← Takin' A Walk - Music History with Buzz Knight
Takin' A Walk - Music History with Buzz Knight
Bill Payne from Little Feat : One of the most iconic keyboard players in music history
00:43:35
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- [00:00]
Tom Yamas
This is an iHeart podcast. Taking over the helm of NBC nightly news, a 75 year old broadcast. It's a great responsibility. Good evening, I'm Tom Yamas. You have to go out there to bring people at home. Closer to the store, wildfires continue to be a threat. With that massive hurricane comes the massive response. The best reporters in our business know how to listen. And when you listen, you get the truth. For NBC News, NBC News, I'm Tom Galamas. That's what we do every night. NBC Nightly News with Tom Yamas.
- [00:33]
Ryan Seacrest
Evenings on NBC.
- [00:35]
Buzz Knight
We're leaving today and entering a world of Cinderella, Castle sightseeing, Tron Light cycling, Jungle cruise, bunning, Pirate swashbuckling, Everest climbing, Dapper Denning soaring, soaring fireworks show of.
- [00:54]
Bill Payne
I'm not crying, you're crying. World of Favorites for whatever you love.
- [01:00]
Buzz Knight
Infinite worlds await at the most magical place on earth. Walt Disney World.
- [01:05]
Tom Yamas
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- [02:06]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [03:05]
Bill Payne
A Walk so music and art are they're not benign. They're there to help. They're there to guide. I don't mean just the people that write it. I mean, we luck out on a lot of things that we do. But you mentioned it before too, Buzz, which is it enables and enacts the spirit of community.
- [03:26]
Buzz Knight
Hi, I'm Buzz Knight and welcome to the Taking a Walk podcast. This is the podcast where we love talking musicians. We get the inside scoop about what they're up to and how they got there with their latest project and all other fun hijinks along the way. I'm very pleased on this episode to have a returning guest. We were able to take a walk in person together pretty early on in the podcast and it was a delight in person. But if it can't be in person, it's a delight to welcome back the one and only Bill Payne from Little Feet to the Take on a Wealth Podcast. Bill, it's so great to be with you.
- [04:11]
Bill Payne
Same here. And yeah, what an honor to be invited back. I mean, I've been keeping track of the various people you've had on. It's an amazing array of artists and thinkers and just good people. So credence to all you're doing, man.
- [04:28]
Buzz Knight
It's great having a blast. And you know, for me, it's so amazing because I get to talk to people that I've followed and crossed paths with or admired over the years. And you are certainly one of those people. And the band Little Feet also is very near and dear, as are you to my heart. So thank you for being on. It's really tremendous.
- [04:54]
Bill Payne
Thank you so much, Rand.
- [04:55]
Buzz Knight
Bill, since the podcast is called Taking a Walk, I do want to ask you if have you had the opportunity to to take a walk or a saunter with somebody living or dead? They could be certainly affiliated in and around music, but doesn't have to be. There's no rules to what we're doing here. Who would you take a walk with and where would you take a walk with them?
- [05:22]
Bill Payne
Oh my gosh, that's Well, I mean, I'm thinking this book I'm writing called Carnival Ghost. I've got a huge section on it on surfing for a number of reasons. I mean, not only the art and act of surfing, but the music that surrounded it. The films that I went to and watched people on stage narrate their movies. One of those guys was Bruce Brown, who also did movies on motorcycles. Bruce had Barefoot Adventure. He went to South Africa with a couple of different people in another film. But he had a soundtrack to Barefoot Adventure, which featured Bud Powell. Let's see, I've got Thad Jones, I think was on trumpet. Man, there's some great, great jazz musicians. Dennis Budmire was on there. Oh, I got a chance to tell my. I was aware of this record. I'd love to take a walk with Bruce Brown. He passed away a few years ago and I'd probably do it up in the Santa Barbara area on one of those beaches up there, maybe even along the cliffs of further north of Santa Barbara, between Santa Barbara and the Gaviota Pass. Some lovely territory up there. I spent a lot of time surfing and just trying to think out my next moves. And it's a good contemplative area. I think it'd be wonderful to talk with him up there.
