photo: Ali Hasbach

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“I’ve been kind of gathering all these loose ends. I mean this with all due respect to the greatest gig ever with Conan, but somebody once told me, ‘It’s kind of a golden handcuff situation,’” says former Conan O’Brien bandleader Jimmy Vivino, while describing his present-day musical motivations and enthusiasms. “I can’t remember if it was Paul Shaffer or Steve Jordan who said that, or someone else who’d done it before. I had this great gig where I went in and played my instrument every day. I’d do arrangements and work with all these great artists who’d come on. Then, all of a sudden, 26 years go by.”

Even though his Conan days are behind him, Vivino may be busier than he’s even been. He has a new album, Gonna Be 2 of Those Days. He’ll be touring with his own band in support of that record and also picking up dates with Bill Murray and The Blood Brothers (Mike Zito and Albert Castiglia). He’s writing songs for a musical that’s in the workshop phase, and he continues to perform with his longtime Beatles tribute group, the Fab Faux.

“For so long, all these things were kind of sidelined, other than doing some Fab Faux gigs,” he notes. “That was the only live gig I was doing for years, except for an occasional one-off that I could make because it was in the same town I was living in. So now it’s about gathering all these other options to present music and play live in front of people. That’s my retirement.”

Early in your career, you were the music director for Leader of the Pack when it was on Broadway. Over four decades later, you’re now writing songs for Delta Blue, a new musical with similar aspirations. What did you take away from the earlier experience that you’ve applied to the new one?

Leader of the Pack was the first real project I worked on outside of playing with Al Kooper, Phoebe Snow, Laura Nyro and all these people at The Bottom Line in New York. Allan Pepper [The Bottom Line’s owner] decided that he and Melanie Mintz were going to mount this show about the music that Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry wrote and Phil Spector produced, including “Leader of the Pack.” They had Darlene Love, this jewel, as the centerpiece of the show. That’s what attracted me and Paul Shaffer to it.

At first, we did it downtown in a revue form and then it was my first Broadway experience. I left with kind of a bad taste other than meeting and working with Marc Shaiman, who I’ve worked with for years since then. What happened was they took this great revue show, and then they twisted up the book. I would say, for lack of a better word, they Broadway-ized it to a point of de rock-and-rolling it. I called in my friend Steven Van Zandt to take a look, and as he walked away, his shoulders went up the way they do and he said “What are you doing? You’re ruining the music!”

It was too bad that happened because those songs were little operettas, those teenage angst songs, especially The Shangri Las songs. I think that Broadway wasn’t ready for a revue-type show at that point. After that, they had plenty of them. We were kind of the pioneers that didn’t make it across in the wagon. Then the next bunch picked it up and they said, “Don’t go that way. Take this route instead.” [Laughs.]

With the new one, Matt Williams called me through Tamara Tunie. She’s an actress friend of mine who you’ve seen in everything. She a producer, a writer, a singer and a dancer— a major talent and a really wonderful person. She recommended me to Matt Williams, who I didn’t know other than being the creator of Roseanne. The one thing I knew about that show was that it had the greatest harmonica cues by “Juke” Logan, who was a great bluesman.

So Matt called me with this idea. At first, I was a bit gun-shy, for lack of a better term—and I love that term, which comes from a horse hearing a sound and throwing the rider.

But, when I heard the word Broadway, I was gun-shy. I was thrown from the horse. [Laughs.] Then I got back up on the horse and I learned that we were going to create original music, which was important because then the songs and the story would be tied in rather than trying to fit the square peg into the round hole, which is a problem with taking preexisting 45 hit records and building a show around them.

I don’t want to sum up the story wrong, but the basic idea is that someone needs to save his little church, so he says, “I’ve got to go make some money, and the only way I really know to do that is to start hitting the juke joints, hitting the road, leaving the church, leaving my family behind and sending the money home.” Then, of course, everything goes wrong as it would and did.

So this was a fresh idea and something I’d discussed with people like Pops Staples. We’d talked about his struggle with gospel and the blues. We’ve seen it with people like Blind Willie Johnson and Reverend Gary Davis, who were people of the cloth, but also needed to make some money to eat. Thomas A. Dorsey, the famous gospel songwriter and probably the greatest of his generation, was also known as Georgia Tom. When he made racy records with Tampa Red, he was also writing the most beautiful gospel songs.

Matt Williams and Trey Ellis are writing a really interesting story, and I’ve gotten to work with Masi Asare. So we’ve put together a wonderful team, with Tamara producing and overseeing.

To me, it’s the perfect closure to my first Broadway experience, since I do love the Broadway stage. I also just turned 70 and I feel, “Wow, what a chance to do something fresh at 70.”

