Speaker 1: Taking a Walk.
Speaker 2: So music and art are they're not benign. They're there
Speaker 2: to help, They're they're there to guide. I don't mean
Speaker 2: just the people that have to write it. I mean
Speaker 2: we lock out on a lot of things that we do.
Speaker 2: But you mentioned it before too, Buzz, which is it
Speaker 2: enables an enacts the spirit of community.
Speaker 3: Hi, I'm Buzznight and welcome to the Taking a Walk Podcast.
Speaker 3: This is the podcast where we love talking with musicians.
Speaker 4: We get the inside.
Speaker 3: Scoop about what they're up to and how they got
Speaker 3: there with their latest project and all other fun high
Speaker 3: jinks along the way. I'm very pleased on this episode
Speaker 3: to have a returning guest. We were able to take
Speaker 3: a walk in person together pretty early on in the podcast,
Speaker 3: and it was a delight in person. But if it
Speaker 3: can't be in person, it's a delight to welcome back
Speaker 3: the one and only Bill Payne from Little Feet to
Speaker 3: the Taken Off Podcast. Bill, it's so great to be
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 2: Save here and yeah, what an honor to be invited back.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've been keeping track of the various people
Speaker 2: you've had on. It's it's an amazing array of artists
Speaker 2: and thinkers and just good people, so creators to all
Speaker 2: you're doing mans, it's.
Speaker 3: Great having a blast, and you know, for me, it's
Speaker 3: so amazing because I get to talk to people that
Speaker 3: I've followed and cross paths with or admired over the years,
Speaker 3: and you are certainly one of those people. And the
Speaker 3: band Little Feet also is very near and dear as
Speaker 3: are you to my heart, so thank you for being on.
Speaker 4: It's really tremendous.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, rn Bill.
Speaker 3: Since the podcast is called taking a Walk, I do
Speaker 3: want to ask you if if you had the opportunity
Speaker 3: to take a walk or a saunter with somebody living
Speaker 3: or dead, they could be certainly affiliated in and around music,
Speaker 3: but doesn't have to be. There's no rules to what
Speaker 3: we're doing here. Who would you take a walk with
Speaker 3: and where would you take a walk with them?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that's well. I mean, I'm thinking this
Speaker 2: book I'm writing, called Carnival Ghost, I've got a huge
Speaker 2: section it on surfing for a number of reasons. I
Speaker 2: mean not only the art and act of surfing, but
Speaker 2: the music that surrounded it, the films that I went
Speaker 2: to and watched people on stage narrate their movies. Well,
Speaker 2: one of those guys was Bruce Brown, who also did
Speaker 2: movies on motorcycles. Bruce had Barefoot Adventure. He went to
Speaker 2: South Africa with a couple of different people in another film,
Speaker 2: but he had a soundtrack to Barefoot Adventure, which featured
Speaker 2: Bud Powell. Let's see I've got Thad Jones, I think
Speaker 2: was on trumpet man. Are some great great jazz musicians.
Speaker 2: Dennis Budenmeyer was on there. Who I got a chance
Speaker 2: to tell me I was aware of this record. I'd
Speaker 2: love to take a walk with Bruce Brown. He passed
Speaker 2: away a few years ago, and I'd probably do it
Speaker 2: up in the Santa Barbara area, on one of those
Speaker 2: those beaches up there, maybe even along the cliffs of
Speaker 2: a further north of Santa Barbara, between Santa Barbara and
Speaker 2: the Gaviota Pass, some lovely territory up there. I spent
Speaker 2: a lot of time surfing and just trying to think
Speaker 2: out my next moves, and it is a good contemplative area.
Speaker 2: I think it'd be wonderful to talk with him up there.
Speaker 3: I love it, I love it. We have a lot
Speaker 3: to catch up on. We want to talk about the book.
Speaker 3: We'll come back to that. Certainly your photography as well.
Speaker 3: I want to hear if you've been continuing to dabble
Speaker 3: at that. But the exciting news too that we want
Speaker 3: to talk about is Strike up the band, the brand
Speaker 3: new Little Feet release which has got some amazing folks
Speaker 3: on it. You've got Lark and Poe and Molly Tuttle
Speaker 3: and Larry Campbell. I want to hear how that all
Speaker 3: came together, how this new project came together for you
Speaker 3: and the band.
Speaker 2: Well, from the inception of putting the band back together
Speaker 2: after Paul Brer passed away in twenty nineteen. Scott Gerard
Speaker 2: was on the Very Show the very date in October
Speaker 2: that Paul passed away. They joined us. Lynn, Larry Campbell
Speaker 2: and Teresa Williams had been on the tour up until
Speaker 2: they had a couple of other obligations they had to fill,
Speaker 2: so we brought in Scott. I had met him during
Speaker 2: the tour with the Dbie Brothers and he was the
Speaker 2: musical director for Greg Alman. We had a gig coming
Speaker 2: up also in Jamaica. Where are we going to do it?
