A Rejuvenated Little Feat to Play the Troy Music Hall on April 18th 

The Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers, and Little Feat share several commonalities.  

Each has or had existed for more than half a century. They all have broken through the restrictions that the music “business” – as opposed to the music itself – has tried to impose on their “product” in an attempt to maximize their commercial appeal, often at the expense of trying to curb the three’s artistic muse.  

Each of these legacy groups has lost its creative leader, the rudder of the band, that was most responsible for their ability to navigate uncharted waters, the kind of leader who makes all three responsible for an enormous part of America’s music being lionized around the world and considered with envy from Memphis to London, Atlanta to Tokyo, The Delta to Paris.  

Fifty years ago, when these groups gained a foothold, descriptive monikers like rock and roll, blues, and pop were seldom mentioned in the same breath as culture. Today, The Dead, The Allman Brothers, and Little Feat jointly are considered cornerstones of America’s point position as the leader of the contemporary definition of culture and the envy of other musical centers around the globe. 

“I’m wearing many hats these days, and I’m not complaining about it,” says Scott Sharrard, lead vocalist, and guitarist in Little Feat, performing at The Troy Music Hall on April 18th. 

The Grateful Dead lost Jerry Garcia in 1995. The Allman Brothers’ Duane has been gone since 1971. Little Feat’s Lowell George passed in 1979. It took that band nine years to put things back together again, but when guitarist and vocalist Paul Barrere died in 2019, Scott Sharrard was front and center to catch the pieces in the fallout. 

“It was in 2019 that I did my first two gigs with them. The first gig was actually a day I was subbing for Paul Barrere, and he passed away about four hours before my first show with the band. 

“I only met him once before he died in passing at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, but I had been a lifelong fan of his playing, writing, and singing. And playing that gig with the band where I had just met (Little Feat band members) Fred Tackett, Kenny Gradney, and Sam Clayton. The moment I met them, they had just found out a half hour before that Paul had died. 

“That was a very emotional couple of concerts we played together, and a feeling of brotherhood came out of that.” 

Rolling Stone magazine once described Little Feat as “the archetypal cult band: inspired, turbulent, smart, experimental, deserving – and accident-prone.” For a half-century of breakups, deaths, and enough other tragedies to fill a bad romance novel, they’ve managed to blend country rock and a Laurel Canyon Americana synthesis that cherry-picks the best of New Orleans, Memphis, Macon, Houston, Nashville, Tijuana, and their native Los Angeles.  Perhaps best of all, they inspire their fans to do the happy dance as if it were their last chance because, many times, it seemed like it was. 

Scott, at age 46, is almost three decades younger than Bill Payne, the only remaining early member of the Little Feat. Scott’s last high-profile gig was as the musical director for Gregg Allman’s solo career, including three albums before Gregg died in 2017. “All of the bands that I’ve been in for most of the past, with the exception of my own solo projects, have been with musicians 20 or 30 years older than me. Sometimes, 15. So, for me, it’s just another day at the office.  

“I’ve been told by people, particularly with Gregg Allman and now the guys in Little Feat, where were you in the 70s? I’m just one of the gang in terms of the books I read and the films I watch. You know, my philosophy, conversation, music taste, it’s like I was there.” 

Scott has been the jumper cables to many older musicians’ careers, including Levon Helm’s. “When I was a teenager, I was jamming with Pinetop Perkins and Hubert Sumlin and playing in chitlin circuit bands in the Midwest. I toured with Willie Higgins and the Mob and Harvey Scales.  

“My mentor was a guy named Stokes, who was about one of the best guitar players/singers you’ll ever hear. I started playing drums for him when I was 15, and then I got on guitar. You know, that was the early ’90s. That was like the end of when my dad would bring me into a club, and I would fall into the clique of older, mostly black men from the south who migrated to the Midwest and hang with them and become part of the mindset. It was kind of the last time you could do that. 

 “Of course, meeting Levon Helm in my 20s and then Gregg when I was 30, and the first thing we kicked off about was all those first gigs I did and those styles of music. When I was a teenager, people like Hubert Sumlin told me to check out (Chicago’s) Maxwell Street players like Robert Nighthawk to learn how to play slide. 

“When I was 15, and in my later teens, when I was 17 or 18, I ended up in Ron Hill’s band. Ron Hill was Magic Sam’s bass player and could sing exactly like Magic Sam. He had that sound in his voice, and he played the bars. He had an old ’60s E bass. We had a trio, and we used to play at (Buddy Guy’s) Checkerboard Lounge, Koko Taylor’s (bar), and sometimes Willie Big Eyes Smith would play drums.  

“My buddy Ron Dixon, with whom I ended up forming the Chesterfields and moving to New York, was on drums most of the time. He was a couple of years older than me. We were kids, and I learned about Magic Sam and Earl Hooker from Ron. We used to do a lot of their arrangements and stuff. Ron had been there. Ron even played with Freddie King when he first started playing in Chicago before he started making those records in Cincinnati. So, there were a lot of these cats around in Milwaukee in my teenage years even though I’m from Detroit originally.” 

Two months before he died, Paul Barrere said to this reporter, “My dad used to say, ‘I get up every day and read the obituaries. If I’m not in there, I’ll shave.’” Paul was in the game until the end. “We want to represent. We also want to experiment. So, a lot of the songs have basically changed in a lot of different ways from tour to tour, and that, to me, is great. I remember we toured with the Allman Brothers in the early ’90s and late ’80s. and I thought Warren Haynes was just amazing. He was such a good man to step into that position, so it just depends on who the player is, and I understand. So, I think it’s a testament to those who are gone that somebody can come in and replicate to a certain extent and also infuse their own personality.” 

“I’m 46. I’m technically generation X,” concludes Scott, “ but I’m also with people who are 40-42 and considered to be millennials, I was just reading the other day. So, I love this weird roots generation where I grew up in clubs with a landline, but then in my early 20s, I had a cellphone and the internet. 

“That’s a weird age, right? What I’m saying is I’m trying to communicate from the generation of Levon Helm and Little Feat and Gregg Allman to the new generation of the newer artists.”  

Scott Sharrard not only has an Allman Brothers connection through his work with Gregg but there’s also a tie-in with the Grateful Dead. Dennis McNally is Little Feat’s publicist. McNally was the Dead’s official historian for decades. He wrote the definitive book on that band, Long Strange Trip, and has authored several other books, including a collection of Jerry Garcia quotes, Jerry on Jerry The Unpublished Jerry Garcia Interviews and On Highway 61, Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom. 

McNally tells me Little Feat is performing better than they have in years. Hyperbole is not in McNally’s vocabulary, even if he is a paid publicist. Plus, I‘m hearing good things about this tour from others, too.