- [07:01]
Buzz Knight
I love it. I love it. We have a lot to catch up on. We want to talk about the book. We'll come back to that. Certainly your photography as well. I want to hear if you've been continuing to dabble at that. But the exciting news too that we want to talk about is Strike up the Band, the brand new Little Feet release, which is. Got some amazing folks on it. You've got Larkin Poe and Molly Tuttle and Larry Campbell. I want to hear how that all came together, how this new project came together for. For you and the band.
- [07:40]
Bill Payne
Well, from the inception of putting the band back together after Paul Barrera passed away in 2019, Scott Sherrard was on the very show, the very date in October that Paul passed away, he joined us. Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams had been on the tour up until they had a couple of other obligations they had to fill. So we brought in Scott. I had met him during a tour with the Doobie Brothers and he was a musical director for Greg All. We had a gig coming up also in Jamaica. We were, are we going to do it? Are we not? We decided with the way Scott was playing, the way we all felt about it, that we should definitely do that. Let's cement the relationship with Scott, which we did. And A few months later, we brought in Tony Leone on drums, so everything was set. And then Covid hit. So we were communicating exactly what you and I are doing now over the Internet and sending tracks back and forth and recording and whatnot, but no get togethers. That didn't happen until November of 2021. When we did get together, we had this agenda which management helped figure out, which was, let's go ahead and take song requests from fans, which we did, which opened a whole catalog that we hadn't played in a long time. Songs like Strawberry Flats, for example, off the very first album. But it's really to follow that, Bud, was the notion of going out and playing Waiting for Columbus, which I had always sort of balked at, to be honest with you. But it made perfect sense now that we had this Bandit could play anything. It was a gutsy move to try and replicate a record, or if not replicate it, at least play songs in order and then put our spin on it. I thought it was a necessary thing to do. But even so, the notion of putting a record together was deeply implanted. I'd already written 20 songs with Robert Hunter, for example, four of which had been recorded in 2012 on Rooster Rag. I just thought, like, we don't have to prove we can play Dixie Chicken. Somebody asked me, how do you keep that song so fresh? I said, well, what do you do when you sing Happy Birthday to someone? You sing it from the heart, I hope.
- [10:20]
Buzz Knight
Yeah, that's wonderful.
- [10:22]
Bill Payne
That kind of thing. So that's what we do. So this is a long, circuitous answer to a project that was the inception was in the beginning of the band coming back together, which was in 2020. But we brought in Vance Powell, who works with Chris Stapleton. He's engineer and works with Fish. He was one of those guys, honestly. We recorded at Blackbird Studios in Nashville, which he helped put together with George Massenburg was also involved in that, who was also one of our engineers for many, many years. But Vance is one of those guys Buzz that can. Just. Before you even think of what you're going to say to him, he's already there. Or when I contemplate saying, hey, listen, man, why don't we. Oh, no, you've already got that. Okay. God, he was ten steps ahead of me almost the entire way. He brought in Christian Rogers to sing backgrounds on some vocals. She's out now with Post Malone. So, I mean, his tastes are great. He solidified that by choosing Littlefeet, I thought to work with. But he and I, as a Production team also fell into line very well. With any kind of scene like that, it takes a while for people to sort of acclimate to one another, which was the case with the band and with. With Vance. But he was so adept at making people feel comfortable. And we had a couple of off ramps we could take with Scott Gerard, who wanted to work with our engineer, who he also brought in, which is Charles A. Martinez. Charles, or Charlie, as we call him, had worked with Steely Dan, with Donald Fagan. Those credentials alone, the door's wide open for him as far as I'm concerned. So then it was a matter of songs. I started writing songs with. I went back to New York to write with Tony and with Scott. We came up with a couple of things there. One of them was the very first track on the record, which is a title that I'd come up with, and actually had a start to some music with as well, and some lyrics. Four days of having three days of work. And when people hear that, I mean, I'll literally be in an Uber, in Denver, in New York, in St. Louis, wherever the heck I am. And I'll ask the driver, where are you from? He goes either from Africa, sometimes Guatemala, wherever. I'll play them. This I'll play first. I'll play some. Wherever they're from, I'll play that music where they're from. Oh, you're from the Congo. Here's some Congolese rumba for you. And I say, well, now here's a band I play with and I'll play that track. And they're like, oh, that's good.
