Little Feat and Frank Zappa's Mothers of Inventions guitarist Lowell George will be honored with a tribute album dropping on May 17. The double LP, Long Distance Love - A Sweet Relief Tribute to Lowell George, features 25 Lowell George tracks reinterpreted by Elvis Costello, Ben Harper, and Dave Alvin, among many other artists.
The tribute will be released in collaboration with Sweet Relief, an organization dedicated to providing financial support to career musicians and music industry workers struggling to make ends meet. It's a worthy homage to Lowell George's diverse catalog and contributions to the music industry.
The full tracklisting is below.
- Trouble - Mike Viola
- Cold, Cold, Cold - Joachim Cooder
- Long Distance Love - Elvis Costello
- Heartache - Bedouine
- I’ve Been The One - Bhi Bhiman
- Rock ‘n’ Roll Doctor - Miles Tackett
- Be One Now - Lady Blackbird
- Love Needs A Heart - Madison Cunningham
- Easy To Slip - Jonah Tolchin
- Dixie Chicken - Eleni Mandell and Milo Jones
- Roll ‘Um Easy - Ben Harper
- Lafayette Railroad - Larry Goldings
- 6 Feet Of Snow - Jack Shit
- Cheek To Cheek - Gaby Moreno
- Two Trains Running - Chris Seefried
- China White - Chris Stills
- A Apolitical Blues - Dave Alvin
- Feats Don’t Fail Me Now - Sugaray Rayford
- Sailin’ Shoes - Taylor Goldsmith
- Spanish Moon - Inara George
- Rocket In My Pocket - Sam Morrow
- Willin’ - Jonathan Wilson
- Teenage Nervous Breakdown - The Bird and the Bee
- Crazy Captain Gunboat Willie - Andras Jones
- 20 Million Things To Do - Gus Seyffert
Lowell George began his music career as a member of Frank Zappa's legendary Mothers of Invention. After leaving the band, he formed Little Feat with Bill Payne. During his seven-year tenure with Little Feat, the band released eight albums through which he showcased his virtuosic lead and slide guitar skills – Jimmy Page once named Little Feat as his “favorite American group“.
During that time, George was also an in-demand slide guitar session player. You can hear his work in many seminal albums recorded during the '70s, including John Cale's Paris 1919 (1973), Bonnie Raitt's Takin' My Time (1973), and Jackson Browne's The Pretender (1976).
In a 1976 interview with Guitar Player, Lowell George recounted how he adopted the slide guitar style:
“Actually, I was in a session, and I used to play a lot of open D tuning, and a friend of mine said “Watch this.” He tuned the A string down to G, and in fact it was an open G tuning! Then he went, “see this!” and he picked up an old flower vase and went whee! I said to myself, “That’s it!” and that’s what started it about six years ago.”
He also talked about his humble approach to playing guitar: “From the time I was 21, when I first started playing professionally, I thought I was hot stuff. From the time I was 23 until I was 28, I was completely under the impression that I wasn’t any good. Just recently, I started not caring about it at all – I just play!”
“A big stumbling block is one’s own attitude or vision of himself as a musician. I’ve known guys that are great guitar players, but they’ve got such high standards of themselves that they’re complete jerks, and nobody will play with them.”
Long Distance Love - A Sweet Relief Tribute to Lowell George is out on May 17 on Flatiron Recordings.
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