Little Feat with Emmylou Harris - "Sailin' Shoes" (mp3)

Little Feat's original run, as led by Lowell George, lasted about a decade, from the late 60's until his death in 1979, the era that continues to define the band's recorded legacy with 7 mostly great studio albums and the classic double live Waiting On Columbus. But since 5 surviving members of the band's classic lineup reformed in 1988, they've now lasted twice as long, and released just as many studio albums, as well as way more live discs. Little Feat are up there with Steely Dan as one of the bands that my dad loved that I grew up hearing constantly, and gradually came to love myself (hell, I played two of their songs at my wedding). I think I realized just in the last couple years that Lowell George is probably the reason that slide guitar is one of my favorite sounds in the world. But dad always played almost as much of the band's 80's and 90's material as stuff from the original run, and a Little Feat show my mom took my brother and I to in the early 90's was probably the first concert either of us ever really went to. So I've always had a healthy appreciation for the fact that while the band might as well exist as a memory of the superior early stuff, it's nice that Bill Payne and Paul Barrere have kept its living legacy alive as a touring band for two decades now.

Join The Band, out on CD next week but released digitally over a month ago, is kind of the Little Feat version of the classic rockers + famous guest stars formula that Santana struck gold with on Supernatural and has kind of become a trend for aging artists ever since. It's a smart idea for a band like Little Feat, who were always kind of a little cult band who just happened to have fans in much bigger acts like the Stones and Zep, and I'm surprised they didn't do it sooner; the band's been playing the early material with big stars sitting in on lead vocals since the Lowell George tribute concert back in the year of his death. The guest list on Join The Band isn't quite as star studded as it could've been, though, and aside from Dave Matthews and Jimmy Buffett, it skews pretty hard to the band's country side with Brooks & Dunn, Vince Gill and Emmylou Harris.

Chris Robinson from the Black Crowes comes closest to the capturing a vocal reminiscent of the original on "Oh Atlanta"; most of the artists kind of stay themselves. I don't really have much against Jimmy Buffett in theory, but his limits as a vocalist really make the version of "Time Loves A Hero" on this album pretty lame. And the Brooks & Dunn version of "Willin'" is almost overbearingly saccharine; if the song took one step up in slickness from the Little Feat version to the Sailin' Shoes version, this is like five steps (it's a shame, too, some other CMT jockeys like Montgomery Gentry probably couldn't given the song a more appropriate amount of grit). Still, the song is pretty much unkillable, and it's funny to think that maybe a version like this could be a hit in Nashville today, even with the "weed, whites and wine" chorus. Only "Spanish Moon" with Vince Gill packs a lengthy instrumental bridge to represent what the band's live interpretations of the songs tend to sound like these days. And while Inara George's appearance on "Trouble," singing her father's lyrics, is a really sweet moment, far and away the highlight of the album is the closing "Sailin' Shoes," with Emmylou Harris doing some lovely work on the title track from my favorite Feat album.

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