Conan O'Brien's Cover Band the Vigodas: How a Podcast Favor Became His Teenage Dream

Conan O'Brien played the Teragram Ballroom in downtown Los Angeles on Friday night with the Vigodas, his cover band, roughly 10 shows into a run that began last August. The 63-year-old wore tight black jeans and a custom black jacket bearing the band's name, and opened by asking how many people had seen them before. Only a few had.

The crowd spanned generations. Some knew him from Late Night, others from his interview podcast, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, and a smattering looked young enough to have only seen clips of his network heyday. The band ran through more than a dozen covers — Elvis Presley, Elvis Costello, Bo Diddley, John Lennon — an eclectic set of rock spanning the 1950s through the 1980s. The music, as Rolling Stone puts it, is best described as the songs that won't get out of O'Brien's head.

Where did the band come from?

The podcast launched it. Norah Jones appeared on the show in May 2023, and asked O'Brien a simple question. "She said, 'How's the guitar going?' And I said, 'You know, it's kind of sad because I don't really have anyone to play with, and I need someone to kind of kick my ass and help my game.' She said, 'I know a guy.'"

The guy was guitarist Jason Roberts, who had played in Jones' band for half a decade. He started giving O'Brien lessons; they bonded over the Beatles. "We text about the Beatles a lot," Roberts says. "We just both love the Beatles so much."

About six months ago, O'Brien asked Roberts to take it further. "He was just like, 'Can you help me put a band together?'" Roberts remembers. "And I said, 'I know the exact guys for this.'" O'Brien tells the same story: "A week later, we're in Hollywood, and we're playing. I'm just floating, so happy."

Why the name?

The band is named for the late actor Abe Vigoda, the expressive-faced Godfather and Barney Miller star who was a fixture on O'Brien's old late show. "Abe did hundreds of bits for us, and he was a sweet and hilarious man," O'Brien says. "I always knew his iconic mug was the face of our band."

The band is the fulfillment of a long-deferred wish. O'Brien never played in a band as a teenager, though he always wanted to. "For years and years and years, you could argue that the only reason I wanted a late-night show was so I could have a band," he says. He used to jam with the Max Weinberg 7, and later Jimmy Vivino and the Basic Cable Band, at every rehearsal. During what he calls his "Tonight Show madness" — his six months hosting the NBC institution from 2009 to 2010 — he toured with a comedy show heavy on music. "That was my happy place," he says.

His tastes were always out of step. "When I was in college, when everyone else was starting to listen to U2 and Oingo Boingo, I was into hardcore rockabilly," he says. "I had the hair for it." He loved Jerry Lee Lewis and early Presley, and collected songs "that were like adrenaline" — including Ronnie Hawkins' version of "Forty Days," which the Vigodas played Friday.

What does this change for O'Brien?

Not his career, by his own account. He's a cover man who reinterprets favorites, often by speeding them up. Beverly D'Angelo once told him how fast his "40 Days" was. And when he met Keith Richards backstage before introducing the Rolling Stones in Brooklyn this year, Richards brought up "Monkey Business," the Chuck Berry cover O'Brien recorded with Jack White for 2010's Live at Third Man. "You sound like a fucking auctioneer," Richards told him. "He's not wrong," O'Brien says.

The band gives him two things: L.A.'s small venues and collaborators. They debuted at Permanent Records Roadhouse in East L.A. as a surprise guest after Fred Armisen's set, and have since played the Troubadour, the Lodge Room, the Moroccan Lounge and Pappy and Harriet's in Joshua Tree. The lineup is Roberts on guitar, Erik Kertes on bass, Ben Alleman on keys and Josh Adams on drums (Rob Jensen filled in Friday while Adams tours with the Fruit Bats). Openers like Malena Cadiz and Sam Evian join for a song or two.

"I want it to be a hootenanny," O'Brien says. "I have no future in the music business, but I can be like a small part of it." Friday's set leaned on covers of Nick Lowe, Warren Zevon, Harry Nilsson, Sturgill Simpson and the Band, with Gaby Moreno sitting in on the Kinks' "Victoria" and "Proud Mary." The clearest sign of where this is heading was on his face all night: the man is having the time of his life, 40 years late and right on time.