Fred Tackett met Lowell George in the ’60s Los Angeles music scene in the most ’60s Los Angeles music scene way.

“I moved to Los Angeles and met this girl, who has now been my wife for 50-some years, and she lived next door to Lowell,” Tackett told the Boston Herald. “She brought him over to (songwriter) Jimmy Webb’s house to play sitar. I went into the living room and Lowell was on the floor dressed in white playing the sitar.”

Tackett, already an ace guitarist and budding session musician, told George that they could jam on psychedelic grooves with the sitar. George told him he only played sacred Indian music.

“I said, ‘Oh, ok, that’s cool,’” Tackett said. “Then two weeks later he was in the Standells doing ‘Dirty Water.’ ”

George didn’t stay long in the Standells. Right as the ’60s passed into the ’70s, George founded Little Feat — a band with no psychedelic sitar but plenty of swamp and Southern rock, jazz and honky tonk chops. Tackett didn’t officially join the band until 1987, nearly a decade after George’s death. But Tackett was the group’s “utility infielder” in the early years — lending Little Feat songs, guitar parts, and even some mandolin and trumpet work in the studio.

Tackett is now one of the band’s elder statesmen, along with keyboardist Bill Payne, percussionist Sam Clayton, and bassist Kenny Gradney, as Little Feat releases new album “Strike Up The Band” and hits the road — Little Feat plays Medford’s Chevalier Theater May 6; “Strike Up the Band” comes out four days later.

“It was ridiculous how many tunes we came into the studio with, we all had three or four different tunes each and were all fighting to get our songs on the record as we played them for Vance Powell the producer,” Tackett said.

One of Tackett’s songs that battled through was “Too High To Cut My Hair,” a groovy, New Orleans inspired tune born out of, well, Tackett telling his wife she was too high to give him a trim while at NoLa’s Jazzfest. The album’s lead single and co-written by new member Scott Sharrard, the song represents how seamlessly Sharrard has blended into Little Feat’s gumbo.

“We didn’t know anything about Scott,” Tackett said of the guitarist who was hired to fill in at the end of a 2019 tour. “But Scott had studied Little Feat since he was 12 years old. The very first show his parents took him to was when he was 12 on the ‘Let It Roll’ tour (in the late ’80s). Allman Brothers and Little Feat were his two bands and he worked with Gregg Allman for 10 years and so the chemistry with him was instantaneous.”

That fill-in gig came at a sad but key time. Paul Barrère, who formed the artistic center of the band with George and Payne in the ’70s, had been too sick with cancer to tour in 2019. Sub and band-pal Larry Campbell had played most of the shows but had a conflict that kept him from finishing the tour. Sharrard was recommended and played his first show with the band the night they all found out Barrère had died.

“Scott walked in, played the show, did an amazing job, and we all just looked at each other and said, ‘OK,’” Tackett said. “As I said, it was just instantaneous.”

Little Feat has taken its licks. It has survived the deaths of members and long breaks that seemed like they could spell the end of the band. But with Sharrard in place and “Strike Up the Band” a rip roaring good time, Little Feat sounds like it could be back in the ’70s when it blended a dozen genres, seemingly everything but psychedelic sitar.

For tickets and details, visit littlefeat.net