This Album Changed My Life: Sweet Talk On Little Feat’s 'Dixie Chicken'

Best Live Blues and Roots act nominees in the 2023 National Live Music Awards, Sweet Talk, have recently released a new single, Warm Love, and are currently on their Sweet Victoria Tour. In addition to new music and currently touring, Sweet Talk have been added to the Bluesfest 2024 line-up. They can only go further up from here.

To celebrate the release of Warm Love, which guitarist Soren Walker calls “a belter to play live”, we caught up with Walker to find out about the album that changed his life – Little Feat’s Dixie Chicken.

Walker added, “That’s the litmus test we need to vet songs for the studio; if the punters come alive, then it deserves a shot on record, and this immediately ticked that box.”

Check out his This Album Changed My Life feature for Countrytown below, as well as Sweet Talk’s upcoming tour dates.

Sweet Talk - This Album Changed My Life

Dixie Chicken by Little Feat

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As the music began to fade on the title track from Little Feat’s Dixie Chicken album, I knew that what I’d just heard would change the course of my own musical journey forever. It’s hard to describe in words what I felt in that moment, but it was the start of a great love affair with the band that continues to this day. Needless to say, their entire catalogue has become a staple ever since - and there are some similarly incredible records - but I had to choose this one as it was my first experience with the Feat - and we always remember our first.

My favourite style of music is what I call “Good Time” music, and it is exactly as it suggests – music that makes you feel great and makes you want to dance. It’s party music; it can impress a band member after a long jam or is perfect when you’re hooning down a highway to some place you’d rather be. The genres that I included in this made-up category of mine is expansive, from blues to country, rock n roll to funk, gospel to rhythm and blues… you get the idea.

It’s not about the genre; it’s about the groove and how it makes you boogie. What I heard on Dixie Chicken was the most magnificent fusion of all my favourite styles of “Good Time” music, all rolled together into a glorious, New Orleans-inspired, swamp-funk-soaked gumbo of goodness.

It’s a tough one, but if you held a gun to my head (I can’t imagine why you would), I’d have to choose their interpretation of Fred Tackett's Fool Yourself as my favourite track on the album. I think Fred joined the band some years later, actually. I am obsessed with Richie’s pocket drumming on this one, and it has one of the most magnificent pre-chorus/chorus combos ever, in my opinion. Just launches! Fat Man in the Bathtub is another one of those swamp-funk compositions Little Feat seemed to so effortlessly excel at.

Their approach to groove, melody, dual-guitar and harmony is something I’ve carried with me into Sweet Talk. So yeah, Dixie Chicken is, without a doubt, an album that significantly changed my life. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. ☺