Life Without George a Feat Accompli

For a long time, Bill Payne felt it was best to let Little Feat rest in peace. In a career that spanned the ‘70s, the Los Angeles-based rock band had built a respected legacy of versatility and sharp musicianship with a funky-bluesy Southern accent. Payne was the keyboard player whose buoyant, easy-rolling New Orleans-style piano was a big part of the band’s signature sound.

But the indispensable figure in Little Feat was guitarist Lowell George, who provided distinctive, throaty lead vocals and much of the band’s best songwriting, including such numbers as “Willin,’ ” “Dixie Chicken” and “Sailin’ Shoes.” When George died of a heart attack in 1979, Little Feat finished the album that was in progress and laid itself to rest.

The five surviving members dispersed to a variety of lower-profile ‘80s gigs. Payne, always a popular studio sideman, played in James Taylor’s touring band for five years. Out on the road, he would meet Little Feat fans who wanted to know whether the band might return.

“I’d say, ‘No, we’ve done everything that Little Feat was supposed to do,’ ” Payne recalled last week as he chatted in a record company office about--you guessed it!--the return of Little Feat, which opens for Jimmy Buffett tonight and Saturday at Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa.

The idea that Little Feat might have a future as well as a past was planted about 2 1/2 years ago when the former band mates regrouped for an informal jam session at a North Hollywood rehearsal studio. A similar musical get-together a few years before hadn’t sparked any enthusiasm for reviving Little Feat, Payne said. But this time, as the alumni worked their way through a repertoire of songs they’d half-forgotten, “the impressive thing was the energy was there.”

“Everyone seemed to have their lives in order, which was great,” Payne said. “I walked out of there thinking of how much fun I’d had playing with Little Feat.”

Payne and the other former members--guitarist Paul Barrere, drummer Richie Hayward, bassist Kenny Gradney and percussionist Sam Clayton--decided that they were still willin’. They agreed to continue their independent musical pursuits while moving cautiously toward a Little Feat revival.

“The obvious question was, what do we do about filling a space that you can’t fill, which was Lowell George,” Payne said. He noted, though, that a fair sampling of Little Feat’s staple repertoire, including “Oh, Atlanta,” “Tripe Face Boogie” and “Time Loves a Hero,” was sung by other members of the band. “We’re trying to replace somebody who can’t be replaced, but to think that everything was basically Lowell, I find it hard to swallow.”

In any case, along with a guitarist and a singer to carry on convincingly in George’s spot, the band required new material strong enough to justify a rebirth. “I said, ‘I don’t want to write “I love you baby” on every tune,’ ” Payne said. “We’re not only in competition with everything we like (in contemporary rock), we’re in direct competition with ourselves, and with Lowell.”

Before he could go ahead with the plan to reform Little Feat, Payne went on a long tour with Bob Seger, where he recruited another Seger sideman--guitarist Fred Tackett--for the Little Feat revival. Tackett was a natural choice: He’d been a close associate of the band in the ‘70s, playing on and composing a song for the acclaimed “Dixie Chicken” album. Then, about a year ago, Craig Fuller, formerly of Pure Prairie League and American Flyer, was brought in as lead singer.

After winning a new record deal with its old label, Warner Bros., Little Feat debuted in April at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. The band’s comeback album, “Let It Roll,” released this week, is a hybrid of the old, down-home Little Feat style and a more polished, contemporary sound.

One nostalgic ballad, “Hangin’ On to the Good Times,” stands as a touching reminiscence of the band’s old days and a statement of purpose for a new beginning:

And though we went our own ways, we couldn’t escape from where we came.

So we find ourselves back at the table again, tellin’ stories of survivors and friends.

The question now is whether Little Feat ’88 will be seen as a pallid repetition of a story already told. Payne is confident that with “Let It Roll” and a tour that will carry through the fall, the band will show it has the right answers.

“Even though I was the one who put it together, I was one of the biggest doubters,” he said. Payne doesn’t talk like a doubter now: “If the worst happened and this album went out and sold 200,000 copies, which would be great for some people and a disaster for us, we’d have to look at what caused it (before deciding whether to try again). I love this album. I’d have to think it was due to unforeseen forces. I had too much respect for the legacy of this band to put us in a position to fail.”

Little Feat opens for Jimmy Buffett at Pacific Amphitheatre, 100 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa, tonight and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $15.50 to $20.35. Information: (714) 634-1300.