Speaker 2: Are we? We decided, with the way Scott was playing,
Speaker 2: the way we all felt about it, that we should
Speaker 2: definitely do that a cemented relationship with Scott, which we did,
Speaker 2: and a few months later we brought in Tony Leoni
Speaker 2: on drums, so everything was set and in COVID hit
Speaker 2: so we were communicating the well exactly what you and
Speaker 2: I are doing now over the Internet and sitting tracks
Speaker 2: back and forth and recording and whatnot, but no get togethers.
Speaker 2: That didn't happen until tomorrow, November twenty twenty one. When
Speaker 2: we did get together, we had this agenda which management
Speaker 2: helped figure out, which was let's go and take song
Speaker 2: requests from fans, which we did, which opened a whole
Speaker 2: catalog that we hadn't played in a long time, songs
Speaker 2: like Strawberry Flats for example, off the very first album.
Speaker 2: But it's shortly to follow that. Bud was there the
Speaker 2: notion of going out and playing Waiting for Columbus, which
Speaker 2: I had always sort of balked at, to be honest
Speaker 2: with you, but it made perfect sense now that we
Speaker 2: had this band that could play anything. It was a
Speaker 2: gutsy move to try and replicate a record, if not replicated,
Speaker 2: at least play songs in order and then put our
Speaker 2: spin on it. I thought it was a necessary thing
Speaker 2: to do. But even so, the notion of putting in
Speaker 2: a record together was deeply planned. I'd written twenty songs
Speaker 2: with Robert Hunter, for example, four of which had been
Speaker 2: recorded in twenty twelve on Richter ragg I just thowt like,
Speaker 2: we don't have to prove we can play Dixie Chicken.
Speaker 2: Somebody asked me how to keep that song so fresh?
Speaker 2: And I said, well, what do you do when you
Speaker 2: sing happy birthday to someone? You see it from the heart.
Speaker 4: I hope, yeah, that's wonderful.
Speaker 2: That kind of thing. That's what we do. So this
Speaker 2: was a long, securitious answer to a project that was
Speaker 2: the inception was in the beginning of the band coming
Speaker 2: back Together, which was in twenty twenty. But we brought
Speaker 2: Advance Powell, who works with Christa Ableton. He's engineer and
Speaker 2: worked with Fish. He was one of those guys. Honestly,
Speaker 2: we recorded at Blackbird Studios in Nashville, which he helped
Speaker 2: put together with George Massenberg was also involved in that,
Speaker 2: who was also one of our engineers for many, many years.
Speaker 2: Advance is one of those guys a buzz that can
Speaker 2: just before you even think of what you're going to
Speaker 2: say to him. He's already there, or when I contemplate saying, hey, listen,
Speaker 2: when we oh, no, you've already got that. Okay, God,
Speaker 2: he was ten steps ahead of me almost the entire way.
Speaker 2: He brought in Christian Rodgers to sing backgrounds on some vocals.
Speaker 2: She's out now with Post Malone, so I mean his
Speaker 2: taste are great. He solidified that by choosing Littleviedt I
Speaker 2: thought to work with. But he and I as a
Speaker 2: production team also fell into line very well with any
Speaker 2: kind of scene like that. It takes a while for
Speaker 2: people to sort of acclimate to one another, which was
Speaker 2: the case with the band and with Vance. But he
Speaker 2: was so adapt at making people feel comfortable, and we
Speaker 2: had a couple of all ramps we could take with
Speaker 2: Scott Grard, who wanted to work with our engineer who
Speaker 2: he also brought in, which is Charles A. Martinez turn
Speaker 2: Els or Charlie as we call him. That work with
Speaker 2: Steely Dan, with with Donald Fagan, those credittions alone the
Speaker 2: doors wide open for him as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2: So then it was a matter of songs. I started
Speaker 2: writing songs with with I went back to New York
Speaker 2: to write with Tony and with Scott. We came up
Speaker 2: with a couple of things there. One of them was
Speaker 2: the very first track on the record, which is a
Speaker 2: title that I'd come up with and actually had to
Speaker 2: start to some music with as well, and some lyrics.
Speaker 2: Four days of having three days of work. And when
Speaker 2: people hear that, I mean, I'll literally be in an
Speaker 2: uber in Denver, in New York and Saint Louis, wherever
Speaker 2: the heck I am, and I'll ask the drive where
Speaker 2: are you from? And do you sally? They're from Africa,
Speaker 2: sometimes Guatemala. Wherever I'll play them, I'll play first, I'll
Speaker 2: play some where they're from. I'll play that music where
Speaker 2: they're from. Oh you're from the Congo. Here's some Congolese
Speaker 2: roombaut for you. And I say, well, now here's a
Speaker 2: big I play with, and I'll play that track and
Speaker 2: they're like, oh that's.
Speaker 4: Good, Oh that's awesome. Those are like many focus groups,
Speaker 4: you don't.
Speaker 2: And honestly answer. I mean to throw it out in
Speaker 2: people like that. It's you know what it's like, It's
Speaker 2: you get honest reactions from people sometimes strike up. The
Speaker 2: band reminds me greatly of of of Let It Roll.
