Using the attitude that made their music such a distinctive mix of funk, folk, polyrhythms and uncommonly smart lyrics, Little Feat's latest effort has a multitude of flavors. Like their classic work, its a bit hard to define.
They have brought in a cast of guests - but don't call it the dreaded "duets album. They have re-recorded a number  of their classics, but in no way is this a tribute album. And they have dipped into the songbooks of some of their contemporaries, but that does not make it a covers record.
"The record exemplifies the idea of calling the children home," Payne says. "It's a New Orleans thing - let's meet at the barn or the club for a fish fry. It's not just for the musicians, but for the children, too." 
"Join the Band," which 429 Records releases Tuesday, features Dave Matthews on ""Fat Man in the Bathtub," Vince Gill on "Spanish Moon" and Inara George, daughter of the late Little Feat chief Lowell George, doing a gorgeous version "Trouble"  with just Payne's accompaniment. "There are a lot reasons, but I just teared up after we finished that one," he says.
Payne had returned from a European tour with the band when he picked up the phone in Michigan to chat about the band. The real kick in the conversation came when he was explaining his piano part on "Dixie Chicken" and sat down at the keys and played the riff - the way Little Feat did it in 1973 - then played the root of its origins - a riff from a Howlin' Wolf record - and then a few variations to demonstrate how uncommon the Feat style was when it came to the little things, like shifts in keys that no one expects.
Little Feat formed in 1969 and from the start made their marks by mixing the organic  and the polished, as much California as they were Louisiana. Payne talked about their beginnings, their current position and the help of old friends like Jimmy Buffett and Bob Seger.
(Video is from a European tour they did with several Warner Bros. acts, among them the Doobie Brothers, in the mid-1970s. He noted that many people who saw them on this most recent tour noted they saw them  on that trek, too. Both tours, he says, "were magical times.")