I'm Retired! Now what?

I’ve always heard that music is timeless, but I can’t say that’s always been true for some of the concerts I’ve attended.  I remember when I went to see an Avril Lavigne show back when she was in her popular prime and got a few looks from the teeny bopper crowd that filled the venue.  I almost expected someone to say, “Hey dude, the Foghat concert is down the street.”  So when some classic rock, 1970’s band comes to town, I love to sift into the crowd, thinking that maybe I’m one of the younger guys there.

I had never been a huge Little Feat fan, but they’re one of those bands that I had heard of all through my life of listening to AOR radio stations and then classic rock stations.  Of course, these guys aren’t to be confused with the Little River Band, Little Big Town, or Little Dragon.  These guys were the original little…well, after Litter Richard, I guess.

The band was playing at the Majestic Theater in Dallas last Sunday, so I bought the cheapest ticket I could find up in the balcony and decided to drift back in time for a while.  I say cheapest, but the freaking parking alone cost me thirty-five bucks!  There’s nothing cheap about a concert these days.  But here’s a little look at the Little Feat show in Dallas, Texas.

Little Feat at the Majestic Theater on April 19, 2026

Back in the 1980’s I heard a radio DJ say, “If you want to hear the best musicians listen to Little Feat.  So with the band’s “Final Farewell” tour stopping by at the Majestic Theater in Dallas, Texas I figured I’d go spend an evening with the ‘best’ musicians.  I’ve probably seen a dozen ‘final tours’ in my concert career, and few of them were truly final tours, but since four members of this six-man band have passed the seventy-five-year mark, I’ll take heed to their Final Farewell claim.

I always love going to concerts like this because it’s a place where I don’t feel like I’m the oldest guy in the room.  Indeed, there were a lot a of dudes milling around with grey ponytails hanging halfway down their backs and straggly beards that would make any mountain man proud.  Yea, we’re all proud children of the 70’s!  Strangely enough though, there were a couple of guys in front of me who looked like they could have been in their mid-twenties.  They must have broken into their grandparent’s album collection.

Counting all their work, Little Feat has cranked out 34 albums over the years, so when singer Scott Sharrard made the claim, “We’ve got a lot of music to play tonight,” he wasn’t kidding.  I thought the early start of 7:00 might be because all of us classic rockers need to be in bed by ten, but the early start was because they were planning to dish out around two and a half hours of tunes!

Scott might have filled in the vocals for the departed members of the band, but he was far from being the only singer on hand.  Those duties were passed all around the stage.  Occasionally conga player Sam Clayton would yell out a few lyrics in his soulful, raspy voice.  I saw this guy play with Jimmy Buffett thirty-five years ago, but I never knew he could sing.  With a voice that sounded a bit like Louie Armstrong, Clayton broke into the band’s dip into blues music with GOT MY MOJO WORKING, and during their acoustic part of the concert they gave the lead microphone to drummer Tony Leone.

However, Sharrard carried the majority of the vocals, but for most of the songs the guy was singing a duet with his guitar.  Indeed, that guy can play!  Although the guy has only been in the band since 2020, he took command of the stage like he’d been with them since 1969!  Of course the guy who had been with the band since day one was keyboardist Bill Payne, and there were a couple times when the concert became the Bill Payne show, and the rest of the band just gave him the stage.  As he talked about writing songs with the Grateful Dead, I just had to imagine what kind of road stories that guy could tell.

 What really got the crowd going were songs like LET IT ROLL and OLD ATLANTA, but what pushed me to the edge of my seat was when the guys all set down and delivered my favorite Little Feat song, WILLN’, which unfortunately, seems to be their shortest song.  You’d think the guys could have added a few more verses just for me.  The guys made up for it though when they plowed into FATMAN IN A BATHTUB.  Sharrard would slide into a guitar rift and then guitarist Fred Tackett would launch into a few picks of his own.  I swear, I think those guys could have played that song all night, and more importantly, I don’t think anyone would have cared.  Of course, that wouldn’t have left anytime for DIXIE CHICKEN, and that’s the song everyone wanted to sing along with.  That tune took me so far back into the 1970’s I felt like I was watching the Midnight Special and nearly expected Grand Funk Railroad to come on next.