Game Changers With Vicki Abelson

Nestor Carbonell Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson Nestor Carbonell has it all. A beautiful wife, great kids, a wildly successful career spanning three plus decades, which is hotter than ever, with two hit shows streaming (The Morning Show on Apple TV, and Pulse on Netflix), a brand new film in theatres (Motherland), a sparkling Emmy award (for Shōgun), his first feature about to be cast, a...

The Blues Magoos Peppy Castro Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson There’s fun, and then there’s spending two hours with The Blues Magoos Peppy Castro! He’s lived a rockers’ life to covet and then some! The Who, Hendrix, Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, JOHN LENNON for Gd’s sake! Stories, stories, stories, one better than the next. He drove a Beatle in a Beetle! Who can say that? Skipping school and...

Bette Sussman Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson Keyboardist, composer, musical director, Emmy winner, Bette Sussman, is a dear friend, a Scorpio almost twin sista, crazy talented, grows her food, cooks delectably, rocks hard, leans left, which is right, cares about humans and other living things… what more could you want in a person? What fun to talk about life, the day to day, how it’s cha...

Liberty DeVitto Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson Sitting down with iconic Billy Joel drummer, Liberty DeVitto, after a too-long three-year hiatus was fantastical! Friends since the 80s, I never get enough of Lib’s stories and his spectacular storytelling. Hot off the heels of being a major player in the current HBO/MAX Billy Joel doc, And So It Goes, Lib caught us up and filled in the blan...

The Cowsills Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson What’s better than sitting down with your old friend and childhood hero, Bob Cowsill? Being surprised when Paul and Susan Cowsill join him. Us. What fun! The Cowsills (Hair, The Rain, The Park, and Other Things, We Can Fly), currently out on The Happy Together Tour, are the real-life Partridge Family, upon whom the show was based. A fan since t...

Bradley Whitford Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson It was a sweet reunion when 3 x Emmy-winner Bradley Whitford of The West Wing was surprised and serenaded by composer Snuffy Walden, with the show’s Emmy-winning theme. They share quite a bit of history, having also done Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Last night Snuff and I binged the pilot episodes of both shows and were astounded...

Decades later, as if no time had passed, bassist Kevin Jenkins came to call. I met Kevin in 1986ish, when he was playing with Cyndi Lauper at the height of her fame. He had stopped in to the Rock ’N Roll Cafe, sat in, and graced our small stage. Big man on campus, he was pop-rock royalty. Girl just wanted to have fun, so with my Cafe cohort, Steve Principe, we headed to The Stone Pony to catch Kev...

Leland Sklar Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson Happy Happy Joy Joy, that’s spending time conversing with our good friend, Leland Sklar, who’s made it all about the bass with everybody on everything, from Phil Collins, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Billy Cobham, Carole King, Hall & Oates, Crosby Stills, & Nash, Barbra Streisand, Joe Cocker, Toto, Lyle Lovett, and the list goe...

We were Live with my good friend, 2x Emmy nominee, Gary Stockdale. What a joy after a long void. Pre-pandemic, it seems we saw each other everywhere, and often. COVID changed life. A lot. We talked about that and how both of us have Facebook Lives born out of necessity. You’d think with our combined expertise, it would be smooth sailing. You’d think. Tech glitches messed with Gary’s fine art… his...

Tracy Newman Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson by Vicki Abelson

Rosemary Butler Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson Part 2 Rosemary Butler has sung with everyone on every song I love. Pretty damn close. In this, our 2nd sitdown, Rose picked up where we left off, post Paul & Ringo, The Rolling Stones, and Three Dog Night - see Part 1 for those fab stories, and took us through Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, The Section, Kenny Lo...

Alan Zweibel Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson Live from the Zoom Room, it’s Alan Zweibel! It was so great to jump back in with the fabulous, funny, and fun Emmy Winner. Alan took us back to his earliest days in the biz, how he made his way in, the first joke he sold, still funny! The Catskill Mountains, Morty Gunty, Freddie Roman, Rodney Dangerfield, maybe his first collaborator… with whom...