I once saw Pops Staples talk about that struggle you just described because so many of his gospel songs drew heavily on the blues.

The last time I spoke to him, he had put out what he called his blues album. This was at the end of his life. He came on the Conan show and played. Then he said, “I’ve wanted to do this my whole career, but I never did.”

He always played Delta-style guitar, very much like Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed with that vibrato he made so famous. He’s my ideal for the blend of gospel and blues.

Mavis is as well—I’ve been so blessed to work with her so much over the years. One major difference from the blues people I’ve known is that the people I’ve known in gospel always bring a joy to everything they say and do. I think that’s the hopefulness of the God side of it, and it makes me feel good.

You may have just turned 70, but it seems to me you’ve always been moving at your own pace. Is it true that you didn’t really take up guitar until you were 23?

I had started messing around with guitar like everyone, learning some cowboy chords and how to play rhythm guitar behind a better guitar player. But I was mostly playing B3 and piano in bands. Then, for some reason, I went through some sort of a self-doubt thing because I felt that my buddies were so much better than me. Dave Tessar played like Oscar Peterson. Ed Alstrom was the consummate B3 player and he now plays organ at Yankee Stadium. They used to tell me: “Oh, but your clavinet playing is like a guitar and your rhythm piano playing is like Horace Silver or Richard Manuel.” But I said, “Well, I don’t know if I want to do this anymore.” So I went to hide away and learn the guitar.

Then I got in a show band, which we had at this time all over New Jersey. They were all like Martin and Lewis—they had a comedian, a handsome singer and a four-piece band. This band I got with when I played just enough guitar was Andre & Cirell—Bobby D’Andrea and Frank Cirell. I said, “I’m going to hide in this show band until I can really play guitar.” I was in this show band for two years and we were working six, seven nights a week, but I also took lessons and I practiced every day. Then, once I had all these chops, I had to learn how to undo all the chops and just play music.

I started playing with some people in New Jersey who were also backing up Al Kooper. One day, the piano player couldn’t make the gig, so my friend Larry, who knew that I also played piano, said, “Why don’t you come and play piano on Al’s gig?” So I did a gig with Al in which he played organ and guitar while I played piano. Then Larry, the guitar player, couldn’t make it, so he called me and said, “Why don’t you come and sub for me on Al’s gig? When I walked into Al’s gig, he said, “What are you doing with that guitar?” He was laughing. In a way, it was similar to his “Like a Rolling Stone” moment. I said, “Well, I’m here to play guitar.” He goes, “You play guitar?”

I said, “You play guitar, don’t you?” Right away, we became the best of friends, and Al said, “We have to start a smaller band where we switch back and forth.” So we started The Rekooperators.

I also began working with Phoebe Snow doing piano and guitar for a while. I was doing both of those because Al and Steve Winwood were two of my favorite cats since they did both. When you look at some of that Blind Faith stuff, what Winwood brings to the table is totally amazing. There were times when Winwood was, in some ways, a better guitar player than Clapton.

So now, I’ll continue to do a little bit of both. I recently did a gig on a boat and Duane Betts was there with his band, but his organ player had to cancel. So he said, “Hey, do you want to play with my band?” I had a day where I went into my room and wrote out charts for all of his stuff. Then when I got to “Jessica” I thought, “I’m fucked now.” So I said to him, “Look, no solo in ‘Jessica’ from me. I’ll play it, but no solo.” He said, “OK,” and then, when we got out there, he made me solo anyway. [Laughs.] So I assimilated my version of what it felt like, without playing any of Chuck’s riffs. I said, “I’m just going to go full out Floyd Cramer here.” That’s sort of what Chuck does—it’s like an elaborate Keith Jarrett/Floyd Cramer mix. Of course, Chuck is unbelievable. The first time I saw him was at Watkins Glen when he’d joined the Allman Brothers after Duane had passed.

On my record, I play all the B3. I also do some piano and Scott Healy played a couple piano things, too. For me, it’s something where one has fed the other, making me a better player, so keeping them both going is important. I became known more as a guitar player because of the Conan show but, as the years go by, I try to keep them both going.

Even with Gov’t Mule, I’ll go over and play with Danny sometimes. Warren will say, “You should play Wurly on this while Danny plays organ.” The fact he respects me as a keyboard player, that alone blows my mind.

You’ve played with Warren and the Mule so many times over the years. How did that first come about?

Warren was like an instant friend. I used to play at a place called Hades on the Upper West Side, and Warren would come in. I think we met each other playing at the old Wetlands. I also used to do a jam every Sunday night at The Bitter End with Danny Louis, Steve Holley and Hank Bones. Then when Warren was around with the Allman Brothers, he would bring Dickey, Johnny Neel, Matt Abts and all these people up to where I was playing. They’d sit in and we’d jam.

