Fifty-two years of great music doesn’t squeeze down to a short announcement very easily.

I will leave it to others to memorialize, to exalt into the heavens someone who wouldn’t have wanted it. Paul Barrere was my band mate, my friend, someone I leaned on and occasionally pushed away. We spent a good measure of our lives engaged in the art of making and playing music with a band that could have only been conjured in a dream. But it was all too real.

As many of you know, for the past several years I have been dealing with liver disease. When we finished the second leg of our 50th Anniversary Tour, I was beginning to develop some edema, which has been making some things a little more difficult. It has been a bit of a roller coaster as I go through the treatments my medical team has prescribed, and I have had good days and not so good days. Lately, the not so good days have been more common. I have met with my team at UCLA and they have told me that what I am experiencing is common and treatable. However, the timing is not ideal, as they have directed me to stay home in October while they fine-tune the treatment in order to get me back to where the good days are the norm.

On the last Tuesday night in May, Little Feat continued their triumphant 50th anniversary tour in Oakland at the storied Fox Theater. Time-honored members Bill Payne (piano, keys, synth), Paul Barrere (guitars), Kenny Gradney (bass), Sam Clayton (percussion), and Fred Tackett (guitars, mandolin, trumpet) were joined by Gabe Ford (drums) and very special guests Midnight Ramble Horns (Steve Bernstein, Erik Lawrence, Jay Collins,) for a night of career-spanning classics.

The Colorado Chautauqua Association is proud to announce the 2019 Summer Concert Series in the historic Auditorium, filled with something for everyone. Artists like Melisa Etheridge and Michael McDonald, Milk Carton Kids, Little Feat and Indigo Girls bring the perfect mix of rock, blues, folk, indie and bluegrass to the stage this summer.

Grateful Web recently had the honor of speaking with Bill Payne about the upcoming milestone of 50 years of Little Feat in 2019. Payne’s depth as an artist goes much farther than Little Feat’s founding pianist, co-songwriter and vocalist. A photographer, poet, one of the hardest working and best damn American rock musicians since the 1970s.

“Dixie Chicken.”  “Sailin’ Shoes.”  “Fat Man in the Bathtub.”  “Feats Don’t Fail Me Now.”  “Time Loves a Hero.”  “Willin’.”  “Oh, Atlanta.”  “All That You Dream.” Little Feat has created its own version of the Great American Songbook, and boy, can they play those songs.  As great as the records are, there is nothing like live music—this is, after all, the band that created one of the two or three greatest live albums ever, Waiting for Columbus.