Joel McHale Returns

Joel McHale (0:03)

My name is Joel McHale, and I feel blank about being Conan O'Brien's friend.

Conan O'Brien (0:10)

You know, when I look into your eyes, I get blank. Hey there, welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend. People are giggling here in the studio. I don't know why.

Matt Gourley (0:41)

Multiple reasons.

Conan O'Brien (0:43)

I'll just go with it. And I'm here with my buds. My buds, my contractual buds, Sonam Asessian, Matt Gourley, and I don't even wanna know why you're giggling. You know, that's your business.

Sonam Asessian (0:55)

Sometimes we just giggle, it's okay. We talked beforehand. I wanna ask you a question. I saw your band perform a couple weeks ago.

SPEAKER_5 (1:02)

Which band did you come to?

Sonam Asessian (1:03)

I went to the Lodge Room in Highland Park to watch the Vagodas. You guys crushed it. It was so much fun.

Conan O'Brien (1:09)

It's a lot of fun to do.

Sonam Asessian (1:10)

And you look like you're having a really good time.

Conan O'Brien (1:12)

Yeah, I love it. It's really fun.

It's a pretty simple story. I was feeling like I was getting stagnant on guitar. And then in this studio, I don't know how long ago, maybe two, three years ago, we had Nora Jones on the show. Oh yeah. And afterwards, she always knew that I played guitar and it was kind of a hobby of mine. She said, how's that going? And I said, you know what? I just feel like I need to work with someone because I'm just playing the same things over and over again. I'm not learning anything new. I'm not challenging myself. And she said, I know a great guy. Give this guy a call. And she gave me this name, Jason Roberts. And so I called him up and Jason- Shout out.

SPEAKER_6 (1:50)

Shout out to Jason.

Matt Gourley (1:53)

Where's the Robertsons at? Yeah.

Conan O'Brien (1:56)

So I call this guy up. He comes over to my house. He's fantastic. And he's an amazing player. And so we just started hanging out like once a week and he or once every two weeks, whenever I had time and he would show me things and we would play together. And I just had a blast. And then one day, not that long ago, like six months ago, I said, hey, if we were to start a band, would you know the guys?

He said, oh, I know the guys. And cut to immediately, I'm in a garage in NoHo and playing with an amazing keyboard player named Ben and Jason's on guitar.

Josh is on drums and Eric is a killer bass player.

And I do vocals and rhythm guitar and occasional goofy solos. And it's just fun. It's just really fun. So we started playing these really tiny venues. We played a really kooky venue in Ojai, which was fun. And it was this older crowd. And so I started to tell them. In Ojai? Yeah, in Ojai. It was this older crowd that politely applauded when we came out and it was a pretty small room. And so I started telling them that, listen, I know that your minister doesn't allow you to dance.

And they all started laughing. And then I went on this whole thing about, I don't care what the minister says, screw that, you have a right to dance. It's not a sin. And so they all started getting up these older people and they were all dancing. Oh, cool. And it was kind of a happening. So we've been playing these shows. We just did The Moroccan, which is down near the train station in downtown LA. And that was fun.

SPEAKER_5 (3:38)

What do you do, covers, I assume? We do all, yeah. What are some songs you guys do?

Conan O'Brien (3:42)

There's one song I wrote myself called Bad Podcast Partners.

SPEAKER_5 (3:47)

Oh, okay. So it's self-reflexive?

SPEAKER_9 (3:49)

How does it go?

Conan O'Brien (3:49)

How does it go? You know, finding something that rhymes with gorely was hard.

SPEAKER_9 (3:54)

Well, it's right there, poorly. But yeah.

Conan O'Brien (3:58)

And then Mobsessian, forget it. No, no, no, we do, we play a wide variety of, I mean, I love rockabilly, so there's some old rockabilly tunes, but there's also Elvis Costello, Harry Nilsson.

Matt Gourley (4:11)

What Harry Nilsson signed?

Conan O'Brien (4:12)

Well, we've been playing around with Jump into the Fire. Yeah, I just like it to be sort of an eclectic mix. We do a song by the band, we do, we sort of jump around, but what I like is I like fast, energetic, things where I can channel my hyperactivity, but the musicians are so good that I just get to enjoy being on stage with them. It's really fun.