Game Changers With Vicki Abelson

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....

It turns out it’s not all about the bass when talking with my hero, iconic legend, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductee, Jack Casady, of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna. We did a deep dive into Jack’s family history, which is documented back to 1600s America on one side. There’s Irish, there’s Jewish, smoked whitefish on Sunday mornings whilst being raised Protestant. There are stories aplenty of Jac...

Post-election 2024 started out somber, weepy, and kind of hopeless for many of us. Thank goodness for my old pal, singer/songwriter/producer, Steve Postell. A long-time news junkie, he determined this day he was through. He pulled me and the rest of us out of the muck––back into the music, art, and the land of the living. We processed together a bit first and then shifted gears with Steve singing...

Dan Navarro Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson They say you can never go home- they didn’t have their old pal Dan Navarro on their show––took me right back to shared memories with Chloris Leachman in the living room, the Mets winning a 2015 playoff game at Dodger Stadium (unlike today), seeing Lori Lieberman at The Grammy Museum, Mike Finnegan at The Levitt Pavilion, NAMM hangs, my book laun...

Dee Wallace Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson Dee Wallace has been a literal life changer for me, let alone a game changer in the business of show and as a self-creation healer. We signed up for a session as soon as I got off the interweb tonight. I’ve been employing Dee’s techniques since first we met at Women Who Write in 2011. I got refresher courses every time she came back to the livin...

My crush on William Katt began decades ago with the tumbling blonde spirals of Tommy Ross in Carrie, the close-cropped Sundance, to the shorter golden curls of Pippin… it wasn’t just the hair, of course… that face, the smile, his voice… the whole damn package. Like millions of other baby boomers, he had us swooning for years. How lovely to sit down with Bill, these almost 50 years later, to discov...

Narada Michael Walden Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson Wow! I’ve seen hundreds of photos, loads of videos - I’ve never seen Narada Michael Walden in an orange bowler. When was the last time I wore orange? InSync! From the first moment to the last, what a glorious, grateful, exuberant lovefest. Narada is as passionate, fun, inviting, and accessible as his music. We talked about his first pa...