Warren and I are like kindred spirits and, other than B.B. King, I had never heard anybody so expressive on the guitar. I’d played with a lot of people, but his expression and feel and lack of showboating was, to me, the difference between playing music and doing music.

When I’m playing with Gov’t Mule, it’s the ultimate give and take between all the musicians. It’s like free jazz and it steps up your playing. Playing with Derek does that as well. Warren and Derek are probably the two best guitar players I know, and the reason they’re great goes way beyond their technique. It goes back to doing what my mentor, Hubert Sumlin would do, which was playing heart to hand—keeping the head out of it and being a totally reactive player. That’s what music is. It’s a conversation. It’s not a recitation.

Hubert would come up to me and say, “You’re feeling my mind.” What could be said on stage that’s better than that? What we’re trying to do is communicate telepathically through what comes out of our guitars. When that happens, there’s nothing’s better.

Growing up in New Jersey, did you ever come into the city and see the original ABB lineup at the Fillmore?

Oh, yeah. I remember seeing them in 1971 on the Idlewild South tour before they cut the famous live album about a month later. The opening band on that tour was a little bar band from New England called J. Geils Band. Then it was Albert King, and then the Allman Brothers. I mean, come on!

The Allman Brothers had the nerve to go on after Albert King and to kill it! They were, at one point, the culmination of everything I loved—everything in jazz and blues and rock-and-roll. They were all of it and no one said a word on stage. [Laughs.]

When was the first time you saw a show at the Fillmore?

I guess it was 1968 or 69 when me and my friends were in eighth and ninth grade, maybe 13 or 14. We’d go to the Fillmore East and my friend’s brother would drive us. He had long hair down to his ass and he’d drive us along with a friend of his in a green Impala. They’d stick four of us in the backseat because you didn’t have to wear seat belts in 1968. They would be smoking pot in the front seat and we would be eating Twinkies in the back seat, both of us doing stuff we weren’t allowed to do at home.

You’d go to a Fillmore show and there’d be three totally different kinds of music playing. That’s how you’d get an idea of what the trickle-down theory means. You would go to the Fillmore and pay $3.50 to watch three acts, then you’d go out the next day and you’d want to buy all three of those records. You saw something with your friends that nobody else saw and there was this camaraderie of saying, “Let’s be the ones who know those records.”

I’m not sure if Bill Graham thought of this or not, but he was giving you a well-rounded education. That worked in a way that an all-Bruce or all-Grateful Dead or all-Beatles Sirius radio station doesn’t work for me. I think that music should be mixed up.

If you listen to my album, you’ll see that it’s not just Chicago blues or just jug-band music like I played with [John] Sebastian for years. It’s not just jazz and it’s not just funk. It’s everything that I’ve always heard coming together. We call it blues because there’s not a lot of places to land, so you need to label it. But I think it’s just like Levon used to tell me: “Man, we didn’t call it anything but our music.”

Was there something in particular that prompted you to record this new album?

It was making lemonade out of lemons in the COVID time while being sequestered. Whether or not people want to get political and say, “We didn’t need to do that,” the thing is that we did it. So did you make use of that time or not? I couldn’t play anywhere and I couldn’t perform in front of anybody. So I used that extra time to write about my feelings when I needed to get them out.

It started as angry writing and a bit political but that’s OK— the blues should have a little bit more to it. I grew up in the hippie era, when revolution was brought through music in a lot of ways.

I wanted to get my own feelings out into the songs in a way that I’d never done before—when I was too busy working to think, “Do I want to say anything?” In my older age, I’m like, “Man, I guess I feel like saying this.”

There’s one song on the record that I wrote over 30 years ago, “Fool’s Gold,” which Catherine Russell has recorded twice for me. I never recorded it myself and then, after figuring out I was going to sing it, I said, “Well, that’s a pretty good song. Maybe I’ll write some more songs.” So I wrote “Blues in the 21st” because I was watching too much TV and seeing things. My hippie-revolution persona crept up in anger about how people today can get away with things that we couldn’t. I had friends go to prison for years because they were caught selling pot. How come you can get away with that and we couldn’t? As you get older, you’re like, “Well, in my day, if you did that…” [Laughs.]

So I became that guy in that song, but I didn’t want to be that guy for the whole record. So I started reflecting on different things. All the songs are fictitious. People used to ask Bob Dylan about “Positively 4^th Street.” They’d say, “What an angry attack song that is. Who is it about?” And Bob would say, “Whoever you think it’s about. Whoever you can apply it to. You know people like that too, don’t you?” Apparently it was about five or six different people who turned into this one character that it all gets dumped on.

