Don Pardo Award
This week on the podcast we reveal the Don Pardo Award winner for Season 5. This high prestigious honor is bestowed onto a person or group of people who contribute to the show's success despite not being eligible for traditional election into the Hall.
Transcript:
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[0:42] Thank you so much, Doug Donatz. It is great to be here in the SNL Hall of Fame.
The SNL Hall of Fame podcast is a weekly affair where each episode we take a deep dive into the career of a former cast member, host, musical guest, or writer and add them to the ballot for your consideration.
Once the nominees have been announced, we turn to you, the listener, to vote for the most deserving and help determine who will be enshrined for perpetuity in the hall.
Except for this week. Because this is our very special Don Pardo Award show where the three of us, Thomas, Matt, and myself put our heads together and award the Don Pardo Award to a deserving individual, or in the case of this year's award, deserving individuals.
I won't bury the lead any longer, but before I go anywhere, please. please wipe your feet.
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[1:43] This week, we are going to be talking about a major component of Saturday Night Live, and that is the SNL band.
So the way we're going to tackle this is we're going to go in chronological order to the best of our ability.
We might miss a couple of years, but we can fill Fill in the blanks as necessary for you to get your little history lesson.
But this has been enough of me talking right now.
How are you doing, Thomas? Hey, JD.
Doing really well. It's nice to be on a little like an actual episode with you and Matt, like the three of us kind of uniting here. Yeah. One united front.
This is really fun. We were talking as we're recording this, we're coming off a really fantastic Kristen Wiig episode. So I think all of us are kind of energized by SNL right now.
So we're taking that energy from the recent Kristen Wiig episode and putting it forth here for this. Oh, that's fantastic.
Matt, you're not in your usual corner this week. No, no. Yeah, I've moved things, moved my desk around.
I need to make room to watch that, you know, 1970s French disco funk and dance around.
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[3:00] I wonder if they were even i know when they counted the numbers they were speaking french but i wonder how much of the rest of it was was actual french my wife was asleep on the couch i would have asked her she's a french teacher i wanted to wake her up and say you got to watch this sketch but she was gone i'll ask i'll show it to her today and ask it sounded right from my grade nine general French.
So it may be like Google Translate. Who knows?
But it had the right shapes. Yeah. And I think Bowen's a French speaker.
So I think at least Bowen was probably speaking good real. Oh, OK. I think he is. Yeah. Didn't realize that.
Well, Matt and I have failed our Canadian tests here.
For those listening from other places in the world, Canadians are not truly bilingual, even though our country is.
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[3:52] But I digress. Let's start at the start.
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[3:57] And speaking of Canadians, we're going to talk about the original SNL band.
And it's not band leader, but it's musical director. And that is Howard Shore, who is immensely talented.
He played the alto sax in the band, and he, like I said, was the band leader.
But he was, before he came to SNL, he worked with Lorne Michaels and Hart Pomerantz on the Lorne and Hart Terrific Hour. hour.
And when Lauren got SNL, it seemed like a slam dunk for him to come South and work with Saturday Night Live.
To me, his most defining moment in the role is that he wrote the closing.
He wrote Waltz in D, is it D minor?
Waltz in A, written by a founding member, Howard Shore.
And And that is something, maybe the only thing other than update that is like lasted the duration of the show.
I'm not as versed in the 80s. I don't know if they ended in Waltz and A, but definitely all the Lorne Michaels era, it ends with that.
And it's always very exciting when you get to hear the bulk of it and you get to see the credits roll and you get to see them mingling on the stage.
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[5:24] Oftentimes here in Canada, when it aired on global TV, they would cut it off and you wouldn't see much of anything.
But now for some reason, you get to see it all.
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[5:35] Uh, do you guys have any feelings about that original music director in that original band?
I'm going to get into more detail in a moment, but I'm just curious if you guys have any sort of thoughts or feelings.
We talked a little bit about this concept in the Don Pardo episode from last season, Matt and I, but it's just branding.
And you touched on it, JD, like the Waltz and A and all of that, like the SNL band, And even with them playing in between sketches and bumpers and stuff, it all goes toward the branding of the show, the show's identity.
