Bill Payne’s eagerly anticipated memoir is set for release on February 16, 2027. Regalo Press will issue Carnival Ghosts: A Memoir of Life, Loss and Rebirth with Little Feat. Renowned historian Douglas Brinkley has written the foreword.
Payne co-founded Little Feat in 1969 and has written many of the band’s abiding songs, including “Time Loves A Hero,” “Tripe Face Boogie,” and “Let It Roll” and “Oh, Atlanta.” His studio efforts include contributions to albums by the Doobie Brothers, James Taylor, Bob Seger, Bonnie Raitt, Jimmy Buffett, and B.B. King. Payne has also worked with Robert Hunter, Charlie Starr, Vince Herman and many others.
The official description of the book notes, “A grade school piano prodigy who would grow up to become one of the greatest rock and roll keyboardists in history, Bill Payne has seen it all and has played with just about everyone in his more than six decades in the music business. In Carnival Ghosts, Payne shares the details of his life story with refreshing candor and with an intoxicating style that is as entertaining as it is literary.
“From his early days as an impossibly youthful church organist, to his teenage surfer years and his first band experiences, to his co-founding of the iconic, genre-defying Little Feat and the group’s rise, fall and renaissance, to his prolific work as a much-sought-after session player, Payne takes the reader on an intimate, free-wheeling tour of a world populated by geniuses, colossal egos, and unforgettable characters. Pulling back the curtain on a critical period in the development of modern popular music as well as on the inner workings of the collaborative phenomenon that was and remains Little Feat, Carnival Ghosts is a compellingly readable, real life tale of professional and personal triumph, tragedy, and redemption.”
Carnival Ghosts: A Memoir of Life, Loss and Rebirth with Little Feat is now available for pre-order.