“Ruby Is Back,” is about that person who—no matter what they do, no matter how bad they treat you—you still go back to. You’re addicted or hooked. You can’t be warned, you’re going to do what you’re going to do.

There are also a lot of everyday troubles with getting older on songs like “Gonna Be 2 of Those Days.” I decided to name the album after that one because I think there’s a lot of Mose Allison in there. There’s also a lot of Johnny “Guitar” Watson and some humorous Willie Dixon isms, like with dropping your medication down the drain.

After you recorded the tracks, I imagine you put a lot of thought into the sequencing.

I did, because when I was growing up, listening to a record was a whole experience. You couldn’t just go to YouTube or Spotify. After you’d gone to the record store and gotten your hands on that record, you’d go through it a few times. You started out listening top to bottom, side A and side B. Then you’d listen to it again while reading the liner notes completely. Then you’d listen to it yet again while looking at every other record that was on the same label, putting together your dream list of what you wanted to buy next.

So yes, the sequencing was important. Just by chance, the first track I recorded was “Blues in the 21st,” which became the first track, and the last track I recorded, “Back Up the Country,” became the last track. I recorded it on a whim at a session in Woodstock. There was an old upright bass in the corner that was in disrepair, and Jesse Williams, who’s a brilliant bass player, picked it up and started thumping on it. I said, “That sounds like Willie Dixon’s bass. Let’s do this.” So I told John to get his harp and I let him know what key we’d be in. Then we recorded it with no rehearsal, from top to bottom, one time through. At the end, I even say, “That’s all there is,” and John says, “I guess that’s it.”

So that’s the last song on the record in sequencing, and “Blues in the 21st” starts the whole journey. In between, the record speaks to recent events and the human condition. There’s also the everyday blues that happen to anybody because you can only write about what you know or what you’ve experienced.

You’re going to play that material over the coming months with your own band and also with Bill Murray and The Blood Brothers. How did that pairing come to pass?

Bill and I have known each other since 1979-ish. There were days of hanging out at JP’s uptown. I know all of his brothers, and we all have done the heavy hang in New York. They’ve always been music enthusiasts. If I would go to Chicago, John Murray and Joel Murray would show up. Andy Murray and I played in a band together in New York—he’s a chef, but he’s also a singer. Bill would always be coming around to sing, kind of goofing off just for fun.

Then we started doing those Caddyshack tournaments where I would come down once a year to the Murray Brothers restaurant in Florida. I would do a show, there would be a couple days of fundraising and there’d be golfing, which I didn’t participate in—I was recovering from a hangover or something. Last year, we had Mike Zito and Albert Castiglia, aka The Blood Brothers. Mike is also incestuously my label with his Gulf Coast Records. [Laughs.] So they came down and we had a ball. When we’re on stage, we’re like three blues Rat Pack guys. Bill was hanging out with us and came up to sing, which is how Mike Zito got the idea of taking this out there.

A lot of the post-COVID idea of music is just saying, “Let’s just go have a good time.” It’s not enough to just watch YouTube anymore after three to five years of streaming, where people were afraid to go out. So I’ll do a song from my album and Albert and Mike will do a couple of songs from their records, and all of us, including Bill, do covers of stuff we love. You get a chance to see people’s record collections and what they would finally get to play if given a chance.

Bill Murray’s a consummate professional and entertainer, but at the same time, maintains this looseness like he’s your buddy on stage.

Speaking of favorite songs, when you played with Conan at Newport Folk this year, I was appreciative that your finale was “Midnight Special,” which is perfect for that situation and something that, to my mind, hasn’t been overdone. How did you land on that?

Jim Pitt, who now is over at Kimmel, helped us with the setlist. It was his idea to do the show at Newport and he was with Conan and me for years, putting bands on the program. He suggested “Midnight Special,” which I said was great because I’d played it and recorded it with Odetta. That one goes back to Leadbelly, who did it all the time. A lot of people were like, “Really, I thought it was a Creedence song.” So I had to tell them otherwise. I felt like Alan Wilson and Bob Hite [from Canned Heat] who were constantly telling people: “No, we didn’t write that song [‘Going Up the Country’]. Henry Thomas wrote it.”

So, once again, the course of the blues goes on. It was the perfect song. It had enough verses to split up and it hadn’t been overdone, as you say. Yeah, we could have done “Rolling Stone,” but that’s cheap, in a way, at Newport. I had been on that stage three other times— with Phoebe Snow, Laura Nyro and Levon. There’s something about looking out with the Fort behind you, the water in front of you and the people below you. The only difference is that, in the old days, it was all lawn chairs. [Laughs.]