Nile Rogers of Chic Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson This sit-down with my old friend, multiple Grammy Winner, Rock & Roll Hall Inductee, Songwriters Hall of Fame Inductee, composer, producer, arranger, and guitarist, Nile Rogers, is SOLID GOLD… more like triple platinum. Even though we never exchanged more than a few words in the handful of times he graced my jams back in the day, there w...

Tony Braunagel, Terry Wilson & Snuffy Walden Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson What do you get when you Zoom with three amigos from Texas who go back over 50 years? A whole lot of fun, rock stories galore, and a ton of love. The Grammy, Emmy, BMI, and Blues Award Winning trio of Snuffy Walden, Tony Braunagel, and Terry Wilson took us back to the 60s in Houston, playing at the Cellar, a stri...

Jim Vallely Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson Sitting down with Emmy and WGA award winner, Jim Vallely was a cozy, comfortable, fun, and funny hang. He even told us a joke joke, on request. It’s one he’s been “testing” as part of a sociological experiment of sorts. Win/win, we got a laugh with a lesson. Who knew that having a seizure in 6th grade would lead to a career as a TV comedy writer...

Rosemary Butler Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson Part 1 Astrologer Zoe Moon warned it was gonna be a crazy day. I read that first thing this morning but forgot about it until 4:45 pm when things started going sideways. What could have been a non-show disappointment, turned into a delayed, technical bit of a mess, but ultimately delightful chat with the incomparable Rosemary Butler. Just th...

Benny Harrison Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson What fun to sit down and catch up with keyboardist, singer, songwriter, producer, Benny Harrison, who I’ve known for 5 decades. There was so much I didn’t know. Benny gave us the back story––growing up mixed race from hard-working parents who may or may not have been on the wrong side of the law, but who taught him strong work ethics and appr...

John Fugelsang Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson Stop everything! John Fugelsang, a Drama League-nominated actor, comedian & host of Tell Me Everything on SiriusXM, is one thought-provoking, gracious, informed, intelligent, sexy liberal! And boy did fill the hour with passion and hope. With informed insight, John offered us tools when dealing with the maga faux Christian right, which will b...

Mark Metcalf on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson As if sitting down twice with Animal House’s Mark Metcalf was not enough (it wasn’t), thrice was the charm. And, I suspect, just the beginning of many more conversations to come… and that’s exactly what this was… a conversation. Sparked by Mark’s just-dropped memoir, Tim Tim Timmy, which is at once gut-wrenching, heart-stopping, terrifying, life-aff...

John Conte Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson What crazy fun to sit down with my old dear friend, bassist John Conte, whom I hadn’t seen in decades. How is it possible that he appears to have aged barely a day? Seriously! John took us back to childhood days, his jazz-singing mother, Rosemary, his early days on guitar, and his brother Steve at first on drums. Their first band when John was 8...

Laurence Juber Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson How life-affirming to be back Live with 2x Grammy Winner Laurence Juber. Laurence got us started with his Cobalt Blue. Loved it! What an extraordinary finger-playing guitarist. Gorgeous. We talked the LA fires, the Juber evacuation plan, fortunately not taken to fruition. Animals before guitars, his one-of-a-kind custom shop signature Martin,...

Jim Beaver Live On Game Changers With Vicki Abelson by Vicki Abelson

Jimmy Vivino Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson It had been six long, 4 1/2 COVID years since last I sat down with my old friend, multi-instrumentalist, producer, composer, and long-time musical director for Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Vivino. It was like coming home. Almost the same age, we have many shared (unbeknownst to us at the time) memories of concerts at The Filmore East, Watkins Glen, the...

Bruce Vilanch Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson We were Live with 6x Emmy Winner, Bruce Vilanch, even though he only stakes genuine claim to 2 of them, he’s got 6. Well, he was awarded 6, he gave one to his mother, one to his manager, one to his business manager, and he’s got 2 in his possession. They all still count, Bruce. And they’re all deserved. This human has brought so much joy, and...

Foreigner guitarist Bruce Watson was having a better hair day, finished his crisp white shirt with a black jacket (I’d intended to do in kind with mine, but I was rushing and couldn’t get my cuffs through my sleeves), and surrounded himself with cool guitars and warm lights. Rockstar! I dig the cut of his jib. Almost as much as I appreciate how accessible, down-to-earth, humble, and lovely he is....