The Tapes Archive

Marc Allan: Shake Me Up is the last thing we heard from you, right?

Paul Barrere: Yeah.

Marc Allan: Is there something new coming?

Paul Barrere: Well, we’re going to, after we finish touring, we’re going to start the writing process and hopefully we’ll get down to starting to record some stuff before the end of the year. And we’ll probably have another record done by, I would imagine next summer. Once we get started we tend to get them done pretty reasonable.

Marc Allan: It seemed to be putting since the group got back together you’d been putting out one touring, putting out another, touring, and like that. Did you kind of take some time where you decided not to go into the studio?

Paul Barrere: We put out Shake Me Up last September. So we kind of missed out on a summer tour for it. And the record is obviously run its course. But we wanted to do a nice summer tour this year. And so it, the opportunity arose to do this co-headline thing with George Thorogood, and it’s been working out really well. So it’s, we’re still, you know kind of promoting Shake Me Up, but we’re basically out here to have fun and to play and let people know that we’re still around. We’ve actually cut back on the schedule from, I mean when we first put the band back together we toured 10 months out of that that first year when we released Let it Roll. And then we went right in and and did Representing the Mambo. And, and we toured somewhere between eight and a half, nine months for that one. And it was like, Oh, okay. We’ve reestablished the fact that we’re back. Let’s reacquaint ourselves with our families. My wife and I just had our second child five months ago, and she was very happy that I was home for that and was there to change diapers because we have a 3-year-old as well, for the first four months, you know, before we started touring again. It’s been good. It’s everybody’s actually got, well, at least the writers in the band has started some songs and stuff so that when we do finally get off this road trip we won’t be starting from scratch. There’s stuff to work on.

Marc Allan: And will we hear anything new when you’re here?

Paul Barrere: Well, we’ve worked up some new things for Little Feat, but they’re not new songs. There’s some old blues classics that we, you know, Little Feat, since when I first remembered them when they were a quartet, I mean they used to cover Howlin’ Wolf tunes like 44 Blues and How Many More Years and things like that. It’s something that we had kind of gotten away from. And Billy came up with the idea of doing a bit of the Little Walter classic Mellow Down Easy, which was on the first Paul Butterfield Blues Band record. So we kind of cover a little bit of that. And we came up with when we were doing these all-acoustic shows, which we tend to do now and then — we’ll go out for a weekend and go out to a club in a town and play nothing but acoustic Feat music, which is great. But I came up with this little medley of a Muddy Waters tune, Can’t be Satisfied, that segues into a Robert Johnson tune, Hot Tamales and They’re Red Hot.

Marc Allan: So will you think we’ll hear those?

Paul Barrere: Oh you will hear those.

Marc Allan: Oh great.

Paul Barrere: We’re going to play those.

Marc Allan: Now, Shake Me Up, I thought it was best — although Representing the Mambo the song is my favorite song that you’ve done for years. Shake Me Up sounds like the best record that you’ve put together since the band reformed. What do you think?

Paul Barrere: Well, personally, I thought the same thing. I think all three albums are gems. You know, Let it Roll was probably the safest mainstream kind of rock and roll record of them all. Representing the Mambo, I’m glad that you liked that record. For some reason, that seemed to go right over a lot of people’s head. They tended to forget the Little Feat was that weird. It was like all they wanted to hear from Little Feat was the Let it Rolls and the Hate to Lose Your Lovins — you know, the Dixie Chicken clones or whatever. They forgot all about The Day At the Dog Races and the stranger side of Little Feat, and I thought Representing the Mambo was just perfect. You know, I mean, we had that song on there. We had The Ingenue we had Silver Screen. I mean, they were all very, we’ll never be accused of being alternative rock. For a while there, we were, you know, being called jazz rockers or something. I think it just shows the musicianship of the band. I mean, and also you got a song like Those Feat’ll Steer You Wrong, which is right out of the Willin’ type of genre, except it’s kind of poking fun at yourself, which is great. And then we did this album, which is a combination of both really. I mean, you’ve got Spider’s Blues, which is, I love that song. And I liked, I loved Clownin’ too which I thought was really great. The choir effects, you know Bonnie Bramlett was just wailing on it. And then a Shake Me Up with the typical atypical Little Feat really hard rocking kind of shuffle. And yet the album went absolutely nowhere. I was like, wait a minute, stop the presses. What’s going on here? Something’s wrong with this picture. Little Feat records tend to sell over the long period. I mean, it took 12 years for Feats Don’t Fail Me Now to go gold and Dixie Chicken even longer. So these things are like, they’ll be little gems in somebody’s time capsule, somewhere.

