, but it is all about intent. I’ve done things that allow people to read into it. A song I wrote, “Voices on the Wind,” the engineer didn’t get what was going on, and I said, ‘You don’t have to. Just make it sound great.’ I may have insulted him a little bit. Later the same song was used by the Los Angeles Lakers in a tribute to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Recently a group in Africa recorded a version, beautifully done. These things morph into different areas. Generally speaking I don’t worry about it. If I like it, then that’s okay if other people don’t. It’s subjective.
Do you ever stop the bus, literally, to get a shot or do you like to plan your shoots?
If I see something, I grab a photo of it. I won’t stop the bus, though. It may not be technically correct, which is to say the photo is overblown, maybe I didn’t get enough exposure, but with Photoshop I can go in fix, change, do whatever I need to do. There are purists out there who say you should’ve stopped the bus, or set it up just right, and I say, look, one of Ansel Adams’ most famous photographs, and there were many, is “Moonrise over Hernandez.” He took a STOP sign out of the photo. So, if you want to debate purity, let’s do it, but it’s up to each artist to approach that subject and deal with it as he’s see fit, not the way you see fit.
If an artist has to stop and take a poll of what the audience thinks, I’m not sure it remains to be art.
No, it doesn’t, and it’s done all the time. It’s called pop. I don’t denigrate it. I grew up enjoying “Alley-Oop” as a song as much as I enjoyed what Ray Charles was doing.
Change versus continuity. The band has changed over the years, sometimes by choice, other times by circumstance. How has that been beneficial or challenging to the group?
It’s always challenging. The challenge is to deal with another person or a group of people. Most bands split up because they can’t stand each other. It’s a marriage. How you keep it together is trying to keep people thinking it terms of not losing your identity, but being comfortable enough to share it with others. If you don’t feel like contributing all that much at certain times, that you don’t feel like you are not pulling your weight. It’s an elastic proposition. The super challenge is when you lose somebody, in our case, like Lowell George. I actually left the band before he passed away. We were in the middle of a project, and I was going to finish it, but I just got tired of all the Lowell stuff. He’s here. He’s gone. He’s okay. He screwed up. What the hell is going on? Well, I knew what was going on. It was endemic of the times. Too many drugs, etc. It wasn’t very comfortable.
What brought you back to it eight years later?
It was done for a very honest reason. I might of realized it with Paul first, that we’ve got something really special here. We can’t do this with anybody else, so let’s consider putting this back together. Let’s do it in a manner that’s cautious with regard to whether we do it or not, but throw caution to the wind in terms with what we are going to write. We are in competition with each other. We are in competition with our past. Not everyone who hears it is going to climb on board, but we have to start with ourselves. Do we think it is an honest bridge we are creating to where we want to go? If it’s not, then we are shutting this thing down.
How difficult is competing with that past?
People say, ‘You said in People magazine that without Lowell George it’s not Little Feat.’ Yeah, I said that, and here is the way I feel now. Is that okay with you? I’ve said a lot of things in my lifetime, and hopefully not just me, but each one of us has the ability to evolve to a point of discussion. You don’t have to feel the way you felt when you were six-years-old for God’s sake, or 26, or wherever you are. Life is about re-evaluation as much as anything. I took the task very seriously, but I like to have serious fun when I play music.
More recently in 2010, you lost your original drummer Richie Hayward after a battle with lung disease. Can you talk about what that loss meant?
Because we were in the process of losing Richie- he wasn’t gone yet, but he was being taken from us by his illness- he and I discussed it. I said we’d like to keep this thing going and he was absolutely fine with it. I think he was relieved. We said if you feel you can come back, the door is wide open. Gabe said as much. When people form bands, you sort out what is important to you about the group. Is it the voice of the band? Writing with other people? If you stop writing with someone, does that affect the group? What do you sound like on-stage? More importantly, what do you feel like when you walk off-stage every night? That’s something that Little Feat has. Something we have investigated, and tortured ourselves with for over 42 years, and gotten a great deal of satisfaction out of, as well, or we wouldn’t be doing it.
Have the personnel changes the band has undergone in some ways led to its longevity? Craig [Fuller] seemed to bring a new perspective to the core unit, as did Shaun [Murphy]. Now, without either, the band again has to evolve in ways it may not have had to otherwise?
By virtue of reality, it’s exactly as you describe it. I wouldn’t sing as much if either Craig or Shaun was in the band. I would write things and hand it over to people. Finally, I decided if I’m going to write it, I want to sing it. I have that confidence, which is why I’m going out and doing solo shows. Anytime you make any shift in any type of band, more than likely it will be a pretty radical departure. It has to do with the sound of the band more than anything. I’ve told people that if we played “Happy Birthday,” it’s going to sound like Little Feat. The slide, the keyboards, the rhythm section- nobody played like Richie Hayward. So that was a huge question mark. It has to do with the actual respect for people that you have worked with over the years. You honor them by continuing all of this. I like to think that I honor Lowell every time we play “Dixie Chicken,” or “Fat Man in the Bathtub,” or “Willin,’” or any number of those songs. We want to maintain the spirit of what the band was from the beginning which is as a platform for doing things you couldn’t do anywhere else. That’s what makes a band. The minute I don’t feel any of us are invested in what we are doing, there isn’t going to be a band anymore.
This new album, Rooster Rag, certainly illustrates Little Feat’s versatility, yet maintains its signature style.
I agree with you. If you think about the very first album and the eclecticism we had with “Strawberry Flats,” “Hamburger Midnight,” “Brides of Jesus,” “Crazy Captain Gunboat Willie,” on and on, you would have to be in four or five different bands to play that breadth of material. The strength of the band, and what also kept us in a real cult status, was that even though we had a sound, it was a sound that covered many different styles of music. That was the freedom we had, and it was the same freedom I had writing with Robert Hunter. If we hadn’t had that I probably would not have been able to write with the guy. I wouldn’t have been comfortable doing it. I also wouldn’t have been the kind of session player I am, or toured with Jimmy Buffet for three-and-a-half years, or toured with Bob Seger or James Taylor.
Finally, we’ve talked about the loss of Lowell and Richie, and of Levon Helm. With such a long and successful career in music as you’ve had, it’s been bound to be marked with loss. Did the loss of a bandmate or peer affect you differently when you were younger than it does now at this stage of your life?
I think the pain of losing someone is always filled with trauma. Not only do you miss the person, you have regrets about what was said or what wasn’t said. I think I’ve just come to the conclusion that death is a part of living. It’s part of a cycle that we are all a part of and I sincerely hope all of them are in a better place. My personal feeling is, I’m not a religious guy at all, I believe in the spirit of things. I believe the spirit, the energy of things, continues when it leaves your body at the end of the day, the literal end of the day. I don’t have any doubt about that, so it’s more of a comforting thing. I don’t have any evidence, so that and a quarter will get you a phone call. The hurt is always there. I’ve shed a lot of tears over a lot of people and it’s only going to continue, I’m afraid. What I believe lastly is that life is for the living. You have to persevere and honor those you think deserve it. Keep them in your heart.