- [13:10]
Buzz Knight
Oh, that's awesome. Those are like mini focus groups. You're doing an.
- [13:14]
Bill Payne
Honestly an answer. I mean, you just throw. Throw it out. And people like that. It's. You know what it's like. It's you. You get honest reactions from people sometimes strike up. The band reminds me greatly of. Of. Of Let It Roll for one main reason, is that Let It Roll, we were. We were reintroducing the band to people. We were in a very similar position this time. And when things are running smoothly with Let It Roll, we had at the helm Peter Asher management. This time we have Ken Lavitan, Brian Pennix at Vector. When things are going smoothly, as I said, you can almost script what's going to happen. I'm pretty good at that. And I just was not surprised at the reaction we've been getting. I knew it would be good. It's the old ad. The old adage, when you're playing, put your Mask on first. So I'm there. I have my mask on. I'm ready. I just think it's a really. The portraitures that are on that record are well framed. I enjoyed the writing process, not only with Scott and Tony, but with Charlie Starr from BlackBerry Smoke, John Leventhal, who's a good friend in New York, Vince Herman, who I just worked with at Red Rocks, who's in a band called Leftover Salmon. We did the last song on the record, which was New Orleans Cries When She Sings, which is an ode to New Orleans. A dangerous place, but a wonderful place nonetheless. Life is pretty good right now.
- [14:52]
Buzz Knight
It's tremendous. And thinking about really the added collaborators, too. I'm just so fascinated by that group. Big fans of all of them. First of all, talk about your opportunity to connect with and work with Larkin Poe.
- [15:11]
Bill Payne
If I'm not mistaken, that was an idea that Scott Sherrard might have had, but it was also an idea for sure, that Vance Powell brought to the table because they live in town, they live in Nashville, so he felt he could contact them and wheel them in. And Scott, I had a song for him as well, but I deferred to Scott, and I'm glad I did because I think they worked out beautifully on the title tracks. Strike up the band.
- [15:45]
Buzz Knight
And then there's the phenomenal Molly Tuttle connecting with her. What was that like?
- [15:51]
Bill Payne
I told Molly before we went to the studio, I said, listen, the only thing that's bluegrass about this song that you're going to play, and it was called Bluegrass Pines by Robert Hunter and myself, is the title. Other than that, it's a long, circuitous song, and if you need any help, let me know, but I'll turn you loose on it. I'll be there to help guide it, but I want you to play acoustic guitar and just feel comfortable to try things. And let's see what fits. So she did exactly that. And it's just an extraordinary, extraordinarily warm person, which I would have expected nothing less, but sometimes you. You don't know until you actually meet people. So that was a thrill to have had her on this record.
- [16:38]
Buzz Knight
I mean, I think it's so brilliant, you know, once again, for fans of the band for a long time, to get what they, you know, always will expect, that. A little feat as. As a band and the great playing, but then adding these. These. These new voices which are really emerging brilliantly out of places like Nashville and. And they're just these phenomenal players that are just. Just a whole different generation. And what's so cool about that generation is that they have such great respect for certainly the. The past as well.