And when talking about Howard Shore, the fact that he created such an iconic piece of music that's obviously stood the test of time.
Like how much aside unless you're one of the more famous cast members or lauren michaels himself it's hard to find somebody who's had such an imprint as far as the identity and branding of the show so right away like he's he's an icon just because of that along with the other like founding members of the snl band but howard shore will highlight at this moment as like the leader So that's what sticks out to me about Howard Shore, specifically his contribution to SNL.
How about you, Matt? Yeah, for me, I feel like he's one of those instrumental components creating the feeling Thomas was saying.
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[7:03] Because that early band was much more involved in the day-to-day operations.
They were. The later bands, because they would play as part of the show.
So you don't get that anymore.
In those early first few seasons, they would do extended musical numbers.
Or like there's this one sketch with Lily Tomlin where the entire band are dressed up as nurses.
That's right. And they do St. James Infirmary Blues.
And it's it's just like they're they're they're a component of those early days, setting the tone, part of the vibe of the entire thing.
Uh and i think it's no small part due to the camaraderie that shore had with the rest of them, that's right the rest of the cast yeah you're gonna mention this jd but also like the ama king b yes i was just gonna go there that's so funny.
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[8:16] To Matt's point, they were much more a part of the show.
You have the nurse band, you have the beekeeper outfit.
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[8:28] Not to mention the fact that the band is responsible for creating interstitial music for sketches and even main music for sketches in some cases.
So, I think that that is woven into the fabric of the blueprint or the DNA of SNL at this point.
Even though, you know, more contemporary SNL bands aren't as involved.
Now, I say that having just come off the Kristen Wiig episode where we got a really funny joke from Lenny Pickett.
And that was just, you know, just fantastic.
To steal a page from matt's book and just offer you a little trivia i thought it was very interesting that howard shore gave the name blues brothers to akroyd and belushi he was the one who came up with that term and obviously we know how successful the blues brothers were both on the show and in their feature debut uh you know really good stuff shore moved on from snl and And had a phenomenal career post-SNL, scoring films.
And he scored films all through the 80s. There are some pseudo-notable ones that I don't have written down right now.
But in the early 2000s and late 90s, I think it's late. Is Lord of the Rings late 90s?
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[9:57] Or is it early 2000s? I think the first one was early 2000s.
Early 2000s. So it entered production late 90s.
Sure. So he did the score for all three of those movies and the three Hobbit films.
And to me, that is just phenomenal.
He's won three Academy Awards. He's been nominated for Golden Globe Awards.
He has won some Emmy Awards as well.
And he's just all over the place in terms of success. sass.
He's been pursuing music since he was basically eight or nine years old.
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[10:36] At 13 and 14, he became good friends with the young Lorne Michaels in summer camp.
And obviously, we know what happened from there.
Gosh, if I could have been in summer camp with Lorne Michaels, if only, maybe I'd have a different career right now. But I digress.
Any other thoughts on Howard Shore and his influence and importance in the legacy of SNL?
Yeah, I think Howard Shore, and not just him. So I'm looking at like the members of the founding band.
A lot of them were in the Blues Brothers.
So a lot of them played in the Blues Brothers and like role class musicians. You had Paul Schaefer.
That's right. Yeah, involved. And of course, we know Paul Schaefer went on to do he was accredited cast member.
Paul Schaefer at one point. Tom Bones Malone is a really well respected trombone and trumpet player in the music world.
So you have all these world-class musicians, Cheryl Hardwick on keyboards, all these people, super well-respected.
And Howard Shore is like the leader of this group.
But these musicians, and this is going to be a theme throughout our conversation, are just world-class musicians.
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[11:52] Do you two know if Shore was responsible for putting, I'm guessing he was, but for putting the band actually together?
Other yeah i would imagine so because i mean that's how it works now uh as reading an interview, uh maddie rice uh the guitarist and she was talking about how lenny the audition it was sort of like the their version of the lauren michaels the musician's version of the lauren michaels audition where he just sort of sits there dead faced kind of thing but yeah like so i i would assume like he's just going around and getting the best of the best of these musicians that.
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[12:31] At that point, it's a regular gig, good money.
