Little Feat

Strike Up the Band

Hot Tomato Productions / MRI

Considered in the literal sense, the album title Strike Up the Band would be a gross understatement. Little Feat has virtually lit itself ablaze, the artistic fire in the band having grown steadily in intensity in the six years since lead singer, songwriter, and lead and slide guitarist Scott Sharrard joined the band. Sharrard, for ten years Gregg Allman’s musical director, has now steered Little Feat through countless shows since the Covid lockdown was lifted. He has proven himself an individualist brimming with passion while singing and playing many of the songs from Little Feat’s vast catalog. He also tips his hat in fine style to the late Lowell George, Little Feat’s founder and its renowned singer, songwriter, and slide guitar stylist. Sharrard cites George as one of his prime inspirations.

The new iteration of Little Feat—Sharrard, founding pianist and singer Bill Payne, longtime members Kenny Gradney on bass, percussionist/vocalist Sam Clayton, guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Fred Tackett, and newest member along with Sharrard, drummer Tony Leone—dropped its first album together last year. On Sam’s Place, Little Feat’s 18^th studio album since forming in 1969, the band tears through a set of vintage blues, spotlighting Clayton’s fierce baritone lead vocals all the way through. Debuting the new band on record that way was a superb idea, and it quickly earned them a Grammy nomination. But Strike Up the Band strikes entirely differently. A true Little Feat album in every sense, it features 13 original songs, each of them packing a different type of punch. The players masterfully cook on it with every ingredient in the rad gumbo that has comprised Little Feat’s signature sound, even adding a few fresh touches to make it spicier yet.  

“4 Days of Heaven 3 Days of Work,” a horn-blasted greasy rocker by Payne, Sharrard, and Leone, lights the Little Feat match with a vengeance. Sharrard announces himself in an animated singing voice and with George-inspired slide licks that could slice iron. Next, the band travels down to Louisiana for the rhythmically shaking “Bayou Mama,” written by Payne with Blackberry Smoke’s Charlie Starr. Payne’s lead vocal hits as heartily and melodically as it did decades ago. Sharrard’s “Midnight Flight” then takes off on a unique tear for Little Feat, its melody streaked with Latin inflections and powered with enough pop juice to light up every listening platform and dancehall in America. Singer Kristen Rogers keeps pace with Sharrard in the song’s chorus, her rhythm and blues-perfect voice a key ingredient. The horn players, saxophonist Art Edmaiston and trumpeter Mark Franklin, deserve a hand for their high-energy heat there, and throughout the album.

Tackett and Sharrard’s “Too High to Cut My Hair, a ripping soul-boogie fest, derives from an actual experience, with Tackett the victim, and his wife the proposed home-stylist. Played out in a hilarious MTV-like companion video, the song’s “too high” refrain seems to craftily echo Stevie Wonder’s monumental hit, “Too High.”

Rebecca and Megan Lovell (Larkin Poe) add beautiful vocal harmonies to Sharrard’s title song, the phrase “Strike Up the Band” a metaphor for togetherness in these impossible socio-political times. The lyrics burst with the gospel truth and the music lifts the principles to the heavens. Payne’s piano solo cascades majestically. Likewise, his solo piano and voice recital at the outset of his French Quarter-rollicking “New Orleans Cries When She Sings,” written with Leftover Salmon’s Vince Herman, is magical.

Molly Tuttle, Larry Campbell, and Teresa Williams help turn “Bluegrass Pines,” a decidedly non-bluegrass adventure written long ago by Payne and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, into vintage-sounding Little Feat. The lyrics are typically abstract, the music full of idiosyncratic rhythmic twists. At the other end of the spectrum, towards the album’s conclusion, Leone offers his “Running Out of Time with the Blues,” a quirky blues that honors Paul Barrere. The beat, slinky guitar, and even Leone’s lead vocal intonations, all bear the late Little Feat lyricist, guitarist, and vocalist’s signature.

Vance Powell (Chris Stapleton, Phish, The White Stripes) produced Strike Up the Band with the assistance of Sharrard and Payne, presenting the album’s hour-long extravaganza perfectly. To judge a 56-year-old institution on its tantalizing inventiveness and superior performances is quite something. Place Strike Up the Band high on the shelf alongside Little Feat’s very best albums, and enjoy some of the highest caliber contemporary rock ‘n roll in the marketplace right now.

Let’s hear it for Little Feat!

 Tom Clarke for MAS

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