‘Late Night With Seth Meyers’ Losing Live Band For Season 12

When Late Night With Seth Meyers returns for its 12th season next September, the program will be without a live band. The 8G Band has been laid off amid budget cuts at NBC.

8G Band keyboardist and associate musical director Eli Janney — who is joined in the group by guitarist/drummer Fred Armisen, bassist Syd Butler and lead guitarist Seth Jabour — revealed the news to Vulture in a new interview. While Armisen’s appearances have become increasingly rare over the years, the 8G Band has been a fixture of the show since Seth Meyers replaced Jimmy Fallon as Late Night host in 2014.

“In the end, NBC was adamant about where they wanted the budget to go,” Janney told Vulture about what has been described as a “revamp” for the next season. “It’s not just the band; there’s a whole crew that works with the band, so there’s a lot of people employed. I think this was an easy way for them to cut the budget. Easy is not the right word.”

The members of the group were informed of the decision by Seth Meyers and showrunner Mike Shoemaker. “They expressed their regret and frustration about it,” Janney recalled. “There’s a lot of strong emotions. No one is happy about it. Seth has been a big champion of ours from the get-go. They couldn’t have been nicer about it. They told us probably about a month ago — maybe six weeks. That’s a good more than 90 days to figure out what’s next for us, so that’s pretty nice.”

Janney, Butler and Jabour have welcomed a slew of guest drummers over the past decade including Joe Russo, Nikki Glaspie, Danny Carey (Tool), Stanton Moore (Galactic), Janet Weiss and Tim Alexander (Primus). “I think we’re closing in on 300 drummers, which is so fun and amazing and has got to be some kind of record — I try to prep them for the show, and I say, ‘Other than the opening theme, which has to be the same every night, everything else is very loose. We can do whatever we want,'” added Eli Janney. Karina Rykman has made several appearances dating back to 2022.

Fred Armisen will return for the last week of the current season and “there’ll be a little bit of a celebration, I’m sure” according to the keyboardist. “It’s also just a sad day for Late Night, because it’s been going for over 40 years now,” said of the show’s history that has included the Paul Shaffer-led “World’s Most Dangerous Band” and The Roots among its past house bands. “But, sadly, it’s the reality of broadcast and a shrinking market — streaming eating into this, and YouTube eating into that. Streaming is not making money, either. So budgets everywhere have been cut and cut and cut.”

The lone bright spot is that the 8G Band will continue contributing to Late Night With Seth Meyers in a different fashion. “We’re still going to make music for them, but we just won’t be playing it live,” Janney said. “That’s one nice thing they’ve worked out. We’re just going to record a whole bunch of them and then update it periodically to keep things fresh. So that’ll be super fun, actually.”