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Archive Sunday #37
🕑 Added 2024-02-25 17:00:12 +0000 UTCAt the end of November we got offered to play The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon for the first time. I think at this stage we were given four minutes to work with, and decided to play Drunk Drivers because it was going over really well live at the time. It took quite a bit of work to shave down the couple minutes or so, but Will came up with a totally new arrangement that kept all the best parts while adding a slightly new feel. I remember being excited to change it up after playing the old version on tour for awhile, but Andrew and I were somewhat terrified our muscle memory formed over tour would kick-in during the performance and we'd mess it up on live TV.
On my way to the airport the day before I lost my phone on the bus I was taking to the Light Rail. I think I was zoning out listening to my ipod, and it must have fallen out of my pocket. But by the time I noticed it was gone, it was too late haha. We got into New York that night, and I'm pretty sure this was the only time we got a hotel room in Manhattan. We usually stay in Brooklyn or New Jersey, but I think we learned last time that trying to get into town during rush hour wasn't worth it.
So we got to 30 Rock pretty early in the morning to set up and check the back-line we had ordered. Will took the time to see if a few of the Roots would be down to join us later and transposed/transcribed their parts to sheet music so they could jump in relatively easily. Thankfully they were super down to jump in and picked everything up with just a short rehearsal at sound-check. The horns and organ definitely filled out the sound and gave the new version this extra flavor to stand out.
I remember the dressing rooms were especially nice, and I was stoked they had instruments scattered around to kill the time between sound-check and taping. They also gave us these little gift baskets with slippers, shirts, and coasters. I have no idea what happened to mine, but I'm always reminded of them when I go over to Andrew's place cause he loves his free schwag. I remember Fallon was especially welcoming, and took the time to talk to us before going out to rehearsal. The only thing I remember though is that he mentioned he was bummed he couldn't play guitar at the moment because he messed up his finger with a ring avulsion accident. We were curious and looked up what that meant later, but everyone regretted checking out the photos.
Around 4:30 or so we finally played the four minutes of music we came for, and it was such a relief that none of us subconsciously slipped into the version we toured with. We made sure to thank the Roots for joining us and making the the performance that much better. I think it was one those guys who told Andrew and me to request a vocal mic for future any TV appearances. Supposedly based on the union's contract, that would bump up our pay from fifty bucks or so to over a hundred for the day. We thanked them for the tip, and I'm pretty sure Andrew successfully used it for our next appearance.
AK: You get way more than $100 for that mic. Bet your ass I'm getting a line in.
Playing Fallon was nuts. It felt like we were really big time getting handed a gift basket and then having Fallon show up in our green room to say he's a fan of our music. Then meeting the roots?? You gotta be kidding me.
So I remember hanging out in the green room putting together my sharpie t-shirt for the night. My original plan with the shirt was to keep the same one and continue adding names to it over time. So I brought the original with "COLBERT" written on it and crossed it out and added "FALLON" underneath. My intention was to imply a "been there, done that" kind of thing. Turns out the producers didn't quite feel the same way... I wore the newly minted shirt for our sound check and the producers caught a look. They ended up sending someone down to our green room to let our manager Mike know that I had to lose the shirt. Apparently they thought I was implying that Fallon was better than Colbert and they didn't wanna start a fight. Personally, I would have loved that, but they have an image to uphold. Thus the FALLON shirt was born.
Also while hanging in the green room we created the hit song *I can't remember the name)*. It was a piece I improvised about Jimmy catching us in the green room being bad and him shooting me in the head with a bow and arrow.
WT: The ‘Drunk Drivers’ single version was a real odyssey. I was told that the song had potential on radio, but needed to be 3 and a half minutes long. Matador sent over an edited version that seemed musically incomprehensible to me. I volunteered to rewrite the song instead. Assuming that “radio” meant “top 40”, I assembled a bizzaro electro-dance version of DDKW that seemed fun to me and musically incomprehensible to the label. I took a second crack at it and ended up with an acoustic-driven version a bit closer to the original feel. At the end of all that, I found out that the original edit had been serviced to stations already. RIP.
Anyways, we did the single version for Fallon, so it’s got a unique edge to it. We were lucky enough to get some of the Roots playing with us on it. I remember the trumpet player being a bit skeptical about some of the chord formations I’d written, but he still played them like a pro. Backstage, Andrew came up with a song about Jimmy catching him making fun of him and attempting to kill him with a bow and arrow. This would eventually result in the same fantastically cruel Jimmy being ‘featured’ on ‘On the Run from Cossett’ on the first 1TD album.
After Fallon, the rest of the band went back to Seattle while I went to Chicago to resume work on Twin Fantasy with Adam Stilson at Decade Studios, which was a part of a loft space right in the city, and also his residence at the time. I slept on an air mattress in the vocal booth, and he slept in the control room. Quite dark at night, but pretty cozy. At some point we’d recorded some band sessions in Seattle, and now we were mixing and overdubbing from those. I was there for a few weeks, and saw a lot of heavy snow whenever we went out. We’d head to a diner across the block when we got hungry, or order in deep-dish pizza. I believe Stef Chura was also in Chicago at the time, and we ended up recording her track “Degrees” while having a slow day in the studio.