- [17:20]
Bill Payne
Yeah, well said. Buzz and Little Feet is known and has been known for a long, long time as a musicians. Musicians group, which we still are. And we're not pop stars or rock stars. Some people try and put that label on. Tried to put on me a couple times, and I said, look, if you want to think of me as a rock star, go ahead. I think of myself as a rock head, mainly, but mainly I am undoubtedly a musician. So that's what. When those doors are open, that's who we're inviting in our people. We're in the same club. And the club, ironically, is for most of us. As Groucho Marx used to say, I would never join a club that would accept me as a member. They're pretty much of that mindset, too. But we are a rather exclusive club as a musician. And the trials and errors and tribulations that come with taking your art seriously but trying to have fun with it, those are the paths we've chosen over the years. And we have very similar stories to tell along those lines, which is great. So when I meet people, and I've done this for a long time, as not only a musician within Littlefeet, who already had the mantle of being a band's band and that kind of thing, or when Eric Clapton came to see us, I said, man, you saw us a week or two ago. What's going on? He goes, I brought my band here. I wanted to hear a proper band. I go, oh, okay, good. Thank you. So as a proper band, that's a pretty good high compliment from Eric. But we are. I mean, that's what we do. And being part of a proper band for me is. What platform are you using to tell the story? Are you writing your own songs? That's not necessary. You don't have to. There are plenty of great writers. There's plenty of great songs out there. How do you treat it within regard to not only your instrument, but how you blend with others? How do you play with others? There's so much that's involved and so much that, like being an athlete, where they have great peripheral vision, whether it's on the basketball court or in hockey or whatever they're doing within music. You have great, or should have pretty wide and great peripheral hearing as well. So it's what you hear and what you react against. It's like our conversation.
- [20:02]
Buzz Knight
Yeah. Natural flow, which is you. You guys have always made it look so easy. But there's nothing easy about what you're. What you're doing. It's complic. It's intricate. It's. It brings you to different places and it blends all different genres. Now it's. It's very popular for artists to go, well, yeah, I'm blending genres. I find my own, you know, particular niche there between this genre and that genre. But in my opinion, when I first discovered Little Feet a few years back, that's everything Little Feet was about. It wasn't really genre defined, in my opinion.
- [20:44]
Bill Payne
Yeah, I'm with you. And I think that fortunately for most of the stuff we play, it sounds easy. In other words, it sounds like falling off a log. So you're. You're not struggling to. I mean, you might not struggle, but you might have to hear a song a few times to get it wrapped around your head. But the water is pretty warm. It's a warm dive. As a musician. When you try and play it, though, it's. People come up to me, I mean, gosh. And they'll say, well, it was. And I go, harder than you thought? And they go, yeah. I was thinking, because I'm writing a chapter now in this book, Carnival Ghosts, about songwriting, and I want to take people through the process. And one of the things I'm discovering about that process is, is that, for my part, trying to keep the music as interesting as the lyrics, depending on what the song is, the lyrics oftentimes will take precedence only in the cadence that I'm following. So if everything's 4, 4, like 1, 2, 3, 4. But a lot of my songs have like, 1, 2, 3, 4, and then boom, boom again, like two more extra beats in a certain section to accommodate lyrics or to accommodate a musical phrase. So I've never, ever shied away from that. It used to confuse Richie Hayward sometimes because he'd go, look, the one is here. And it would. But I said, no, Richie, when I'm going 1, 2, 3, and then I'm feeling the beat is happening there, then it's 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4. So it's a seven beat phrase rather than four. But he'd laugh and go, okay. I said, as long as you know what you're doing, you count it any way you want. But what I'm feeling is when the accent hits hard, that's where I start to recount. That's where one starts for me. Much like in Tom Wolf's book the. The Right Stuff, where the astronauts didn't. They didn't want to evaluate too Heavily what they were doing back in the day because they were basically, they were human beings, but they didn't feel they were much better than the monkeys that were crawling in some of those capsules and just popping them off into the air. In the beginning for me, I didn't really think about whether something was in a certain time signature or did it have three, eight beats before we took off on something I didn't want to know. And then later I thought, well, why am I thinking I don't need to remain ignorant of this. If the proposition of learning, whether it's learning scales or learning more chords or listening to a broader context of music and, or reading maybe literature or books that are a little over your head and you have to look at a dictionary every now and then, what you're doing is expanding your vocabulary. I don't see how that hurts anyone or anything. So I, I then began to take that approach and, and dove a little, you know, more consciously into what I was doing and why and without fear of interrupting or hurting my creativity, which is the way a lot of people think it does.