Speaker 2: For one main reason is that Letter Roll we were
Speaker 2: we were reintroducing the band to people. We were in
Speaker 2: a very similar position this time, and when things are
Speaker 2: running smoothly with Letter Roll, we had at the Helm
Speaker 2: Peter Asher management. This time we have Ken Levitan Brian
Speaker 2: Pennox at Vector. When things are going smoothly, as I said, Uh,
Speaker 2: you can almost script what's going to happen. I'm pretty
Speaker 2: good at that. And I just was not surprised at
Speaker 2: the reaction we've been getting. I knew it would be good.
Speaker 2: It's still that the old adage when you're playing, you
Speaker 2: put your mask on first. So I'm there, I have
Speaker 2: my mask on, I'm ready. I just think it's a
Speaker 2: really the portraitures that are on that record are are
Speaker 2: well framed. I enjoyed the writing process, not in wiscont
Speaker 2: and Tony, but but with Charlie Starr from BlackBerry Smoke,
Speaker 2: John levinthal is a good friend in New York, Vince Herman,
Speaker 2: who I just worked with that Red Rocks, who's in
Speaker 2: a band called Leftover Salmon. We did the last song
Speaker 2: on the record, which was New Orleans Cries When She Sings,
Speaker 2: which is an ode to UH to New Orleans, a
Speaker 2: dangerous place, but a wonderful place. Nonetheless, life is pretty
Speaker 2: good right.
Speaker 4: Now, it's tremendous.
Speaker 3: And thinking about really the uh, the added collaborators too,
Speaker 3: I'm just so fascinated by that that group. Big fans
Speaker 3: of all of them, for of all talk about your
Speaker 3: opportunity to connect with and work with Larkin Poe.
Speaker 2: If I'm not mistaken, that was an idea that Scott
Speaker 2: Gerard might have had. But it was also an idea
Speaker 2: for sure that that Vance Powell brought to the table
Speaker 2: because they live in town. They live in Nashville, so
Speaker 2: he felt he could contact them and wheeld them in
Speaker 2: and Scott I had a song and form as well,
Speaker 2: but I deferred to Scott, and I'm glad I did
Speaker 2: because I think they worked out beautifully on the title.
Speaker 2: Trucks struck up the band.
Speaker 3: And then there's the phenomenal Molly Tuttele connecting with her.
Speaker 4: What was that?
Speaker 2: I told Molly before we went to the studio, I said, listen,
Speaker 2: the only thing this bluegrass about this song that you're
Speaker 2: going to play and was called Bluegrass Pines by Robert
Speaker 2: hundred myself, is the title. Other than that, it's a
Speaker 2: long securitis song and if you need any help, let
Speaker 2: me know, but I'm turning you loose on it. I'll
Speaker 2: be there to help guide it. But I want to
Speaker 2: play acoustic guitar and just to feel comfortable to try
Speaker 2: things and let's see what fits. So she said exactly that,
Speaker 2: And it's just an extraordinary, extraordinarily warm person, which I
Speaker 2: would have expected nothing less, but sometimes you don't know
Speaker 2: until you actually meet people. So that was a thrill
Speaker 2: to to've had her on this record.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's so brilliant, you know, once
Speaker 3: again for fans of the band for a long time
Speaker 3: to get what they you know, always will expect at
Speaker 3: a Little Feet as as a band and the great playing,
Speaker 3: but then adding these these these new voices which are
Speaker 3: really emerging brilliantly out of places like Nashville, and and
Speaker 3: they're just these phenomenal players that are just just a
Speaker 3: whole different generation. And what's so cool about that generation
Speaker 3: is that they have such great respect for certainly the
Speaker 3: past as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well well said of Uzz and Little Feet is
Speaker 2: known and has been known for a long long time
Speaker 2: as a musician's musicians group, which we still are and
Speaker 2: we're not pop stars or rock stars. Some people try
Speaker 2: and put that label on I've tried to put on
Speaker 2: me a couple of times, and I said, look, if
Speaker 2: you want to think of you a rock star, go ahead.
Speaker 2: I think of myself as a rockhead mainly, but mainly
Speaker 2: I am undoubtedly a musician. So that's what when those
Speaker 2: doors are open, that's that's who we're inviting in our people.
Speaker 2: We're in the same club. And the club, ironically is
Speaker 2: for most of us as Breator Mark used to say,
Speaker 2: I would never join a club that would accept me
Speaker 2: as a member. They're pretty much of that mindset too.
Speaker 2: But we are a rather exclusive club. As a musician,
Speaker 2: and the trials and errors and tribulations that come with
Speaker 2: taking your arts seriously but having trying to have fun
Speaker 2: with it is those are the past we've chosen over
Speaker 2: the years when we have very similar stories to tell
Speaker 2: along those lines, which is which is great. So when
Speaker 2: I meet people, and I've done this for a long time,
Speaker 2: is it's not always a musician within little Feet who
Speaker 2: already had the mantle of being a band's band and
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. Or when Eric Clapton came to
Speaker 2: see us, I said, man, you saw us week a
Speaker 2: week or two ago. What's going on? He goes, I
Speaker 2: brought my band here. I want to I want to
Speaker 2: hear a proper band. I go, oh, okay, good, thank you.