So for the 70s, that's a nice enticement to a lot of musicians, I'm sure.
You're in New York. You're in New York, yeah. So you have ample opportunity to go to a live venue and play during the week if you're not rehearsing.
Almost like the stand-ups and the sketch artists on SNL. Very similar through-line there. That's interesting, Matt. Yeah.
Well, shall we move forward? Shore was there, I guess, from the inception through 1979.
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[13:05] So he left when everybody else left, including Lorne Michaels.
There were two band leaders in the early 80s, one that only lasted a year, I want to say.
Yeah. And one that was three or four years on top of that.
And then Lorne came back. so kenny vance succeeded howard shore as the musical director but kenny vance right he was only there basically probably just when gene dumanian was there as the producer so i think maybe when dick ebersole came uh some of the retooling that they did uh i imagine uh affected kenny vance as well as musical director but then they replaced him with the aforementioned tom Tom Bones Malone, who was in the original SNL band that Howard Shore was musical director of.
So Tom Bones Malone from 81 to 85 was the musical director.
Not that much on Tom Bones Malone. I just know you always hear that name as far as when you talk about great respected musicians.
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[14:10] The name Tom Bones Malone is one that I remember people always talking about.
Out but so it was kenny vance from 80 to 81 and tom malone from 81 to 85 i don't know much about that period i just know tom bones if he got bones as a nickname yeah no it's tom bones malone he's like and speaks to the quality of the music those original musicians uh he played multiple instruments aside from trombone he played saxophone trumpet tuba flute bass guitar.
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[14:42] Oh like he could be half the band if and i mean that that was all these musicians were these multi-instrumentalist talent powerhouses um so so yeah it's just it's amazing again like i think that period is sort of like a weird dark period in a lot of ways where a lot of that doesn't make it out kind of like a black hole of saturday night live but it's a little bit yeah yeah tougher to to find information on that era.
So that brings us to a member, I want to say he was a member of Tom Bones Malone, his troupe.
You guys can correct me if I'm wrong, but he became bandleader, and that is G.E.
Smith, and we're going to pass the torch to Thomas on this one.
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[15:27] Yeah, so they were doing retooling, so Dick Ebersole left, and so Lorne Michaels came back to the show in 1985, so they're doing a lot of retooling.
That was the year, you know, Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Michael Hall, we saw Lovitz and Nora Dunn and Dennis Miller come into this season, but just a lot of reshuffling and new energy into the show.
So that's the season that G.E. Smith started as the musical director of the Saturday Night Live band.
I don't know, Jamie, that he was in previous iterations. I think he's a Lorne guy.
Okay. And he knows Lorne because G.E. Smith, he was married to Gilda Radner for a couple years in the early 80s. So he got to know Lorne that way.
And we've seen, obviously, now that Lorne hires people who he knows and trusts.
That's a really big factor. So you're right. Right. If I had married Gilda Radner in the early 80s, I might have a different career path as well.
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[16:31] But as it stands, G.E. Smith's the one who married Gilda Radner.
So he became SNL bandleader in 1985.
But G.E. Smith, if you've ever heard him speak, he has the blues in his blood.
He's like a true blues man, the way he speaks and just his cadence.
And you could tell he plays the blues when you listen to G.E. Smith talk.
He did a really great episode, I'm going to say probably around when COVID first came up with Marc Maron. He was on WTF with Marc Maron. Oh.
Yeah. So he and Marc Maron just geeked out about music because Marc's a guitar player.
And so he and G.E. Smith just geeked out about the blues and, oh, what about this musician? What about this guy and that guy?
And so it was like two music blues geeks. Oh, that's great. So you can tell, you can feel it in G.E.
Smith's blood that he's a blues man. He started playing guitar when he was four years old.
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[17:26] He started kind of learning cursory notes when he was four.
Yeah. And by seven, he actually got like a friend of the family gifted him a really good, like the nice starter acoustic guitar.
So G.E. Smith's been playing since he was a really tiny kid.
You could tell he's just a he's just such a prodigy. That's what he was. He was a prodigy.
Yeah. When he was a kid, man, he's he's he's just he's gotten his blood.
