Little Feat: Big Hand : The veteran virtuosos play everything from folk to rock to metal. They will be in concert Sunday at the Ventura Theatre.

Little Feat has been around forever, has a dozen albums and will be playing the venerable Ventura Theatre on Sunday night. This is one of those bands that everybody seems to like except the radio programmers. Only a handful of performers hang around so long without airplay--the Grateful Dead immediately comes to mind.

If necessity was the Mother of Invention, Frank Zappa was surely the father. A notable member of the Mothers of Invention, guitarist Lowell George, joined up with keyboard player and former Venturan Bill Payne to form Little Feat in 1969, or back when even your parents were groovy.

After a year or so of searching for new members, they added guitarist Paul Barrere and drummer Richie Hayward. The self-titled debut disc came out in 1971. In 1973, bassist Kenny Gradney and percussionist Sam Clayton joined the band. All these guys have a musical resume longer than the solos during a Grateful Dead weekend. And with the exception of George, who died in 1979 at age 34, they are all still in the band.

But for a while following George’s death, there was no band. Little Feat broke up. The members pursued solo projects until 1985, when Barrere, Payne, Hayward, Clayton and Gradney got together for a jam session, and Little Feat was reborn. Fred Tackett was soon added on second guitar, and Craig Fuller became the new lead singer.

The band’s even dozenth album, “Shake Me Up,” was released late last year on Morgan Creek Records, perhaps named after one of the funniest movies of all time, “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek.” But Little Feat’s miracle is no secret--every member is a virtuoso who can play everything from folk to country to rock to Southern boogie to metal, showing off aplenty all the while.

Besides being worth a listen, the band is worth a trip to the used-record store just to check out their album covers. The second album, 1972’s “Sailin’ Shoes,” was the first to boast the very bizarre cover art of Neon Park, as has every Feat album since.

San Fernando Valley resident Barrere recently discussed the life and times of his favorite band.

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So, how did “Shake Me Up” do?

It was not a hit. As far as radio, it was OK. But as far as sales, it was not a hit. But we’ve never had a hit as far as a record hit.

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Do you guys have the songs ready for No. 13?

The show at the Ventura Theatre will be our last show for some time. We’re going to start writing pretty soon. The four writers--Fred, Billy, Craig and myself--basically have a show-and-tell session. I live in Woodland Hills, and three of us live fairly close, but Craig lives in Portland.

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So what’s with this acoustic show?

We started doing these gigs at radio stations, actually. We started doing them long before the “Unplugged” series on MTV. We did one back in April at the Coach House and decided to do one in Ventura, too. We played there a couple of years ago and shot a video.

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How come rock ‘n’ roll never starts on time?

Because Axl Rose never does. I don’t really know. We’ve been pretty good about that, though. I know if you play in a union- operated venue, they go off like clockwork. Somewhere like the Forum, if you go past 11 o’clock, the stagehands are wiping the sweat off their brows with $20 bills.

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Has your music changed since the band re-formed?

I don’t know that it has changed as far as the approach. We’ll play any kind of music at any time. All the guys in the band are eight years older now; they’re eight years more proficient with their instruments. The input of Fred and Craig and the absence of Lowell are the obvious answers. But I think we’re just more locked into being musicians than 15 years ago, when we just wanted to be rock stars.

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How did you get started in all this?

I started playing guitar when I was 13 after I got tired of piano lessons. I grew up listening to Dick Dale and the Beach Boys, then I got into the blues and country-folk, and I kinda picked the blues. I’d known Lowell George since high school, and we’d check out each other’s bands. We both went to Hollywood High School, and I later went to North Hollywood High when they told me not to come back to Hollywood, but that’s another story. Anyway, when Little Feat decided to expand, I befriended Billy and Richie and I joined the band in 1971. We became a sextet. Everyone in the band is from California except Billy, but he moved to Santa Maria when he was a little kid and grew up in Ventura.

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What’s the L.A. scene like these days?

I really don’t know. I don’t go out so much anymore. I have two small children, and now I read them stories. Then I go to the back room and record on what’s basically an eight-track system with a sequenced synthesizer. From going to bars and jamming, now I do it by myself.

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How would you describe Little Feat music?

The band can do a country song, an up-tempo rocker to something approaching heavy metal. It’s just good American rock ‘n’ roll.

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What was your coolest gig?

Oh, we’ve had a lot of those. Playing with the Stones in Stuttgart, playing with the Who in Anaheim Stadium, Eric Clapton sat in with us about four years ago and again last month--we’ve had a lot of cool gigs.

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Neon Park? Is that really his name?

It is now. He came out of the Haight-Ashbury scene--his first name was Jefferson Airplane. He had that name first, but the band liked it more, or so the story goes. Unfortunately, he’s got Lou Gehrig’s disease now, and he’s only about 47 or so. He’s such a great artist. He’s got a lot of stuff on file. It wouldn’t be a Little Feat album without one of his covers.

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Do you get a lot of Deadheads at your shows?

Yeah, we get a lot of Deadheads, and that’s cool. We also get a lot of people between 18 and 50, a lot of musicians and a lot of industry people. The industry people are the ones that don’t applaud.

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Where did the name for the band come from?

It came from Jimmy Carl Black when he was in the Mothers of Invention with Lowell. Lowell’s feet were so big Black called them “earth pads.” Anyway, one day at practice, Black said, “Look at those ugly little bleeping feet!” So they took the obscene part out and that’s it. Not a great story, but the truth.

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Any cool bands around that you like?

I really like Bela Fleck & the Flecktones. They remind me of the Dregs. They’re very innovative, which is tough for an instrumental band. I like Peter Gabriel, Eric Clapton, all the usual suspects. I’m not into those Seattle bands. Most of those metal bands all sound alike to me. I think you could take 100 of those metal bands, put them on a turntable and not be able to tell them apart.

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Anything that everybody always gets wrong about Little Feat?

Not really, as long as they spell our name right. Well, one thing, it doesn’t really piss me off, but a lot of people seem to think there can’t be Little Feat without Lowell. The music is bigger than any one member.

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What’s next?

Well, we’re going to start writing out next record. We’re going to take our time this time. There’s no timetable.