Speaker 2: So as a proper band, that's that's a pretty good
Speaker 2: high compliment from Eric. But we we are, I mean,
Speaker 2: that's that's what we do. And being part of a
Speaker 2: proper band for me is what platform are you using
Speaker 2: to tell the story? Are you writing your own songs?
Speaker 2: That's not necessary. You don't have to. There are plenty
Speaker 2: great writers. There's plenty of great songs out there. How
Speaker 2: do you treat it with it within regard to not
Speaker 2: only your instrument, but how you blend with others? How
Speaker 2: do you play with others? There's so much that's involved,
Speaker 2: and so much that like being an athlete where they
Speaker 2: have great peripheral vision, whether it's on the basketball court
Speaker 2: or the hockey or whatever they're doing. Within music, you
Speaker 2: have great, or should have pretty wide and great peripheral
Speaker 2: hearing as well. So it's what you hear and what
Speaker 2: you react against.
Speaker 4: It's like our conversation, Yeah, natural flow, which is you.
Speaker 3: You guys have always made it look so easy, but
Speaker 3: there's nothing easy about what you're what you're doing. It's complicated,
Speaker 3: it's intricate, it's it brings you to different places, and
Speaker 3: it blends all different genres. Now it's it's very popular
Speaker 3: for artists to go, well, yeah, I'm blending genres. I
Speaker 3: find my own, you know, particular niche there between this
Speaker 3: genre and that genre. But in my opinion, when I
Speaker 3: first discovered little Feet a few years back, that's everything
Speaker 3: little Feet was about. It wasn't really genre defined in
Speaker 3: my opinion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm with you, and I think that. Fortunately, for
Speaker 2: most of the stuff we play, it sounds easy. In
Speaker 2: other words, it sounds like falling off logs, so you're
Speaker 2: you're not struggling to I mean, you might not struggle,
Speaker 2: but you might have to hear a song a few
Speaker 2: times to get a craft around your head. But the
Speaker 2: water is pretty warm. It's a warm dive as a
Speaker 2: musician when you try and play it, though, it's the
Speaker 2: people come up to me, I mean, gosh, and they'll say,
Speaker 2: well it was, and I go harder you thought, and
Speaker 2: they go, yeah, I was thinking. Because I'm writing a
Speaker 2: chapter now in this book Horrible Ghosts about songwriting, and
Speaker 2: I want to take people through the process, and one
Speaker 2: of the things I'm discovering about that process is is
Speaker 2: that in trying, for my part, trying to keep the
Speaker 2: music is interesting as the lyrics. Depending on what the
Speaker 2: song is, the lyrics oftentimes will take precedent precedence only
Speaker 2: in the cadence that I'm following. So if it's everything
Speaker 2: four to four, like one two three four, but a
Speaker 2: lot of my songs have like one two three four
Speaker 2: and then boom, boom doom again, like two more extra
Speaker 2: beats in a certain in section to accommodate lyrics or
Speaker 2: to commodate a musical phrase. So I've never ever shied
Speaker 2: away from that. It used to to confuse Richie Hayward
Speaker 2: sometimes because he'd go, look, the one is here, and
Speaker 2: it would but I said, no, Richie, when I'm going
Speaker 2: one two three, and then I'm feeling the beats happening there,
Speaker 2: and then it's one two three, one two three four,
Speaker 2: so it's a seven beat phrase rather than four. But
Speaker 2: he'd laugh and go, Okay. I said, as long as
Speaker 2: you know what you're doing, you counted any way you want.
Speaker 2: But what I'm feeling is when the accent hits hard.
Speaker 2: That's where I start to recount. That's where one starts
Speaker 2: for me, much like in Tom Wolfe's book The Right Stuff,
Speaker 2: where the astronauts didn't they didn't want to evalue it
Speaker 2: too heavily what they were doing back in the day
Speaker 2: because they were basically, I don't they were human beings,
Speaker 2: but they didn't feel they were much better than the
Speaker 2: monkeys that were crawling in some of those capsules, this
Speaker 2: popping them off into the air. In the beginning, for me,
Speaker 2: I didn't really think about whether something was in a
Speaker 2: certain time signature or didn't have three eight beats before
Speaker 2: we talk took off on something I just I didn't
Speaker 2: want to know. And then later I thought, well, why
Speaker 2: am I I don't need to remain ignorant of this.
Speaker 2: Let's uh if the proposition of learning, where it's learning scales,
Speaker 2: or learning more chords, or listening to a broader context
Speaker 2: of music, UH and or reading maybe literature or books
Speaker 2: that are a little over your head and you have
Speaker 2: to look at a dictionary every now and then, what
Speaker 2: you're doing is expanding your vocabulary. I don't see how
Speaker 2: that hurts anyone or anything, So I've I then began
Speaker 2: to take that approach and go a little more consciously
Speaker 2: into what I was doing and why, and without fear
Speaker 2: of interrupting or hurting my creativity, which is the way
Speaker 2: a lot of people think it does well.