- [24:07]
Buzz Knight
Well, when I think about working with, you know, Larkin Poe and Molly Tuttle and of course, you know, Larry Campbell on the new project and then I sort of reflect with, with your work beyond Little Feet, which to name a few, I mean, I think of certainly your work with Bonnie Raitt and James Taylor. But then I go off to thinking about your work, you know, that you did with Pink Floyd and, and, and then of course the long standing work with the Doobie Brothers. It's always covered, you know, different territory for, for sure. Is there any territory that you haven't covered that you would still like to cover?
- [24:54]
Bill Payne
Well, that's an excellent question and I guess the short answer is is no. But there, there's a song I've, I've, I've got that I hope will appear on the next record. We have done some jazz, but we haven't. I've embraced jazz in the last few years more than I've ever done in my life. Become more cognizant of things, listening to a lot more of Herbie Hancock, who might have also been a person to take a walk with, to be honest with you. He's one of those guys. Wayne Shorter, so Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock with their collective work. I've got a song called Trains Blues which I might change because I didn't come up with a title. But Trains Blues is also an album that John Coltrane did. There's a couple books called that, so the title might shift, but the music's pretty interesting and it takes us to Paris. The book just starts to really open, not only musically, but lyrically. Neon park helped shape some of the song Paul Brer did. It's not an easy song to play and, but I think it's going to sound really, really good. I got a couple people for the horn section that I'm contemplating for, for that. But yeah, I think what happens Buzz is when we listen to, or when I listen to music. I'm going to listen to something in the next two weeks, two years, whatever, and I'm going to go, wow, I'd like to have that inform some part of my writing. So I guess in that sense it was difficult for me to answer your question. What have I not tackled yet that I'd like to. I think that door is always open though, and it's increasingly open not only on the level of music, but on the level of the expansion of ideas through lyrics. In describing a section or a part of my writing yesterday I was suggesting that having the music be as important as the lyrics. I caught myself and I went, you know what, wait a second. When I used to sit myself in the room to play piano, the piano for me was an instrument to exploit visualization. So if I was at the beach and hearing the waves break or the seagulls, the wind hitting the surf, I come home and play for my mother or my parents. This is what I saw today, that kind of thing. And I thought, well, so that was already ingrained in my ethic as a musician from the very get go. But now as a guy who's 76 years old and writing about it, I went, well, no, don't discount that. Just admit that you like the Chinese where they keep burying their past. You forgot about it, you forgot about the importance of it. But that importance is being visual is what created songs like Gringo Red Streamliner, the Time, Love's a Hero. I mean there's a lot of them. I mean that meld the visual and it puts the person right there. Which is what great writing does, obviously. But I think songs obviously do that too. I mean they've done it for a long time.
- [28:19]
Buzz Knight
Yeah, cinematic, right? They're just, they bring you to a place. Which is why as a non musician, I think about this often. Talk to my wife who's a photographer about this as well. We think about where the heck would we be in our life without music.
- [28:42]
Bill Payne
Yes. Well, I, you know, I just signed a Somebody sent me letter dies 22 years old, says I suffer from depression and anxiety. And what I do is when I, when I feel that coming on, I put on your music, Little Feet's music, and it helps, it helps calm you down, helps draw me out of it. And I wrote him back and I signed his stuff for him as he requested. But I, I said, look, first of all, thank you for sharing your story with me. Music is obviously, it has power, not just ours, but a lot of music out there has that kind of power to shape our emotions, our feelings and whatnot. And it's just important. I mean, we try. Like I might have told you this on our first walk we did in New Jersey, the people try and bury music about the amount of times they try and marry God. And I'm not, I'm not a believer in much of anything, to be honest with you, but I just think people go to great lengths to deny things. They deny it based on a very slim view of what's going on, generally speaking. But an adultly, I mean, I run into far more people that have told me that, look, I was in a coma and somebody put some of your music on and it brought me out of it. We're not here to cure cancer. I'm not suggesting that. But this has been told me at least twice, if not three times, where people were in dire straits. Playing Mozart has the ability to up the ante with one's intellectual prowess, they say, and I don't doubt that. We'll be right back with more of the Taking a Walk podcast.
