Late Night, with Shawn Smith and Happy Chichester

Shawn Smith made an announcement a month or so ago on facebook that his band Brad would be playing on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, and that if you're "flipping through the channels... and see a large bear fronting a band," that it would be him.


I know of Shawn Smith mostly from his work with Greg Dulli, in his bands The Afghan Whigs and The Twilight Singers, which are two of my favorite bands. I am not that into Shawn Smith's own bands, except for a few Pigeonhed songs, like "The Full Sentence":



There's also a Pigeonhed song from over a decade ago that there's a really wellknown remix of, which I can guarantee you've heard before, even if you didn't know what the hell it was.

Regardless of me not really caring for his band Brad, I wanted to see that large bear on television. I waited patiently until the night of the performance, trying my best not to forget about it. Fifteen minutes or so before I figured the band would go on, I went to my television to tune in to the show and wait. I was having technical difficulties due to the satellite signal or something, and missed the performance.

I finally got around to watching the Late Night episode today. Since that episode is only up on the site until the 27th, and you might not want to watch the full episode anyway, here's a youtube video of just the performance:



I seem to have a talent for recognizing voices, and as soon as the chorus began on the words "stay low," I was thinking "Hey, that sounds like Happy Chichester singing backup vocals." Sure enough, a bit later they showed a closeup of him playing keyboard and singing backup. For being behind a keyboard at the back of the stage and just being a backup singer, he sure got a lot of camera time and closeups throughout the performance.


Harold "Happy" Chichester has also worked with The Afghan Whigs and The Twilight Singers. In fact, he and Shawn Smith were in the first Twilight Singers album, Twilight As Played By The Twilight Singers quite a bit, and sang together on some of the songs. Here's a song called "That's Just How That Bird Sings" where Greg Dulli, Shawn, and Happy all sing:



Shawn Smith's voice is the first you hear, off to the left, and Happy Chichester's voice is the second one you hear, off to the right. I'm sure you can hear why I love their voices. It was cool seeing them on a television show, even if it was actually on the computer.