Speaker 3: When I think about working with you know, Lark and
Speaker 3: Poe and Molly Tuttle and of course you know Larry
Speaker 3: Campbell on the new project, and then I sort of
Speaker 3: reflect with with your work beyond Little Feet, which to
Speaker 3: name a few, I mean, I think of certainly your
Speaker 3: work with Bonnie Rait and James Taylor. But then I
Speaker 3: go off to thinking about your work you know that
Speaker 3: you did with Pink Floyd and and uh, and then
Speaker 3: of course the longstanding work with the Doobie Brothers. It's
Speaker 3: always covered, you know, different territory for for sure. Is
Speaker 3: there any territory that you haven't covered that you would
Speaker 3: still like to cover?
Speaker 2: Well, that's an excellent question, and uh, I guess the
Speaker 2: short answers is no. But there's a song I've I've
Speaker 2: I've got that I help will up here on the
Speaker 2: next record. We have done some jazz, but we haven't
Speaker 2: I've embraced jazz in the last few years more than
Speaker 2: I've ever done in my life. Become more cognizant of things,
Speaker 2: listening to a lot more of Herbie Hancock, who might
Speaker 2: have also been a person to take a walk with,
Speaker 2: to be honest with you, he's one of those guys.
Speaker 2: Wayne Shorter, so Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock with their
Speaker 2: collective work. I've got a song called Train's Blues, which
Speaker 2: I might change because I didn't come up with the title.
Speaker 2: But Train's Blues is also an album that John Coltrane did.
Speaker 2: There's a couple of books called that, so the title
Speaker 2: might shift, but the music's pretty interesting and it takes
Speaker 2: us to Paris, the book that starts to really open,
Speaker 2: not only musically but lyrically. Neon Park helped shape some
Speaker 2: of the songs Paul Breer did. It's it's not an
Speaker 2: easy song to play, but I think it's going to
Speaker 2: sound really, really good. I got a couple of people
Speaker 2: for the horn section that I'm contemplating for that. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I think what happens is when we listen to or
Speaker 2: when I listen to music. I'm going to listen to
Speaker 2: something in the next two weeks, two years, whatever, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to go, well, I'd like to have that
Speaker 2: perform some part of my writing. So I guess in
Speaker 2: that sense it was difficult for me to answer your question,
Speaker 2: what have I not tackled yet that i'd like to.
Speaker 2: I think that door is always open, though, and it's
Speaker 2: increasingly open, not only on the level of music, but
Speaker 2: on the level of the expansion of ideas through lyrics.
Speaker 2: In describing a section or a part of my writing yesterday,
Speaker 2: I was suggesting that having the music be as important
Speaker 2: as the lyrics. I caught myself and I went, you
Speaker 2: know what, wait a second. When I used to set
Speaker 2: myself in the room to play piano, the piano for
Speaker 2: me was an instrument to exploit visualization, sometimes at the
Speaker 2: beach and hearing the waves break, or the seagulls, the
Speaker 2: wind heading the surf. I come home and play for
Speaker 2: my mother or my parents. This is what I saw today,
Speaker 2: that kind of thing, And I thought, well, so that
Speaker 2: was already ingrained in my ethic as a musician from
Speaker 2: the very get go. But now as a guy who's
Speaker 2: seventy six years old and writing about it, I went, well, no,
Speaker 2: don't discount that. Just admit that, you like the Chinese
Speaker 2: where they keep burying their past, you forgot about it,
Speaker 2: You forgot about the importance of it. But that importance
Speaker 2: is being visual, is what created songs like Gringo, Red, Streamliner,
Speaker 2: the Time Loves a Hero. I mean there's a lot
Speaker 2: of them. I mean that meld the visual and it
Speaker 2: puts the person right there, which is what great writing
Speaker 2: does obviously, and I think songs obviously do that too.
Speaker 2: I mean you've done it for a long time.
Speaker 3: Yes, cinematic right, They're just they bring you to a place,
Speaker 3: which is why as a non musician, I think about
Speaker 3: this often. Talked to my wife who's a photographer, about
Speaker 3: this as well. We think about where the heck would
Speaker 3: we be in our life without music.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, I you know, I just signed somebody sent
Speaker 2: me a letter, Drives twenty two years old, sins I
Speaker 2: suffered from depression and anxiety. And what I do is
Speaker 2: when I when I feel that coming on, I put
Speaker 2: on your music, little feats music, and it helps, it
Speaker 2: helps calm me down, helps draw me out of it.
Speaker 2: And I wrote him back and I signed this stuff
Speaker 2: for him as he requested. But I said, look, first
Speaker 2: of all, thank you for sharing your story with me.
