Every artist hopes that they are afforded the opportunity to go out on top. With a career fast approaching 60 years, Rock ‘n’ Roll stalwarts, Little Feat, have given themselves the chance to do just that with The Last Farewell Tour.

Making one last musical round visiting friends, collaborators, and towns where they made their name, Little Feat with very special guest, Grammy Award winner Molly Tuttle, pulled into the Perinton Center Amphitheatre in Fairport, NY.

A quality double bill of Americana, rock, and swamp; Tuttle and Feat provided an extended evening of diverse musicianship and celebration for an assembled crowd of Upstate music lovers.

What felt like a capacity crowd rocked to and fro in sweet syncopation to an exultant opening set by Tuttle and her band. Highlighted by her free-flowing flatpicking, Tuttle and her exceptional group blended bluegrass and pop with detailed and fun playing in what could have easily been a headlining spot.

With a summer eager crowd properly primed, Little feat took the stage at 8:30. The foundation of Little Feat’s legacy is the songs, and the players that rewrite these historic narratives through their own interpretative scrawls. Little Feat’s set ran the gamut of their career, stoically investigating the nooks and crannies of almost 60 years of lineup changes, studio recordings, and the deft navigation of a fickle music industry.

From the opening velocity of “Let It Roll,” from the 1988 record of the same name, through the closing of 1974’s “Feat’s Don’t Fail Me Now,” the set read like a loving memoir. The new songs nestled up against the old, while the band reinterpreted and recognized a deep catalog that was both a tribute and in some ways a eulogy. The performances were reflective, celebratory, and continuously met a standard that was set in 1969.

While founding member Bill Payne holds down the musical center, longtime percussionist Sam Clayton and bassist Kenny Gradney lock in the band’s signature groove. Together with drummer Tony Leone, guitarist/vocalist Scott Sharrard, and guitar legend Fred Tackett, they serve as the seamless curators of the band’s rich legacy.

Big guitar work from Sharrard and Tackett provided the fireworks, but Payne’s keyboard work is what provides the band it’s recognizable aesthetic. His dexterity is the same as it ever was and his work sprawling, touching on barrelhouse, prog, and straight up psychedelia sometimes in the same solo.

Inspired and crowd pleasing performances of the Little Feat cornerstones “Rock and Roll Doctor,” and “Time Loves a Hero,” set the table for the musical feast the made up the heart of the concert.

The middle of Feat’s set was fat and filling spotlighting a duo of songs from 2025’s Strike Up the Band, that each traveled new and exciting roads through expansive jam segments. Tackett and Sharrard’s partners in crime guitar work both payed tribute to and diverted from the historic foundational weaving of Paul Barrere and Lowell George in the current songs “Midnight Flight,” and the gloriously funky fun of “Too High to Cut My Hair.”

Molly Tuttle joined the group for a bluesy lean into Junior Parker’s, “Mellow Down Easy.” The drummers churned as the band waded through the southern muck of a blues standard. Their reading was a mantra from the Delta with Sharrard’s slide work and Tuttle’s picking coloring in the lines of the ass shaking thump. Along with Clayton’s Howlin’ Wolf like vocals, the song was an absolute highlight of the evening.

Tuttle stayed on the stage to sing with Payne on the gypsy roll of “Bluegrass Pines,” a Payne co-write with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter from the Strike Up the Band record. Tuttle and Payne blended earth and sky in a dramatic reading of what has quickly become a classic Feat composition.

The concert hit a dead sprint as the band tore through a series of standards beginning with “Willin,” and the appropriate timing of a imposing version of “Spanish Moon,” that rose in perfect syncopation with the yellow orb rising over the venue. “Skin it Back,” and “Fat Man in the Bathtub,” both overflowed with heavy jams and Sharrard’s stellar guitar work that thoughtfully payed reference to the music’s history and continued relevance.

The evening bridged old and new, past and future, remembrance and celebration—nowhere more clearly than in the closing reading of “Dixie Chicken.” Tuttle returned to the stage, helping the band navigate the familiar changes and reveal them through a fresh lens. The expansive performance also featured a well-placed rendition of the Grateful Dead’s “Tennessee Jed” at its juicy center. “Feats Don’t Fail Me Now,” closed up shop and was played as a joyous goodbye and a statement of hope as the band accelerates to the next gig, in the next town.

Rock “n” Roll often celebrates tragedy, folklore, and the burning out of creative candles extinguished before their time. But what should be recognized is longevity, and the stubborn refusal to let fads and the inevitability of time stifle the joy of playing music and propagating a legacy. Little Feat, with the willing help of friends and admirers continue to roll right through the night, playing the songs they love, and that we love, in new and changing ways while recalling the times and players that helped cultivate them.