The first band announcements of the Rooster Walk 12 lineup are here, just in time for tickets going on sale tomorrow (Tuesday) at noon EST. Legendary rock band Little Feat will perform the entirety of their 'Waiting for Columbus' album at Rooster Walk this year! Tab Benoit will sling smoking New Orleans blues, while Andy Frasco & The U.N., and Sammy Rae & The Friends, will bring the party.

Little Feat have been powering through the end of their By Request Tour this November, and this past week Grateful Web caught one of the last shows, in the low key but luxurious space the Calvin Theatre in Northampton, MA.

With Little Feat returning to the stage this Thursday the 11^th in Port Chester, New York, the band wanted to share even more widely Bill Payne’s letter to Feat Fans.  It goes a long way to explain the music and the magical bond among them that has allowed them to overcome losing Lowell (George), then Richie (Hayward), then Paul (Barrere): the music, and the pleasure of sharing it with audiences, is more than enough to keep them playing on.

Making a truly great live rock and roll album is an enormous challenge, so difficult that they are a rarity. Waiting for Columbus is a consensus member of that very exclusive club.

After two years of Covid-enforced silence, Little Feat has big plans for its return to the stage.  Hard on the heels of their November “By Request” tour, they are planning a March-April 2022 tour that will celebrate the 45^th anniversary of the legendary Waiting for Columbus, replicating the album at every stop.

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.