Speaker 2: Music is obviously, it has power, not just ours, but
Speaker 2: a lot of music out there has that kind of
Speaker 2: power to shape our emotions, our feelings and whatnot. And
Speaker 2: it's just important. I mean we try, Like I might
Speaker 2: have told this on our first walk we did in
Speaker 2: New Jersey. The people try and bury music about the
Speaker 2: amount of times they try and marry God. And I'm
Speaker 2: not a believer in much of anything, to be honest
Speaker 2: with you, but I just think people go to great
Speaker 2: links to deny things. They deny it based on a
Speaker 2: very slim view of what's going on generally speaking, but
Speaker 2: ana doubtly. I mean, I've run into far more people
Speaker 2: that have told me that. Look, I was in a
Speaker 2: common and somebody put some of your music on and
Speaker 2: it brought me out of it. You know, we're not
Speaker 2: here to cure cancer. I'm not saying suggesting that, but
Speaker 2: this has been told me at least twice, if not
Speaker 2: three times, where people were in dire straits. And I
Speaker 2: mean the playt Mozart has the ability to to up
Speaker 2: the ante with one's intellectual prowess, they say, And I
Speaker 2: don't thought that.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more of the Taking a
Speaker 1: Walk Podcast. Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.
Speaker 4: I think I might have told you in you know.
Speaker 3: One of our offline conversations about this other podcast that
Speaker 3: I'm producing, Len Hoffman hosted it's called His Music Saved Me,
Speaker 3: and it's exactly exploring that premise there of the healing
Speaker 3: and therapeutic powers that music has for certainly the musician benefit,
Speaker 3: but really from the fan benefit. Lynn interviewed a gentleman
Speaker 3: by the name of Brian Harris, who is the CEO
Speaker 3: and founder of this company called med Rhythms, and they're
Speaker 3: the first FDA approved product that really is a music
Speaker 3: based product that is a form of therapy for I
Speaker 3: believe stroke victims. And so he's just at the beginning
Speaker 3: of this powerful medical journey. That really highlights it from
Speaker 3: that standpoint. But it's just the stories out there are
Speaker 3: many of them in terms of what music really really
Speaker 3: means and how it lifts us up and can bring
Speaker 3: us together, and just the communal feeling of being together.
Speaker 4: I feel like Strike Up the.
Speaker 3: Band as an overall vibe really is celebratory.
Speaker 4: Is that fair to say?
Speaker 2: I think he is, even with a song like New
Speaker 2: Orleans Prize when she sings it's contemplative in the beginning
Speaker 2: that talks about you know, I've seen your dark side,
Speaker 2: have seen your sunrise. I mean New Orleans is a
Speaker 2: rough place, and we know that from the news and
Speaker 2: from perhaps having traveled there. You go to watch yourself,
Speaker 2: you know. But it's also a city full of life
Speaker 2: and of an attachment to heritage that celebrates life and
Speaker 2: a mixture of music from the Caribbean and what professor
Speaker 2: long Hair, you know what he played here in the Calliope.
Speaker 2: I was just there for Piano Night a few weeks ago,
Speaker 2: playing with twenty six out of youd pianists at the
Speaker 2: House of Blues. It's my second you're doing it?
Speaker 4: Oh wow?
Speaker 2: I had a ball. I mean, I'm not used to
Speaker 2: being on stage just by myself and playing and singing,
Speaker 2: but I played that song for everybody, and the city's rising.
Speaker 2: Nobody ain't nobody can keep us down. So yeah, it's celebratory.
Speaker 2: And I love the song that John Levinthal I wrote
Speaker 2: when Heart's Fall, same kind of thing. He had this
Speaker 2: beautiful music that was had that had a good edge
Speaker 2: to it, but it was also I enjoyed taking people
Speaker 2: on a journey. I think what we're talking about earlier, guys,
Speaker 2: was the way music affects us, the way it hits
Speaker 2: the synopsis, the synopsis in our brain, you know those
Speaker 2: things that click. It's almost like when you exercise and
Speaker 2: the endorphins hit and that gives you a feeling of
Speaker 2: uplift and whatnot. It's music is it's very similar. It's
Speaker 2: it's not doing the same thing, but it's similar. And
Speaker 2: what that says is our bodies are are these vessels
Speaker 2: of They're open. They're open to so many suggestions from
Speaker 2: things that that that freak us out, that that give
Speaker 2: us comfort, that that cause us to retreat to ourselves
Speaker 2: and allow things like we're experiencing today to overwhelm the
Speaker 2: landscape and the dialogue. It doesn't happen to everybody, thankfully,
Speaker 2: but for those that it does, it's almost like they're
Speaker 2: they're as ambulic state. It's just easier for them to go, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not responsible for all this nonsense. Well great, but
Speaker 2: it's not a great attitude to have, and historically it
Speaker 2: never has been. So music and art are. They're not benign.
Speaker 2: They're there to help, they're there, they're there to guide.
Speaker 2: I don't mean just the people that write it. I
Speaker 2: mean we luck out on a lot of things that
Speaker 2: we do. But you mentioned it before too abuzz, which
Speaker 2: is it enables and enacts the spirit of community. I
Speaker 2: think that's what great art does. And even if that
Speaker 2: spirited community is it is not a wholesale large swath
Speaker 2: of people. It's people in general that that are able
Speaker 2: to think, that that are that are attuned to the
Speaker 2: fact that there's things that when when they read, when
Speaker 2: they when they listen, when they communicate with people. Who
Speaker 2: do you surround yourself with, for example, who friends do
Speaker 2: you have, Who's feeding that fire that you have in yourself?