- [30:41]
Buzz Knight
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- [31:34]
Tom Yamas
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway this spring. Stock up on all your personal care favorites and earn 4 times points. Now through June 17th. Shop in store online for deals on all your favorite personal care items like Pantene Shampoo, Native Body Spray, Deodorant, Secret Body Spray, Venus Razors, Always Pads head and shoulder shampoo and native deodorant and earn 4 times points. Then use those points for discounts on groceries or fuel. You don't want to miss these deals. Offer ends June 17th. Promotions may vary. Restrictions apply. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
- [32:05]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [33:05]
Tom Yamas
Over the helm of NBC nightly news, a 75 year old broadcast. It's a great responsibility. Good evening, I'm Tom Yamas. You have to go out there to bring people at home closer to the store. Wildfires continue to be a threat. With that massive hurricane comes the massive response. The best reporters in our business know how to listen. And when you listen, you get the truth for anyone. NBC News NBC News I'm Tom Yamas. That's what we do every night. NBC Nightly News with Tom Yamas evenings on NBC. Think advertising on TikTok isn't for your business.
- [33:38]
Bill Payne
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- [33:38]
Tom Yamas
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- [33:45]
Bill Payne
My name is Trey Farrow.
- [33:47]
Tom Yamas
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- [34:09]
Bill Payne
Welcome back to the Taking a Walk podcast.
- [34:12]
Buzz Knight
I think I might have told you in, you know, one of our offline conversations about this other podcast that that I'm producing. Lynn Hoffman hosts it. It's called Is Music Save Me? And it's exploring that premise there of the healing and therapeutic powers that music has for certainly the musician benefit, but really from the fan benefit. Lynn interviewed a gentleman by the name of Brian Harris, who is the CEO and founder of this company called Med Rhythms. And they're the first FDA approved product that really is a music based product that is a form of therapy for, I believe, stroke victims. And so he's just at the beginning of this powerful medical journey that really highlights it from that standpoint. But it's just the stories out there are many of them in terms of what music really, really means and how lifts us up and can bring us together. And just the communal feeling of being together, I feel like strike up the band as an overall vibe really is celebratory. Is that fair to say?
- [35:39]
Bill Payne
I think it is. Even with a song like New Orleans Cries when she sings, it's contemplative in the beginning. It talks about, you know, I've seen your dark side, I've seen your sunrise. I mean, New Orleans is a rough place. And we know that from the, from the news and from perhaps having traveled there. You got to watch yourself, you know. But it's also a city full of life and of an attachment to heritage that celebrates life and a mixture of music from the Caribbean and what Professor Longhair, you know, what he played here in the Calliope. I was just there for piano night a few weeks ago, playing with 26 other pianists at the House of Blues. It's my second year doing it.
- [36:29]
Buzz Knight
Oh, wow.
- [36:30]
Bill Payne
I had a ball. I mean, I'm not used to being on stage just by myself and playing and singing, but I played that song for everybody. And this city's rising Ain't nobody can keep us down. So, yeah, it's celebratory. And I love the song that John Leventhal and I wrote, When Hearts Fall. Same kind of thing. He had this beautiful music that had a good edge to it, but it was also. I enjoy taking people on a journey. I think what we're talking about earlier Buzz was the way music affects us, the way it hits, the synopsis, the synopsis in our brain. You know, those things that click. It's almost like when you exercise and the endorphins hit and that gives you a feeling of uplift and whatnot. Music is very similar. It's not doing the same thing, but it's similar. And what that says is our bodies are these vessels of they're open. They're open to so many suggestions from things that freak us out, that give us comfort, that cause us to retreat into ourselves and allow things like we're experiencing today to overwhelm the landscape and the dialogue. It doesn't happen to everybody, thankfully. But for those that it does, it's almost like they're their assembly state. It's just easier for them to go, well, I'm not responsible for all this nonsense. Well, great. But it's not a great attitude to have and historically it never has been. So music and art, they're not benign. They're there to help, they're there to guide. I don't mean just the people that write it. I mean we luck out on a lot of things that we do. But you mentioned it before too, Buzz, which is it enables and enacts the spirit of community. I think that's what great art does. And even if that spirit of community is not a wholesale large swath of people, it's people in general that are able to think that are attuned to the fact that, that there's things that when they read, when they listen, when they communicate with people. Who do you surround yourself with? For example, what friends do you have? Who's feeding that fire that you have in yourself? Those things are all just critical to what it is to be a human being. And the more we understand and absorb those lessons, I think in the long run it's still going to be complicated because human beings are complicated. But I think we'll have more and more reason to agree on things than to disagree.
