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For well over 30 years, Bill Payne has been a consummate
all-star in the high-stakes, cutthroat game of rock 'n' roll. Taking a gander
at his extensive resume reveals a pristine shine without blemish. And by taking
each phase in the most general of terms, one quickly discovers that Payne has
helped improve music in general with every chance he got.
Payne has made the records and tours of some big-name Hall of Famers better (John Lee Hooker, J.J. Cale, Pink Floyd). The music he helped create has been a part of cinematic history (Easy Rider) and covered by a ridiculously diverse group of admirers (The Byrds, Van Halen, Garth Brooks). He’s taken a new generation of bands under his mighty wing (the former God Street Wine, Leftover Salmon, String Cheese Incident). And, of course, Little Feat, which couldn’t ever swing the way it does without his signature keyboard boogie.
Most musicians would kill to have one phase of that career to
hang their legacy on. So, to think there could be anything missing from one
man’s music career is an absurd notion. But for Bill Payne, there is--his own
career. To be clear, though, Payne has pioneered plenty of creative projects
on his own and obviously made tons of music apart from his roles in Little Feat.
Really interesting and brilliant stuff, too. Hell, he’s even performed solo.
Once. But so far, there is no such thing as Bill Payne solo. Nothing
he can call his very own--it's always been for someone else. Well, that's about
to change.
Until very recently, Bill Payne the regular guy has convinced Bill Payne the musician that no one would buy a record by either Bill Payne. “I think what I learned is that we talk ourselves out of far more things than we talk ourselves into,” he warns. So much so that his friends and family got sick and tired of hearing it, until one day his wife Cheryl all but begged him to do it. Just how far he’ll take it by himself is anyone’s guess. But with a lifetime of achievements under his belt, it’s time Bill Payne took a moment to create Bill Payne on the most singular of terms.
Bill: I'm putting out a solo record sometime this year. I just
finished it up here in Montana.
JamBase: Well that’s great--you beat me to the question.
Bill: Yeah, Gil Morales was here. Out of the six days he was up here, we went
cross-country skiing three days; I took him up to the hot pools another night.
We just had a ball. But the work was there, and it was pretty much done. There
were a couple things I attended to on the fly. There were a couple instances where
he was fixing something, or you know, doing backup copies. And there was a section
to this one tune I was working on, and I thought, “You know what? I’m going to
just re-do it from about midway, and just punched in and played it out. It was
something I probably recorded about four years ago. But yeah, it was an exciting
project. I listened to it the other night at the neighbor's house, which is always
a good acid test, as to whether you like what you have when you play it in front
of somebody else [laughs].
And I thought it sounded pretty darn good. The main thing was, I just wanted to get the first one out. And then obviously work on as many Little Feat records as we can do. And I want to carve my own trail, too.
JamBase: Well, that’s great to hear. I speak for many, I
think, when I say "Finally!"
Bill: Yeah, that was it! I mean, it got to the point where people
went, “Yeah, yeah, OK… We’ll believe it when we hear it.” (laughs) I nearly
talked myself out of it again when my wife Cheryl said, “Look, just do it
this time, OK? Please.” Because I had hernia surgery on December 29th.
Oh no, you're kidding.
So that kind of laid me back a little for a while. I just didn’t have the strength or willpower to go in and work on anything. So I was really slow about doing anything. When Gil came up, I had done quite a bit of homework on it. But it was in a very short amount of time. And I thought, “Well, I don’t know if I have enough material. If I don’t, I’ll simply play more music.” But it turned out I had plenty of music ready and other stuff in the wings, should I need to call on it. We’ll get the first one out and I’ll take it from there.
One of the guys I really admire is Bill Evans, obviously, as a jazz pianist. But also, a guy who put out a lot of records. I mean he seemed somewhat fearless about putting things together. Fortunately most of it quite brilliant.
Bill Evans |
Yeah, I mean Evans was just always doing it... never not
doing his thing.
Yeah! I think there’s something to be said about that. I mean,
I’ve always composed works. Well, not always, but the thing for me, given the
style in which I play--I've got some classical chops that served me relatively
well, and I've a got a good imagination. It was really how to compose anything;
how to document what I was doing. Well, thank God for sequencers, and all that
technology that Lowell just saw the beginning of, but missed out on a majority
of what would have kept him busy. And I think quite busy for many hours, and
many years.
That was really the thing Lowell seemed to relish...
I thought so. I think for the same reasons. You have those things that come out of you. And you think, “How can I capture this?” I mean, yeah you can put a tape recorder on. But what if I want to change something? What if I want to marry up ideas? So those are the questions you begin to ask yourself, which is absolutely the way that technology is true to forms. It starts with people of like minds, concerned, and having questions. And those questions and concerns are… There’s an attempt made to answer them.
Lowell would literally give me a cassette. And he would have
taken the tape out of the cassette and chop it up and edit it. And he’d give
it to me and go, “Figure this out.” And I’d go, “Whoa, alright.” So I’d sit
there, and I was working on a song, and it sounded like five and a half beats,
so I made it six… Well, it was “Rock 'n' Roll Doctor!” [laughs]
Oh yea?
Yeah. He was all over the map with it, but it was brilliant stuff. I mean his editing on it was absolutely astounding.
Wow... So, for as antiquated the method, the genius still
shined through I guess, huh?
Oh yeah, he definitely had his stuff in order. But it was always
about the feel, you know? We’d be sitting there going, “This sounds cool.” We
didn’t want to know... It was almost like Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff.
It wasn’t fair to figure out if it was a 2/4 bar. Who cares? You know, just
play it. And then later, I realized the reason we weren’t checking if it was
a 2/4 bar. I honestly believed we thought it would cut into our creativity.
It would take the magic out of it.
And indeed I had a conversation, not that many years ago, with a guy who was a driver back in New York. He was taking me over to Long Island, where Korg has all their facilities; I was doing some work for Korg. And he said he was a musician who was driving to supplement his living. And I suggested, “If you feel like you’re making progress, great. But you might consider even studying a little about music. You don’t want to do it because you feel like it will cut into your knowledge and take away your creative spike, right?” He goes, “Yeah.” I said, “Well believe me, brother, I used to think the same way.”
It’s really, really not true. In fact, if you think of music as a language--which it absolutely is--then all you’re doing is adding to your vocabulary. Then there’s no possible way you can’t enhance what you do. Because you’re not going to lose what you have. You’re simply adding to your ammunition.
That’s a great way to look at it.
I think I scored some points with him. I obviously never saw
him again, but I was hopeful. Which is one reason why I had the opportunity
to write for this Japanese magazine (Player). I kind of jumped on it
as a way to kind of contribute something back. I gained a heck of a lot from
it, too, as a writer. Investigating, literally, the importance of words.
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