Speaker 2: Those things are all just critical to to what it
Speaker 2: is to be a human being. And the more we
Speaker 2: we understand and absorb absorb those lessons, I think in
Speaker 2: the long run it's still going to be complicated, because
Speaker 2: human beings are complicated, but I think we'll have more
Speaker 2: more and more reason to to agree on things and
Speaker 2: to disagree.
Speaker 3: So how far along are you on the book? I
Speaker 3: know you're pretty far along.
Speaker 2: I'm about a word wise, I'm about one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifteen thousand words into it.
Speaker 4: Okay, you're pretty far along.
Speaker 2: Sorry far along. I have a great editor. The people
Speaker 2: who don't have released this book are called Llo Rigalo Press,
Speaker 2: Gratchen Young is a part of that system. She helped
Speaker 2: write a book by interviewing Senator John Lewis some years back.
Speaker 2: She's her help added a book with a fellow that
Speaker 2: wrote a book on Tiger Woods. I mean, she's got
Speaker 2: sports books, she's put She's a heavyweight, great, great person.
Speaker 2: I absolutely adore her and her husband. John Baxter is
Speaker 2: my editor, along with a guy named Gary Bays, who
Speaker 2: I've had for the last twenty years. Look over my stuff.
Speaker 2: I just just what I said, you know, who do
Speaker 2: you surround yourself with for this book? I've surrounded myself
Speaker 2: with some people that are Little Feet fans and that
Speaker 2: know the English language, and they also have inspired and
Speaker 2: got me to just relax into writing and and doing
Speaker 2: what I do. They're not there as ghost writers. I'm
Speaker 2: a pretty good writer on my own, but they helped
Speaker 2: shape things like when I wrote something about Lowell. Lowell's
Speaker 2: birthday was I think it was August excuse me, April thirteenth.
Speaker 2: I'd said, oh, Lowell's going to be eighty. And John Baxter,
Speaker 2: who's written several books on Walt Disney, by the way,
Speaker 2: he said, now Lowell would be would have been eighty. Oh, yes, right,
Speaker 2: you know that that kind of thing I didn't grow
Speaker 2: up was a songwriter. I mean, I thought Lowell was
Speaker 2: very accomplished, and I've taken care too in this book.
Speaker 2: Also not to detegrate Lowell George. His demise and death
Speaker 2: is not unlike Janis job and Jimmy Hendrix, Brian Jones,
Speaker 2: Jim Morrison, I mean, greor Garcia a lot of them.
Speaker 2: That doesn't define who he is. It defines how he passed.
Speaker 2: So I want to write about the person that was complicated,
Speaker 2: that could irritate the hell out of you, that was
Speaker 2: two steps forward, one step back, but was also even
Speaker 2: if he was only producing one or two songs, they
Speaker 2: were brilliant. I also addressed the fact that when Paul
Speaker 2: and I were Paul Breyn and I were accused of
Speaker 2: taking over the band back in the day. I said, look,
Speaker 2: if we took over his little feet by the way
Speaker 2: of Lowell's muse, why are there a few Lowell George
Speaker 2: songs on his solo record that took five years to make,
Speaker 2: And people go, oh, I don't know. I go oh,
Speaker 2: I don't either. He evidently wasn't writing, That's what I
Speaker 2: would say, So he got his own way but it's
Speaker 2: not a crime to be vulnerable, and he wasn't. I
Speaker 2: think that's that's what made Hina, That's what added to
Speaker 2: his humanness and his humanity was that vulnerability, because like
Speaker 2: a lot of people in that shape, he was trying
Speaker 2: to break through that and come out on the other
Speaker 2: side and get back to some form where he could
Speaker 2: feel comfortable in his own skin. Which is why I
Speaker 2: wrote back to that kid today to say, hey, I'm
Speaker 2: glad our music's helped you and just you know, keep
Speaker 2: it going here.
Speaker 4: So I do want to I want to.
Speaker 3: I want to close with asking about something I saw
Speaker 3: the great Jerry Douglas.
Speaker 4: Post something beautiful.
Speaker 3: About the fact that the Great Little Feet Band deserves
Speaker 3: to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Speaker 3: And he wrote this eloquent from a musician's heart speech.
Speaker 3: And I know your feelings on Jerry and how you've
Speaker 3: collaborated with him and what you think of him, and
Speaker 3: obviously I see what he thinks of you and the band,
Speaker 3: but I guess I really wanted to get your take
Speaker 3: on how that made you feel when you saw him
Speaker 3: lay this out publicly saying, hey, come on, you know
Speaker 3: this band deserves that recognition.
Speaker 4: Let's just do it.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you it's truth. This is the first I've
Speaker 2: heard of it, and I'm thrilled to you that he
Speaker 2: weighed in. For years, I thought, well, I don't care
Speaker 2: if we're in there or not. But then a few
Speaker 2: years ago I kind of flipped my stance on it.
