Thanks to his longtime association with talk show host Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Vivino is one of the most well-known guitarists in the country. Vivino served as a member of O’Brien’s Late Night band beginning in 1993, eventually becoming the leader of the Basic Cable Band when O’Brien’ moved from NBC to TBS. Kind of a 21st century Doc Severinsen, if Severinsen played the guitar.
Unfortunately, coordinating all of the music on O’Brien’s show and appearing on television five nights a week left precious little time for Vivino to pursue his own musical directions. He has released a few albums over the years, beginning with a 1992 collaboration with his brother Jerry titled Chitlins Parmigiana (I can only assume that this is an example of Southern Italian cuisine). However, solo releases from Vivino became few and far between during his time on the air.
Thankfully, this situation has been rectified with the release of Vivino’s album Gonna Be 2 of Those Days. It’s a record that is filled with a variety of gorgeous guitar tones populating songs written by Vivino over the past few years
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Speaking via Zoom, Vivino explains why it was difficult for him to write and record his own music during the Conan years. “I had the gate with the golden handcuffs. My day-to-day job there was so engrossing – having to record music, write music, get the band together, get the show together – it was a full-time job. I never thought about playing much, or writing for that matter.
“So when that ended [in 2018], my plan was to just go out and start playing as much as I could, because people had [only] seen me play 10 seconds at a time on the air. But then COVID hit, and we all lost three years in there somewhere. So I just started writing, and ever since then I haven’t stopped.”
Once live performances resumed, Vivino jumped at the chance to play wherever, whenever. “I don’t have a high standard for being out on the road,” Vivino says. “I don’t care where I stay or how far I’ve got to drive to a gig. Getting to the gig, where it is, how big it is [doesn’t matter]. Just playing for people and meeting people who say, ‘I watched you for 25 years.’ Kids are like, ‘I’m playing guitar because I watched you on TV.’ That’s a joyful thing to me, and basically my retirement is going out and playing joints.”
Another advantage of retirement (his term) is that Vivino actually has more time to play the guitar. “Playing guitar every day,” he confirms. “I don’t fish, I don’t golf, I don’t hike. I certainly don’t camp! Or jump out of planes.”
When Gonna Be 2 of Those Days was recorded, Vivino was a free agent and not affiliated with any record label. “I cut the record myself,” Vivino says, “so I owned the record. I just did it because the songs kept coming. Over three days, we recorded 8 of [the album’s] tracks [in Stone Ridge, NY], and three more in Woodstock.”
After the album was completed and it was time to find a label to release it, Vivino looked to Texas and Gulf Coast Records, headquartered in Nederland. “I had been talking to some people, but I kept hearing [about] Gulf Coast from a lot of people. I had played on [Gulf Coast co-founder Mike Zito’s] Chuck Berry tribute album. I looked around and saw the music he was putting out, and I thought that they were working the records really good. I, of course, had years of relationships with [Alligator Records’] Bruce Iglauer and other people, but I just felt that Gulf Coast was fresher, and they needed an old guy on the label. I was the new old guy!”
“When I would see Cream play, or Zeppelin or Hendrix, when I was a kid, going to the Fillmore at 13 in 1968 and 1969, the hope was, ‘Oh, they’re going to play it different than the record, they’re going to open this stuff up.’”
Gonna Be 2 of Those Days’ basic tracks – guitar, bass and drums – were recorded live, with minimal overdubbing added later. This fundamental instrumentation provides a refreshing sound, allowing the music to breathe, and harkens back to the influences that shaped Vivino’s playing. “I had in mind that I would have to go play this stuff,” Vivino says. “Everybody said, ‘I can’t believe that you didn’t use horns.’ I said, ‘I was 30 years with horns!’ It would restrict me.”
Though Vivino has demonstrated great versatility during his career, his aesthetic never wanders far from his early inspirations, who were fearless when it came to improvising in a small group context. “When I would see Cream play, or Zeppelin or Hendrix, when I was a kid, going to the Fillmore at 13 in 1968 and 1969, the hope was, ‘Oh, they’re going to play it different than the record, they’re going to open this stuff up,’” Vivino says.
“It’s the Grateful Dead thing, each night is different. It has a jazz quality then, but the jam is still serving the song. You would hear the first verse of ‘Sunshine of Your Love,’ but in the middle, what would happen would be mind-blowing. And then they would go back to the song. It was a very bebop sort of thing: play the head, take off, come back and play the head, and go out.”
These memories have informed Vivino’s performances in recent years. “I’m finding that it’s a real part of the experience of playing live that I wasn’t quite expecting. The audience is very open to that, of us just going. It’s different every night. So I’m grateful that I have musicians who respond that way. ‘Don’t just lay it down,’ I say. ‘You’ve got to be able to go.’ The discovery and experimentation in that is so great.”
Vivino had the opportunity to play frequently with O’Brien, who is an accomplished guitarist, during the course of his television show, and more recently he has performed onstage with comedian and podcaster Marc Maron (WTF). So what does each funny guy do well when it comes to six-string endeavors?
“Conan knows songs. He comes to me, and he’s got the chords, he’s got everything. Marc is a lead guitar player. Conan is a singer, and he wants to play Beatles songs and rockabilly songs. When I met Marc, I said, ‘Man, you’ve got the Clapton vibrato.’ So, 30 years ago, he would come on the show and we would sit in his dressing room playing Bluesbreakers songs, and the producers would say, ‘We’ve got to talk to him! We’ve got to interview him! Stop playing guitar!’ So we have a different musical relationship.
“Conan will surprise me. I don’t know if he has a good ear or what, but he always seems to know the song, sometimes better than I do. Maron has this search for tone all the time. So we get into this nerd thing about amps and guitars. Conan wasn’t so much that. It was about the song. ‘What do you think Dylan was saying?’ More cerebral. Marc is more from the gut. Marc is a bluesman at heart.”
For more on Jimmy Vivino and Gonna Be 2 of Those Days, visit jimmyvmusic.com.