- [39:34]
Buzz Knight
So how far along are you on the book? I know you're pretty far along.
- [39:39]
Bill Payne
I'm about word wise. I'm about 115,000 words into it.
- [39:44]
Buzz Knight
Okay, you're pretty far along.
- [39:46]
Bill Payne
Sorry, far along. I have a great editor. The people that are going to released this book are called Regalo Regalo Press. Gretchen Young is a part of that system. She helped write a book by interviewing Senator John Lewis some years back. She's edited or help edited a book with a fellow that wrote a book on Tiger Woods. I mean she's got sports books she's put out. She's a heavyweight great, great person. I absolutely adore her. And her husband John Baxter is my editor along with a guy named Gary Bayes who I've had for the last 20 years. Look over my stuff. I just, just what I said, you know. Who do you surround yourself with for this book? I've surrounded myself with some, some people that are little Feet fans and that know the English language. And they also have inspired and got me to just relax into writing and doing what I do. They're not there as ghost writers. I'm a pretty good writer on my own, but they help shape things. Like when I wrote something about Lowell. Lowell's birthday was. I think it was August. Excuse me, April 13th. I said, oh, Lowell's going to be 80. And John Baxter, who's written several books on Walt Disney, by the way, he said, no, Lowell would have been 80. Oh, yeah, that's right. You know, that kind of thing. I didn't grow up as a songwriter. I mean, I thought Lowell was very accomplished. And I've taken care to, in this book also not to denigrate Little George. His demise and death is not unlike Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, I mean, Jerry Garcia, a lot of them. That doesn't define who he is. It defines how he passed. So I want to write about the person that was complicated, that could irritate the hell out of you. That was two steps forward, one step back, but was also. Even if he was only producing one or two songs, they were brilliant. I also addressed the fact that when Paul and I were. Paul Brerrare and I were accused of taking over the band back in the day. I said, look, if we took over Little Feet, by the way of Lowell's muse, why are there so few Lowell George songs on his solo record that took five years to make? And people go, oh, I don't know. I go, I don't either. He evidently wasn't writing, is what I would say. So he got his own way. But it's not a crime to be vulnerable, and he wasn't. I think that's what made him. That's what added to his humanness and his humanity, was that vulnerability. Because like a lot of people in that shape, he was trying to break through that and come out on the other side and. And get back to some. Some form where he could feel comfortable in his own skin. Which is why I wrote back to that kid today to say, hey, I'm glad our music's helped you, and just, you know, keep it going, you know.
- [43:13]
Buzz Knight
So I do want to. I want to. I want to close with asking about something. I saw the great Jerry Douglas post something beautiful about the fact that the great Little Feet Band deserves to be in the Rock and Roll hall of Fame. And he wrote this eloquent from a musician's heart speech. And I know your feelings on Jerry and how you've collaborated with him and what you think of him. And obviously, I see what he thinks of you and the band. But I guess I really wanted to get your take on how that made you feel when you saw him lay this out publicly, saying, hey, come on, this band deserves that recognition. Let's just do it.