And he said something to Marion that I thought was interesting. and it says a lot about G Smith's musical style so he said in in talking about the Beatles and the Stones and stuff he said he respected the Beatles he liked the Beatles but it was the Rolling Stones and the Kinks he said that really like motivated him as far as music goes so that's just where he's coming from like he likes the Beatles but he's like a Stones guy so I think that could say a lot about a musician when they state that like which way they lean you know what what I'm saying he has more stones in him he ended up working with Mick Jagger which is probably was probably cool for him but does that make sense like like you get to kind of tell when a musician says I like the Beatles but like I had like the stones more in me absolutely and that he mentions the kinks too yeah I can add that vibes with me or I'm like yeah yeah I get a kinks energy.
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[18:46] Yeah, so this guy is just a true blue musician. He played with Hall & Oates.
He was on some of Hall & Oates' biggest records from 79 through the mid-80s.
G.E. Smith was... So that's what he was doing in the early 80s.
He was mainly playing and touring with Hall & Oates.
He's done albums with Tom Waits, Mick Jagger, Carly Simon, Buddy Guy, Bob Dylan.
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[19:09] Worked closely with David Bowie and Roger Waters. I mean, this guy has been around.
That's what he loves. He loves playing. He's made a lot of connections, very well respected.
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[19:19] And we talk about branding, you guys. And I know, JD, I'm pretty sure this is when you started watching, was around the mid-80s. Maybe when Phil Hartman and Carvey and Lovitz and those guys.
G.E. Smith, to me, was part of the fabric of the show. They would even build G.E. Smith and the Saturday Night Live band.
And watching him, the dude with the blonde ponytail, just shredding on the guitar.
Guitar like he was to me as a viewer part of like that branding he was part of like the essence of the show i don't know if either of you felt that way watching that era of snl absolutely every time they cut to commercial you just see him wailing away on that guitar uh with these incredible licks and it's just yeah that was just the moment and it's like i that early ge smith you know saturday night live band is like i couldn't at that time i couldn't have imagined it i can almost hear don pardo saying it ge smith on the 70 my wife the way he said ge smith it was like it felt like it meant something i don't know here's something nitpicky do we know what ge stands for oh george edward george edward smith oh it's cooler george edward dad actually oh let's say that again george edward haddad.
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[20:43] Yeah, his dad's side of the family is Lebanese. Oh, wow.
So, yeah, so he grew up kind of like culturally Lebanese in a lot of ways, G.E. Smith did. That's fascinating.
Yeah, so like a real cultured guy, a lot of influences, has worked, like I said, with so many people.
People uh he says and he gives he gives credit to a lot of people that were in the his band at snl because he tells he tells marin that he just wanted to keep up with these amazing musicians, so he's like that that's just what you know that that's he said that was my role in the band i was kind of like the leader but like these were world class he's like snl had the budget he said this is a big show they had the budget to get these amazing musicians so he's like i felt every week like i just had to keep up man well he gives a lot of credit he gives a lot of credit to uh to the other people uh that were in the snl band at the same time and i'm looking and um yeah it was guys like george young i know he's a he's a pretty respected player earl gardner who was there forever he started with ge smith all these really great uh great musicians matt chamberlain that That blew my mind when I read that.
Yeah, he was probably best known for Pearl Jam, but he's been drummer for a lot of bands. Soundgarden?
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[22:05] Soundgarden, yeah. He was, from 91 to 92, he was part of G.E.
Smith's band a little bit.
We'd see David Johansson as Buster Poindexter make appearances every now and then in that era.
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[22:18] So, yeah, G.E. Smith really gives a lot of credit to other musicians, the people in his band.
Even though he was the one that was billed and people just think of G.E.
Smith from that era, he really is very complimentary of all the musicians that he got to work with on SNL.
There seems to be a through line here so far that these band leaders put together these world-class bands to play one night a week for 90 minutes. Yeah, right.
Probably the best gig going. Yeah, what a great gig. Yeah.
Well, from GE Smith, we go to...
The longest running, the Kenan of band leaders.
I don't know that anyone will surpass his record at this point because I don't know when he's leaving even.
But this brings us to Lenny Pickett and his cohort at times that I'm sure Matt is going to get into here.
