Conan O’Brien has fronted a band before. Now he finally has one of his own.
The podcaster, travel show host, occasional actor, and Oscars MC added another credit to his post-late-night résumé Monday night, surprising the crowd at Permanent Records Roadhouse in Los Angeles with the debut of his new band, The Vigodas.
O’Brien handles vocals and guitar in the five-piece, alongside Jason Roberts on guitar, Erik Kertes on bass, Ben Alleman on keyboards, and Josh Adams on drums. It’s something of a curated sideman supergroup: between them, the musicians have played with the likes of Beck, Shakira, Michael Bublé, Norah Jones, Jenny Lewis, Social Distortion and Grace Potter.
Their Monday night set mixed rock and rockabilly songs, including a rendition of Elvis Costello’s “Radio Radio.”
And this apparently wasn’t a one-night-only affair. The Vigodas are already set to play another Los Angeles show Thursday night at the Troubadour.
The band’s name should ring a bell for longtime Conan viewers. It’s a tribute to Abe Vigoda, the veteran character actor who became one of the most memorable recurring players of O’Brien’s Late Night years, where he became part of the show’s collection of recurring oddballs alongside characters like Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and the Masturbating Bear, with O’Brien and his writers regularly finding new and increasingly ridiculous uses for the Godfather and Barney Miller actor.
Among them was “Abe Vi-Yoda,” which put Vigoda in prosthetic ears as an even older and more wrinkled version of the Star Wars character. Another bit presented a “Vigodal Eclipse,” with Vigoda passing in front of the camera like a celestial body. Elsewhere, he battled Dr. Joyce Brothers like Godzilla and even appeared in a sketch in which Abe Vigoda interviewed Abe Vigoda, alongside sidekick Abe Vigoda.
The reason the bits worked was largely Vigoda himself. O’Brien later recalled that the show could come up with something ridiculous just hours before taping, call Vigoda, and he would happily come over and do it.
Vigoda remained part of the Conan universe through O’Brien’s final Late Night episode in 2009. When he died in January 2016 at age 94, O’Brien and Andy Richter paid tribute to him on Conan, remembering both his long association with the show and his willingness to play along with virtually anything they threw at him.
Naming a rock band after him is, in that sense, a pretty fitting extension of the bit.
Music, meanwhile, has been a recurring part of O’Brien’s own career for decades.
His first instrument was actually drums. While at Harvard, O’Brien played in a rock band called the Bad Clams. Guitar later became his primary instrument, and he frequently found opportunities to play on his television shows, whether sitting in with musical guests or building comedy segments around his enthusiasm for guitars.
He has played alongside musicians including Bruce Springsteen and Lou Reed, and during his brief Tonight Show run enlisted Slash to accompany him on a Craigslist expedition in search of a new guitar.
O’Brien got an even bigger opportunity to play frontman during his 2010 Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television tour, mounted after his departure from The Tonight Show and before the launch of Conan on TBS.
Backed by musicians from his television house band, O’Brien sang and played guitar throughout the tour. At a stop at Jack White’s Third Man Records in Nashville, White joined him onstage for several songs, including Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock.” The performance was recorded and later released on vinyl by Third Man.
He continued picking up the guitar throughout the TBS years, including during the final episode of Conan, when he performed with longtime members of Jimmy Vivino & the Basic Cable Band.
The Vigodas, though, appear to represent something a little different: not a late-night house band, comedy tour ensemble or one-off musical performance, but an actual named group with another gig already on the books.
Nice tribute to Abe Vigoda!😁👍