Little Feat’s Bill Payne – HuffPost 9.17.12

Mike Ragogna: Bill, what advice do you have for new artists?

Bill Payne: If you’ve got a chance of becoming a lawyer or a doctor or something…I’m kidding. My advice is just “communication.” I’ll put it in these terms: The biggest argument you’re ever going to have with either your band or people you hire to back you up is going to be when you can’t hear on stage. You’re just going to tear into each other. I just suggest taking that down to a minimal boil, you know, a little bit, but don’t go crazy because the next night, you can play in that same venue and have the monitors actually work, or you’ve got enough of a crowd to where the sound is absorbed and it sounds really good and you’re going to just love each other again. So there’s that aspect of it and I would also say for new artists, not to be preachy about it, but figure out what it is you really want to say. That can change over time, too. I’ve been doing this for forty-three plus years. Finding your voice is important, and the only way you can find it is digging into your influences. If you like blues and you like Eric Clapton, let’s say, maybe check out what influenced Eric Clapton, which would be Albert Collins or Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf, et cetera, and begin to get into that amount of music and stuff. Being inquisitive is always a good thing and that ties over to everything else in life, whether it’s what you read or what you eat, where your politics are, even if you don’t have politics, what your sense of the community is. Get involved and be, as I said, inquisitive about what makes things work. That’s what you’re going to share with your audience, how you perceive life.