Based on a Facebook post I read earlier today. Yes. Well, Lenny was one of those 1985 hires. So he came in at the same time as G.E. Smith.
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[23:34] He was co-musical director with Cheryl Hardwick, who founding band member.
She was co-musical director with G.E. Smith.
She was in the band until 1995 when she retired at the end of season 25.
So, I mean, she was the last member of the founding band.
But so you get this i think that's why there's such a through line in the psychology of the band leaders because you had members of that original band all through the years up until you know 95 like just a little over you know a little under a decade ago so you you've got like just the psychology and it is a very music forward psychology uh you've got going on like He's a former member of Tower of Power, R&B funk band, amazing.
He led their horn section before joining the SNL band.
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[24:30] He's entirely self-taught. This is a guy who picked up his instruments as a kid and just taught himself, except for a brief period where he went to work with a particular musician for less than a year.
So I don't even really count that. So he's learned everything on his own.
He went to study with Burt Wilson, a jazz musician, for a short time.
But he can also play clarinet, flute, as well as the alto saxophone.
He's considered a virtuoso of the altissimo register.
This is a technique where you can just change your position of your tongue and the shape of your throat and make your saxophone play way outside of its register so he'll you'll key like a b flat and you'll get a high f that kind of thing like totally outside of the range so that's why he gets this incredible performance out of his uh out of his saxophone because he's like pushing it beyond the limits but you know.
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[25:37] He's performed with the greats. He's also performed with Paul and Oates.
He performed with David Bowie as well.
Aaron Neville, Katy Perry, Talking Heads. He was recently a part of Love This Giant, an album by David Byrne and St. Vincent.
So he played saxophone. Wild.
So, I mean, he's still a vibrant, powerful musician.
He surrounded himself with, if we look at this, his current band, they're all veterans at this point there's only a couple of people who are relatively new uh you know leon uh pendarvis keyboard since 1980 he predate he's like predates the you know the band leader uh alex foster 85 uh steve turay trombone 85 christine olman vocals since 91 sean pelton drums since 92.
Valerie Naranjo, you see like rocking out back there every every episode.
95 James Keenis 2000.
Ron Blake, he's on baritone sax 2005.
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[26:50] Toughest Zimbabwe keyboard since 2010.
And then you have Maddie Rice, a guitarist that I mentioned earlier, and Summer DeMarco, who's on trumpet both 20 and 20 and 2022 respectively so for the most part these are band members who are seasoned respected and talented musicians um and it's like an incredible like i was doing a little bit of digging into their process and i have to say in a in some ways they have it harder than the sketch comedians because they don't generally come in during the week they come in on saturday day.
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[27:29] Sometimes they'll do a bit of a rehearsal on Friday if it's a complex piece, like a big piece.
But they work with Elijah Bruggeman. He's the sketch musical director.
And he will collaborate like Rice was talking about, the Tampon Farm sketch, where Kate actually laid down a guitar track.
But it was you know it's not professional quality because she's just a home guitar player so she came over and played over that and sort of expanded the composition but they did that on thursday so it's like she just came in listened to the track and just sort of noodled something over top of it and uh but yeah like they will come in they'll they'll start rehearsal on friday a Saturday and then be ready for dress.
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[28:26] So it's just like, there's no time there. And like those sketches are so tight.
Like you look at the sketches just past weekend, you had multiple sketches where you've got this intense musical number or, or some of the classic sketches where, where you've got music feature very prominently.
No, they've had a day to figure that out is like, this is why you have the best of the best on that band.
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[28:52] Yeah they i noticed snl especially this season in season 49 they like to do one sketches where a character gives a dramatic monologue and then you hear like the dramatic music playing in the background so yeah so a lot of i don't think a lot of people realize that in in most of these sketches that require music that's the band that's like the house band playing in a lot of these sketches so it's not just like oh we're gonna play uh in between commercials or we're gonna play the good nights or or whatever like they're like involved in sketches i think that's a really good thing to bring up pros pros they are absolutely pros pros and very well deserving of this prestigious award the don pardo award that we will be presenting every season uh so far the list is short it's don pardo and the snl band any final thoughts on the snl band gentlemen i'm curious who you think might be good for the like when lenny retires to take over the reins hmm.