- [44:03]
Bill Payne
I'll tell you the truth. This is the first I've heard of it, and I'm thrilled to hear that. He weighed in. For years, I thought, well, I don't care if we're in there or not. But then a few years ago, I kind of flipped my stance on it. I thought, you know, I think we should be in it. And for all the right reasons, too. Because of our legacy, because of Lowell, because of Sean Murphy, because of Craig Fuller, Paul Pereira, Richie Hayward, because of the fact that we're influenced by who we grew up listening to, which is this great catalog of music, starting with Little Richard. Do you want to listen to Tutti Frutti by Little Richard or by Pat Boone? I mean, Little Richard won my heart is all I can say. And I have nothing against Pat Brun. I met him. He's a decent, decent man. And great. There's room for everybody. I'm not knocking anybody either. That's already in the hall of Fame. I mean, that's an easy target for a lot of people that could get riled up about. Look, rock and roll is a very wide term. The terminology is wide. It encompasses so much, and it should. I mean, it's R and B. It's the breakdown of things. And so what do you want to attach to this huge whale that's swimming through the ocean with barnacle and planktonite attached to it? That's rotten. It's moving. It may move slow at times, but it never slows down. I mean, it's not going to disappear overnight. It's an attitude. Little Feet is the reason we can call it Little Feet in 2025 is because of the attachment of. The legacy is still there. When you hear that first track, Four Days of Heaven, Three Days of Work, if you know the band at all, you're going to go, my gosh, that sounds like Little Feet. Now, how is that possible if you know. Well, I found that out when I went to hear. Well, was. Actually, I wound up hearing Jimmy Page. I'll cut to the chase. But I was there to hear those Yardbirds were playing Jeff Peck, Pismo Beach, Rose Gardens. Jeff wasn't there. And we're. Where's Jeff? Come on. And then we started hearing this Other fellow play and it was Jimmy Page and we go. We didn't forget about Jeff Beck, but we went, well, this guy's really good, too. That was the impetus I had to put Little Feet back together in 1988, was just that, that experience with the Artbirds. You're going to miss Lowell. Some people are going to put up a wall and say, without lulls, not Little Feet. That's their prerogative. I think it's a narrow view. I think that we're inviting more people to come in and find out who Lil George is, because he's not always on the radar, especially with new generations. So by keeping Littlefeet alive, by keeping a band alive that would take 10 bands to play in, to play the music that we play, it's a selfish reason. I do it because I love the band. I love being able to write without thinking of what genre I'm in. I just want musicians that can play it, sing it and provide their own material to expand on the legacy. But that legacy is always going to point to Lowell George, to Richie Hayward, to Paul Pereira, to Sam Clayton, Kenny, Fred Tackett, myself, and on and on. It's bigger than any of us at this point. I think it's a wonderful thing.
- [47:51]
Buzz Knight
And I think the fact of still out playing, you're going to be hitting the road for another long run, as you always do, and creating in terms of the new project, I think for whatever it means for me, I believe that carries even a greater positive aspect of why you guys should be in the Rock and Roll hall of Fame. You're still vibrant and kicking some ass.
- [48:18]
Bill Payne
Thank you. I think it'll happen, and for all the right reasons.
- [48:22]
Buzz Knight
When you got Jerry Douglas on your side, it can't hurt either, right?
- [48:26]
Bill Payne
We do. We have Ken Levitan on our side, too. We got a lot of people, and I think that's great. And we're going to continue doing what we do and expanding on the notion of who we bring into play with. I think that's part and parcel for me over the next few years. Or what do we have left to do this of who we extend the invite of joining us in this journey that we are collectively on. Not just that Littlefeet is on, but as musicians, what we do. Let's celebrate what we do. Let's take our art seriously, as I've said earlier, but let's have fun in the process.
- [49:13]
Buzz Knight
You played any golf?
- [49:14]
Bill Payne
I played yesterday and they had aerated the greens and I. But my wife and I, Polly, we were there and I went, gosh, maybe I shouldn't play for another three and a half weeks. I'm really hitting the ball well, which happens.
- [49:31]
Buzz Knight
I adore little feet. I adore you, Bill Payne. It's great to be with you. I'm taking a walk and congrats on the new release and enjoy the tour.
- [49:40]
Bill Payne
Buzz Night. Thank you so much man. You're a treasure. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Taking a Walk podcast. Share this and other episodes with your.
- [49:51]
Buzz Knight
Friends and follow us so you never miss an episode. Taking a Walk is available on the.
- [49:56]
Bill Payne
Iheartradio app, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
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Tom Yamas
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Buzz Knight
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