Conan O’Brien channeled his best “serious musician” self this weekend, closing out the Newport Folk Festival on Sunday, July 28 alongside some renowned artists… and a few friends from his late night days.
The former host’s appearance had been billed as “Conan O’Brien and Real Musicians,” underscoring the idea that the performance would be a serious affair rather than a comedy show.
Well, mostly.
O’Brien did riff on the names of Rhode Island cities when he took the stage, though he saved the real comedy bit for the middle of his set. That’s when Robert Smigel’s Triumph the Insult Comic Dog took the stage to belt out a Woody Guthrie-inspired song about O’Brien.
O’Brien’s very own longtime bandleader Jimmy Vivino was one of the “real musicians” to take the stage, backing the guitar-playing comedian alongside the folk rock band Dawes. While they had been billed in advance, fans had also been promised some “very special guests”—and Team Coco did not disappoint.
Langhorne Slim, Nick Lowe, Brittany Howard, Nathaniel Rateliff, and Mavis Staples all popped into the 13-song cover set. But the highlight may have been when O’Brien was joined by a longtime friend Jack White, who came in at the end of the set to perform “Twenty Flight Rock” and “We’re Going To Be Friends.”
“We’re gonna do a song about friendship,” White told the crowd before launching into the latter tune, which serves as the theme song to the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast, and is often performed on stage during live recordings of the show.
O’Brien and White’s friendship goes back to the Late Night with Conan O’Brien era. The White Stripes did a four-night residency on Late Night in 2003, and broke their hiatus to appear on the show’s final episode in 2009. White was also the musical guest on the premiere of TBS’ Conan in 2010, and the duo have even released music together.
O’Brien has displayed his musical chops before, most notably during his Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour in 2010. Comprised of comedy and music (which varied in degrees of seriousness), that tour saw O’Brien play 43 shows across the country with his longtime house band, led by Vivino.
Founded in 1959, the Newport Folk Festival was one of the country’s first music festivals, and was created to highlight the folk music community. In 1965, Bob Dylan famously caused a stir by playing an electric guitar at the festival.