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[30:01] This is almost, I mean, this is almost harder than Who Replaces Lorne, because with Lorne, it's a short list.
But like we could, if I knew anything about, you know, jazz music in New York and, you know, R&B music in New York, I would have a couple names for you.
But I don't. So I don't even have any names.
Thomas? Yeah, I wonder if SNL would do something like want to pry like John Batiste or something from his Stephen Colbert gig.
Oh, wow. So here's the thing. Maddie was in that band. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, Maddie came from that band. I kind of feel like she's being lined up because she's featured more and more prominently in the transitions and stuff.
She's also a multi-instrumentalist. she's young so she can she's sort of got the vibe for the modern sound but also, jazz musician and guitarist so she has that respect for the old ways as well as the new ways I think she'd be a good fit to sort of transition a new era because I don't Lenny would leave before season 50 but you know like if there was a new new guard let's say were to take over I think that would be a good fit because it's it's a legacy.
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[31:25] How old is Pickett? When he turned 31, 31, he was born at 31.
She. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Lenny Pickett.
Lenny is he was born in 1956.
OK. No. Yeah. Lenny's turning 70 in three days, actually, on April 10th.
So as we're recording this, Lenny's going to be he's 70 when this when this. Yeah. April 10th, 1954.
Sorry. Yeah. So he might be. Yeah. No, I think Matt brings up a good point about Matty Rice, though. Matty. Yeah. Yeah, Maddie's 30, 31.
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[31:57] She could be next in line to follow, to succeed Lenny Pickett, for sure.
She did a good interview with Vulture earlier this year.
That was the interview that I think Matt was referencing, was her Vulture interview.
So yeah, she used to play in John Batiste's Stay Human house band for Stephen Colbert.
My wife and I, a few years ago, went and saw a taping of Stephen Colbert.
Dana Carvey was on that. So that was like, as an SNL fan, that was pretty special.
So I got to see Maddie and John Batiste and do their thing.
It's interesting about Maddie Rice is, and it's kind of unfortunate too, but she was almost at the center of a really, really unfortunate nonsensical discussion online.
Imagine that, a nonsensical discussion online.
Line but people were focusing in on if she laughed or not during the monologue and her reactions during the monologue and i think she even came out and said i've seen a lot of these jokes in this monologue like this is probably the third or fourth time that i've seen it so she said she doesn't want to like do fake laughter so she's like these are just kind of my it's not no offense against the host or whoever's doing the monologue but it's just so it was just very weird like yeah Yeah. Focusing on Maddie Rice's reaction.
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[33:15] And to be fair to her, most of the other band are pretty deadpan during that, too, because they don't want to they don't want to telegraph stuff.
Yeah. They want to, you know. Right. And J.D.
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[33:34] Right. So so what you want to refresh people's memories about that?
Yeah, well, it was interesting. Kristen came up for her monologue.
And before she monologued, she said, you know what?
I haven't talked to the band in a while. Toughest on keys. How you doing?
Sean on drums. How about you?
Great. Lenny on sax. How you doing? I'm OK.
And it was something that we just have not seen before on the show in that manner.
So it was really, for a show that is 49 years old to do something it hasn't done before is pretty incredible.
And I think that's why we pointed it out to each other earlier today, because it does seem sort of shocking in a sense.
But it just goes to show you how important this group of people truly are, that they can, you know, take us to a commercial break.
Oftentimes, when there's not enough time for another sketch, we get a commercial break, and then we come back to an interstitial, and then another commercial break before we go to Walt's and A.
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[34:45] So that is this year's Don Pardo Award winner.
We have some exciting news as well.
As you're listening to this, we are opening voting today, and voting will run through the 17th of May, at which time we will do some tabulation, and then we will present with you the Monday episode that will reveal Season 5's SNL Hall of Fame.
Gentlemen, it has been an absolute pleasure for Matt Ardill and Thomas Senna. I'm JD.
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[35:23] Do me a favor on your way out as you pass the weekend update exhibit.
Turn out the lights because the SNL Hall of Fame is now closed.
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