Speaker 2: I thought, you know, I think we should be in it,
Speaker 2: and for all the right reasons too, because of our legacy,
Speaker 2: because of Lowell, because of Sean Murphy, because of Gregg Fuller,
Speaker 2: Paul breverchie Hayward, because of the fact that we're influenced
Speaker 2: by who we grew up listening to, which is this
Speaker 2: great catalog of music starting with Little Richard. Do you
Speaker 2: want to listen to chety fruity by Little Richard or
Speaker 2: by Pat Boone? I mean, Little Richard won my heart,
Speaker 2: That's all I can say. And I have nothing against
Speaker 2: Pat bone I'm madam. He's a decent, decent man and
Speaker 2: great just room for everybody. I'm not knocking to anybody
Speaker 2: either that's already in the Hall of Fame. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's that's an easy target for a lot of people
Speaker 2: that to get riled up about. Look, rock and roll
Speaker 2: is a very wide term. The terminology is wide. It
Speaker 2: encompasses so much and it should. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 2: R and B. It's it's the breakdown of things. And
Speaker 2: so what do you want to attach to this huge
Speaker 2: whale of swimming through the ocean with barnacle and planktonight
Speaker 2: attached to it. That's that's rotten. It's moving. It may
Speaker 2: move slow at times, but it never slows down. It doesn't.
Speaker 2: It's not going to disappear overnight. It's it's an attitude.
Speaker 2: It's little feet. Is the reason we can call it
Speaker 2: little feet in twenty twenty five is because of the
Speaker 2: the attachment of the legacy is is still there. When
Speaker 2: you hear that first track four days a half and
Speaker 2: three days of work, if you know the band at all,
Speaker 2: you're gonna go, my gosh, that sounds like little feet,
Speaker 2: And how is that possible? If you know? Well, I
Speaker 2: found that out when I went to hear well was
Speaker 2: actually I wound up here in Jimmy page. I'll cut
Speaker 2: to the chase, but I was there to hear those
Speaker 2: of the yardbirds were playing Jeff Pack Chrismal Beach, Rose Gardens.
Speaker 2: Jeff wasn't there, and we're Jeff come on, and then
Speaker 2: we start hearing this other fellow play and it was
Speaker 2: Jimmy Page. We go we didn't forget about Jeff back,
Speaker 2: but we went, well, this guy's really good too. That
Speaker 2: was the impetus I had, and to put Little Feet
Speaker 2: back together in nineteen eighty eight was just that that
Speaker 2: experience with the Artbirds. You're not gonna you're gonna miss Lowell.
Speaker 2: Some people are gonna put up a wall and say
Speaker 2: without Lulls, not Little Feet. That's their prerogative. I think
Speaker 2: it's a narrow view. I think that we're inviting more
Speaker 2: people to come in and find out who Lowell George
Speaker 2: is because he's not always on the radar, especially with
Speaker 2: new generations. So by keeping Little Feet alive, by keeping
Speaker 2: a band alive that would take ten bands to play
Speaker 2: and to play the music that we play, it's a
Speaker 2: selfish reason. I do it because I love the band.
Speaker 2: I love being able to write without thinking of what
Speaker 2: I mean. I just want musicians that can play it,
Speaker 2: sing it, and provide their own material to expand on
Speaker 2: on the legacy. But that legacy is always going to
Speaker 2: point to Lowell George, to Richie Hayward, to Paul Preyer,
Speaker 2: to Sam Clayton, Kenny Fred Tacking myself and on and on.
Speaker 2: It's it's bigger than any of us at this point.
Speaker 2: I think it's a wonderful thing.
Speaker 4: And I think the fact of still out playing.
Speaker 3: You're going to be hitting the road for another long
Speaker 3: run as you always do, and creating. In terms of
Speaker 3: the new project, I think, for whatever it means for me,
Speaker 3: I believe that carries even a greater positive aspect of
Speaker 3: why you guys should be in the Rock and Roll
Speaker 3: Hall of Fame. You're you're still vibrant and kicking some ass,
Speaker 3: so thank you.
Speaker 2: I think it'll happen, and for all the right reasons.
Speaker 4: Well, you got Jerry Douglass on your side. It can't
Speaker 4: hurt either, right.
Speaker 2: Can't love it then on her side too, these h
Speaker 2: We got a lot of people, and I think that's great,
Speaker 2: and we're we're going to continue doing what we do
Speaker 2: and expanding on on the notion of of of who
Speaker 2: we bring into play with. I think that's part and
Speaker 2: parcel for me over the next few years, or what
Speaker 2: do we have left to do this of who we
Speaker 2: extend the the the invite of joining us in this
Speaker 2: this journey that we are collectively on, not just that
Speaker 2: Little Feet is on, but as musicians what we do,
Speaker 2: celebrate what we do. Let's let's take our art seriously,
Speaker 2: as I've said earlier, but let's have fun in the process.
Speaker 4: You played any golf?
Speaker 2: I played yesterday and they had arad the greens and
Speaker 2: I by my wife and Polly were there. I'm my gosh,
Speaker 2: maybe I shouldn't play for another three and a half weeks.
Speaker 2: I'm really hitting the ball well, which I adore. Little Feet.
Speaker 4: I adore you, Bill Payne. It's great to be with you.
Speaker 3: I take it a walk and congrats on the new
Speaker 3: release and enjoy the tour as night.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, man, You're a treasure. I appreciate it.
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