Marc Allan: People will discover them eventually.

Paul Barrere: Yeah, I think they do. And it always amazes me how much people will come up who just got into the band over the last three records since we put it back together and then they go back and they listen to the old stuff and they go, boy, there’s some good stuff there. It’s really rewarding. It’s like being a good author or something.

Marc Allan: You don’t want to end up like a great painter where you’re dead and then people discover you.

Paul Barrere: Yeah, well, that’s what Time Loves a Hero’s about. That’s how that whole thing is like van Gogh. I have these friends who had this garage band and and they had a song that was great. It was called “I Don’t Want to Be the Vinny van Gogh of the Radio. I went, because you have no ears? They said, no, because we make no money.

Marc Allan: I guess there’s no chance that we’re going to hear Mambo played live?

Paul Barrere: We don’t do it live in the electric show. We’ve been doing it in the acoustic shows It’s really a kick, but we pretty much put together kind of a rock and roll set for this tour this year with Thoroughgood. We started out with him down in Florida and we were closing the shows and he was opening them. And he tends to hammer people. I mean, he really is a rockin’ guy. We would come on if we would start to play some some things that were a little bit more musical and didn’t have quite as much the impact — something that require, thought shall we say? — it tended to get lost in the shuffle. So we kind of geared the set towards more rock and stuff. We’ll still do, you know, Hanging On to the Good Times and a couple of acoustic little gems, but for the most part we’re rocking.

Marc Allan: Does he pump you up? I mean, does having him on the bill with you make you play that much harder?

Paul Barrere: Oh, sure. There’s always a friendly kind of competition that goes on amongst bands. This tour is really unique for any one that I’ve ever been on as far as the co-headline thing, because it truly is a co-headline thing. I don’t even know when we play in Indianapolis. I’d have to look in the book here to see who’s closing the show.

Marc Allan: You usually do pretty well here. I’d be surprised. I mean, the only times George has played here he’s played at a club and he’s played as an opening act.

Paul Barrere: Well, sometimes the promoter seems to think that it’s better if he closes it because he is so loud. It’s unique in the fact that we’re both playing an hour 45 minutes. There’s that kind of a, yeah, well, if we’re going to do a show together then it should be compatible. You can’t really do something that’s so 180 degrees that people won’t get it or won’t stick around to listen or something like that. Recently we closed most of the shows up until the last couple of weeks we’ve opened for him. And so it’s like the shoes on the other foot and it’s like, okay we’re going to play our hour and 45 first and see how you follow it. It’s actually been a lot of fun. The guys in his band and George himself have been very cool. And we’ve got the other guitarist with George, Steve Chrismar, has joined our foursome. We’ve been out on the golf course every day off. I’ve heard it. I’ve heard the, the description of the over-40 rock and roller’s typical day is 18 holes and an AA meeting. So

Marc Allan: Butch Trucks, when the Allman Brothers came in, he said, I got a day off when we’re coming here. Where should I go play golf?

Paul Barrere: Exactly. Yeah. We toured with them last fall. And that was when you can get guys from Motley Crue out on a golf course, then you know something’s really gone wacko in the world.

Marc Allan: Days of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, I guess, must be over or must be left to the young

Paul Barrere: I think so, you know. Maybe it’s safe sex and golf and rock.

Marc Allan: The last time you were here, which I guess was two years ago now, Silver Screen was the song that you really stretched out on among all the new ones. Is there something from Shake Me Up that you’re going to stretch out on this time?

Paul Barrere: To tell you the truth, the only song we’re doing from Shake Me Up is Shake Me Up. Although, you know, that can change at a moment’s notice. We have a song list with about 60 songs, so it’s been kind of strange. We’ve been actually stretching out more on the the blues tunes, in particular Mellow Down Easy and Apolitical Blues and things like that.

Marc Allan: How’s this new label working out?

Paul Barrere: it’s okay. They’re still airing out problems that new labels are wont to have. And so that’s part of actually taking a chance and going from a major label, like Warner Brothers, to a new subsidiary — who actually isn’t a subsidiary, but they’re distributed by another company, Polygram. So it’s tough sometimes to get all the necessary things happening to sell records. When you think, in the scheme of things, how many brand new labels there are, it’s pretty frightening. It’s like everybody’s fighting for the airspace and the and the rack space and the rack jobbers. I mean, the business has changed, shall we say.

Marc Allan: And not for the better. as far as I can see — although Little Feat, I think, has changed for the better. The last time you were here was the best I’d ever seen you. And I’ve seen you about 10 times

Paul Barrere: Really?

Marc Allan: Since ’77.

Paul Barrere: Right, right. You know, the thing about the band now is consistency. You know, whether it’s just the fact that we’ve matured or are more serious about our instruments and our music. I’m not really sure exactly what the defining line was. But we seem to be a much more consistent band night after night. And it’s really just a joy to play with these guys.

Marc Allan: Yeah. And that’s true because there were nights where you’d come out with Lowell and you just never knew how participatory he would be.

Paul Barrere: Right.

Marc Allan: And it was, so it is kind of cool to see you now and know you’re going to kind of get a great show as opposed to wondering if you’re going to get a great show.

Paul Barrere: Wondering if, or who was going to sing what or how many songs they would do. Boy, those days are strange. It’s like every now and then I’ll read in the paper Hank Williams Jr. went out and played 16 minutes, you know, in St. Louis or something like that. Marc Allan: Right.

Paul Barrere: Good night.

Marc Allan: Yeah. Do you get a déjà vu feeling?

Paul Barrere: I do. It’s like, I’m so glad those days are over for us.

Marc Allan: You have to have some fond memories of that.

Paul Barrere: Oh yeah. Oh absolutely. We have tapes. And there’s actually a couple of videotapes of some shows that we did from back then that are just phenomenal. We played some really good music. You know, I tend to forget how well we used to play because there was that eight-year layoff between bands. And there’s some stuff that is just phenomenal. We have some jam tapes from our rehearsal hall with people like John Klemmer came in and played the sax one day Robben Ford and just things where we just got together and jammed that are like, whoa, that’s pretty neat. It’s amazing to think that it’s been an existence like 22 years, 23 years. 

Marc Allan: Do you have any theories on why Little Feat has never become like a major commercial act?

Paul Barrere: I think because we’re so diverse probably is the main reason. If we were just a southern boogie band or just a, I dunno, a country funk band or whatever random music that we’re playing at the time, if we were just that, then you know, a label can go, “Oh, good. OK, we can put these guys in this pigeonhole here and we’ll promote them as such. And we’ll talk to them about their image, which they have none. We’ll get them some nice clothes and we’ll do their hair up — those that got their hair.” It’s like, we’re a band that just, you know, likes to play music. And that’s, that’s not really what marketing is all about.

Marc Allan: Yeah. That isn’t even really what music is about anymore, it seems.

Paul Barrere: Well, it is what music’s about, but it’s not what the music business is about.

Marc Allan: Yeah. I mean, it’s like, you don’t even have to be a player anymore. You know, you can just know producer or something.

Paul Barrere: I think with the whole realm of, of video and video performance art and the thing that bugs me most about the business is that you’ll have the major people in all those different genres and then you’ll have the clones and some of the clones are making as much as the major people. It’s like, if you put blindfolds on people and played the music and said, OK, can you tell me that band A B C or D, I’m sure a lot of people would fail.

Marc Allan: Anything else you want me to tell people about the you, the band, anything else? Paul Barrere: Oh God, I hope you don’t tell them all this crap I spurted off here today.

Marc Allan: Just the highlights.

Paul Barrere: Wonderful. I can’t wait to see what this sounds like. No, just tell him to come out. We will definitely have a good time. The thing about the band and this tour is that we’re not really out promoting anything. We’re just out playing and we’re having a good time. It’s evident in the smiles that are on our faces that translate to the smiles that are on the audience’s faces. We’re here to have a ball.

Marc Allan: One other question, kind of a goofy question. I’m asking everybody I interview. If they have a favorite lyric about love, either your own or somebody else’s. I talked to Tori Amos yesterday and she picked Dixie Chicken. She thought that was her favorite love song.

Paul Barrere: Really?

Marc Allan: Yeah.

Paul Barrere: Oh man. I didn’t think It ever mentioned love, but …

Marc Allan: It does in a weird way.

Paul Barrere: God, you know, the cynical part of me wants to say Love Stinks, but I’m not going to do that. You know, the problem with that is there’s too many sappy songs about love. There’s you know, there’s good love songs too, though. The way I’m feeling now I having been gone from home for about three weeks I think Missin’ You would probably do it.

Marc Allan: Yeah, OK, all right. Well, I’m looking forward to seeing you and,

Paul Barrere: Good. You take care. I’m sorry I bent your ear so long.

Marc Allan: No, that’s all right. It’s been great. Thanks, Paul. Bye-bye.